Japan's nuclear "ghost town" tour
Visitors to Google Maps Street View can now explore the area around Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima, an area you are not allowed to visit any other way. Start your tour with our embedded map.
Visitors to Google Maps Street View can now explore the area around Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima, an area you are not allowed to visit any other way. Start your tour with our embedded map.
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This story was first published in March, 2013. It is still a good read. I (Terry) have just arrived in the United States to visit my 95-year-old mother, so during my time there, you will be seeing quite a few repeat stories.
Read the story and then check out the embedded map below. You can take your own tour of the city of the city of Namie in Fukushima prefecture. Google Street View takes a bit of practice. You will see arrows on the road that allow you to move forward or backward. Use the arrows in the circle to look in other directions. Notice that you can click on "view larger map" to get a bigger view. If you do so, don't get lost. To return to this story, click on the back arrow in your browser.
Click button to listen to Ghost town and rightclick to download
Google reveals views of Japan's nuclear ghost town
By Harumi Ozawa (AFP)
TOKYO — Visitors to Google Maps can now roam virtually through the overgrown streets of an abandoned town where time has stood still since a tsunami crippled Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant two years ago.
The Internet giant's mapping site is offering views of the deserted streets of Namie, half of which sits within the 20-kilometre (12-mile) no-go zone around the nuclear plant, wrecked when the 2011 tsunami crashed into Japan.
A scene from Google Street View of a street near the Namie Post office not far from the nuclear reactor accident site.
With cooling systems knocked out by the wall of water, three reactors melted down, spewing radioactive particles into the air, soil and sea and forcing Namie's entire population of 21,000 to flee.
The entrance ban will be lifted for a small part of the town from Monday next week, allowing residents to visit for a short time, but the vast majority remains highly contaminated and is expected to be uninhabitable for years.
"The world is moving on to the future after the disaster... but time has stopped in the town of Namie," said mayor Tamotsu Baba, writing on a blog for Google Japan Thursday.
"I hope these street views will show the people of future generations what the great earthquake and nuclear disaster brought," he said.
"We need many years and many people's cooperation to rise again from the nuclear crisis. We will never give up on getting back our hometown," he said.
The natural disasters killed nearly 19,000 people, including those whose bodies are yet to be recovered.
Some parts of the town were swamped by the waves of March 11. Houses and other buildings damaged by the water can be clearly seen as site visitors click through the panoramic displays.
Along the coastline, the occasional boat lies in an untended field, dumped there by the waves that spread heavy oils and silt over rice paddies, where they also left the now rotted bodies of marine life.
But many of the buildings in the town are intact, tinged only by the invisible menace of radiation and abandoned when the sudden order to evacuate came two years ago.
Plant pots, their contents long dead or run wild, stand neatly outside some houses. Barber shops and hairdressers still display their welcome signs, offering haircuts to customers who may never return.
The images come from a heavily polluted part of the town, where residents are not allowed to venture, a town official said.