A damaged beauty

Fukushima – not the first place you’d think of going to for a vacation. In fact, I can’t think of any place with such a negative connotation to its name for the last few years (with the exception of a few war-riddled countries maybe). Nevertheless, it seemed a logic place to go when heading north from Tokyo, and since we’d read just as many positive things about the area, we decided to give it a go.

The weather somehow cleared up as soon as we entered the area, which we took as a good sign. Speaking of signs: I admit that passing this one made me feel a bit weird, somehow.

We kept going along the ocean, since it proved to be far more interesting than using the (expensive) highway. After a while, we noticed more and more abandoned houses, which all somehow looked as if people had been running away without taking anything with them. Food was still in gas station shops, we passed real estate offices with bleached out brochures still on the shelves – but nobody around. Except from cars and trucks passing and the occasional cop, we saw virtually no people.

According to the web, there was a containment area ahead, but we figured somebody would stop us once we were about to enter it. Surprisingly, no one did – which we realised once we passed this sign, a mere 2km from where the accident happened:

By now everything looked like a ghost town. Every single driveway and entrance was sealed off, and not a soul in sight. Surprisingly, though, there were still cops, guarding certain entrances and major roads:

Just as we began to wonder, where the actual sealed off area was, we were stopped and told to turn around. Funny thing though: We were told to go by CLOSER the actual power plant, and were stopped from getting away from it. Seems contamination does not really spread even, for all we can tell. 

Following the order of the law, we made it to the actual town of Fukushima, about 60km from the power plant. Here, life was certainly back to normal – if it had ever been interrupted. Great sushi, a stinky sulfur onsen up in the mountains, and the quite spectacular Hanamiyama park full of – you guessed it – cherry blossom made the trip here worth our while. 

We spent a few days discovering that the Fukushima area certainly does offer a lot: Impressive mountains with ski resorts, majestic valleys that go for miles on end, and beautiful lakes of all sizes that reminded us of back home. And while you can tell that they’re giving their best to recover from the bad image stuck to their name – we were even interviewed by a local TV station for being tourists in the region – as of now, they still have a long way to go: All along the way back down south we passed abandoned places. The smaller the town, the more empty houses there were, it seemed. 

Did they leave because of contamination? Or were they forced to leave because of the sudden decrease in tourism and other visitors, killing their businesses? We don’t really know. But we’d certainly come back. For us, the beauty and diversity of the area far surpasses the negative connotation of the name.