So don’t expect spooky, well-placed dolls or unnecessary HazMat gear. She doesn’t look to dramatise or commodify the dangers of visiting Fukushima’s restriction zone because the truth is, it is safe. Read our community guidelines in full, The latest offers and discount codes from popular brands on Telegraph Voucher Codes, Telegraph Travel's Greg Dickinson holds a Geiger Counter in the Fukushima evacuation zone, Eight years on, Fukushima still has a long way to recovery, The founder of Aman Resorts is launching a new ryokan hotel chain for the modern age, The enchanting part of Japan where John and Yoko found peace, Japan's national parks join destinations seeking to woo remote workers, Japan to reopen borders this week – but not to tourists, What will ski holidays be like this winter? Despite what the clicks may suggest your Geiger Counter reading won’t go anywhere near truly dangerous levels. The sky was heavy as concrete, weighing down on the vehicles that passed through, mainly trucks transporting contaminated soil to be buried far away from here. After the explosion, over 150,000 residents were evacuated from the area 20km (12 miles) from Dai-ichi, and for years the official advice was to stay away. For the final stop of the tour we met her in the nearby town of Tomioka outside her family’s old jewellery shop, which was ransacked in the days following the fallout and has remained closed ever since. Namie’s izakaya (a traditional, saloon-type bar found across Japan) for example looked like it had been the site of a terrible brawl, with smashed sake bottles on the floor and rubbish strewn across the room. | Cookie Settings. The other vehicles were commuters and lorries taking the fastest route through the prefecture, zooming past crumbling homes and greenhouses reclaimed by the plants within them. Thank you for showing an interest in our area of Fukushima. Go if the idea appeals to you, but beware the fallout of your visit will last longer than you could imagine. The version that this family knew eight years ago is long gone. If you are interested in visiting, please first read the following guidelines: Our tour takes you into the current exclusion zone with an official permission. If you are interested in visiting, please first read the following guidelines: Our tour takes you into the current exclusion zone with an official permission. I was in the Fukushima exclusion zone along with a Telegraph film crew, and we were under strict instructions to keep our car windows shut. But after a magnitude 9.1 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan, that all changed. It will become a new town.”. TWITTER Entering buildings in the way demonstrated by David Farrier on Dark Tourist is dangerous, unnecessary and largely prohibited. © 2020 The Hollywood Reporter The clicks were becoming maddening. And of course people spend money here, which will be good for the economy.”. His ranch was the first stop on our tour. Hiroko Nakayama, born and raised a few miles from the power plant, struggles to see a time when she will ever return home. Farrier and the other tourists become concerned as the readings on their Geiger counters showed radiation higher than they were told to expect and what is deemed to be safe levels. After the success of HBO’s Chernobyl, visits to the Ukrainian power plant have skyrocketed with operators like Explore now running trips there. This is a place that, probably more so than anywhere else on the planet, offers a glimpse of what happens when humans leave somewhere behind and nature is free to do its thing. We didn’t need breathing apparatus, she said with a smile as we climbed into the car. Nearly 20,000 people died in March 2011, when a huge earthquake set off a devastating tsunami that knocked the cooling systems of the nuclear plant out of action, leading to three reactors at Daiichi melting down. Thank you for showing an interest in our area of Fukushima. He led me into his office, a claustrophobic corrugated shed filled with horseflies, and showed me laminated photos of starving cows and pigs from neighbouring farms. Find out more, The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. 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As a result, the name “Fukushima” joined the likes of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. Soon after the evacuation order he ignored government advice and returned to his ranch, exposing himself to dangerous levels of radiation to keep his cows alive. "We're examining the video content," a senior official from the prefecture told news agency Jiji. Best regards,Shuzo Sasaki, Real Fukushima Team. And then there was us: amongst the first tourists to take a day trip to one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Terms of Use | We want to hear your thoughts. Yoshizawa’s mission is about as quixotic as they come. Gavin J Blair Japan Wonder Travel started running tours of Fukushima earlier this year and Yoko believes that tourism could help to bring life back to Namie. The Fukushima government declined to provide further comment on Dark Tourist or the action that it might take. Farrier also stays in a robot-run hotel and takes a tour to the abandoned Hashima Island. See you in Fukushima! Check the Foreign Office advice on Fukushima before visiting (fco.org.uk). Sitemap | Comment below to join the conversation. This, the tragic loss of animal life, is just one of the unreported “inconvenient truths” of the Fukushima disaster that Yoshizawa wants to shed light on. The evacuation order was lifted in 2017 and today, Namie has a population of 1,000, although during my hour there I did not see another soul walking its streets. These are the property of private owners. In Chernobyl you will even find vendors selling snacks with a nuclear hazard symbol on them – you won’t find any such thing here. “I don’t think it will return to the normal we once knew, but rather a new type of normal,” she told me. But the flip side is that visiting Fukushima teaches some poignant lessons about the destructive power of humankind, it reminds of the enduring resilience of nature, and sheds light on the untold human stories of the disaster. We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism. Posted September 25, 2018 December 1, 2018 Editor. YOUTUBE. We met our guide, Yoko Kitamura, just outside the restriction zone at the J-Village soccer training facility, where we were staying. As we drove out of the exclusion zone and made our way back to the J-Village, Yoko turned to me, our Geiger Counter clicks slowing down now. What on earth was I doing here? The faster the clicks, the higher the reading. “This is a place that stands outside the rest of the country. In the beginning of March 2011, the town’s population was 21,000 – by the end of that month, it was zero, and it stayed that way for six years. I was thankful when it was time to move on, blood trickling down my legs from where I had been bitten. When, if ever, will they be filled again? To Viewers of Netflix’s Dark Tourist. During the episode, Farrier also visits the Aokigahara forest, an area known for suicides. Tours start from Tokyo (23,000 yen/person; approx £179) and last 12 hours. I saw an abandoned house with an open window and took a glimpse through the window. A reading of 0.7 on the Geiger Counter went up to 1.2 then jumped to 2.9. The clicks accelerated in time with my heart beat. She had a calming demeanour, which actually had the opposite effect on me. The resulting 40-metre-high tsunami killed more than 15,000 people and breached the flood defence walls at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Power Plant, prompting a Level 7 nuclear disaster for only the second time in history. The farm is dubbed the Ranch of Hope, but the aesthetic is more like the hideaway of the last man on earth, decorated with cow skulls and sprayed with anti-nuclear graffiti. Are the horseflies themselves radioactive, I wondered? Could you be tempted by a tour of the Fukushima exclusion zone? You will be asked to show respect to this area throughout the tour and consider those affected by evacuation orders, the survivors of the earthquake and tsunami and the people who died as a result of this triple disaster since 2011. What we learnt on a tour of the exclusion zone Eight years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, "dark tourism" is on the rise. They’ve been feeding on the contaminated cows, after all. We encourage all visitors to independently verify this data should they wish. Prior to March 11 2011, the mountainous Fukushima region received little international attention. In „Dark Tourist“ erkundet der neuseeländische Journalist David Farrier die düsteren Seiten des Freizeitspaßes. My tour was coming to a close, and I kept coming back to the question – why come here? Japan Wonder Travel (japanwondertravel.com) runs tours of the Fukushima restriction zone. What I saw inside was a snapshot of a life left behind at a moment’s notice. EMAIL ME After the meltdown, the government ordered all of the contaminated livestock in the exclusion zone to be slaughtered, but he is not the kind of man who likes to be told what to do (he describes himself as a “cow terrorist”).

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