One Day Trip to Fukushima

Last week I went to Fukushima prefecture office with my colleagues to see an executive person in order to discuss about a long term support for revival of ruined area by Tokyo-based companies. However my wording seemed to be a little bit wrong. "Revival?" the executive laughed in self-deprecation. "Far from revival. We are still suffering."
Iwate and Miyagi, two prefectures which were damaged by tsunami, located north of Fukushima ,have already started to reconstruct the ruined regions. But Fukushima is still continuously being suffered by "invisible tsunami", radioactive substances scattered by broken nuclear reactors.
I recognized it is not so easy to support this district as long as four reactors are out of control.
After the discussion, I left Fukushima Pref. office for Haramachi-city, which is located only 15 miles from reactors. Iitate route is the shortest cut to Haramachi.
The traffics were much heavier than I had expected. A lot of cars including army vehicles were coming and going. However I found nobody waking there.
Rice field along the street remained dry because nobody has taken care of it for a long time. Despite the season of planting rice it looked like the scene of winter while it was surrounded by green weed of early summer.
There is a beautiful rural scene about 25 miles away from broken reactors. However when I imagined invisible particles were flying here and there I hesitated to open the window of the car.
Haramachi-city is only 15 miles from reactors, less than 2 miles from restricted area, nevertheless the radioactivity level is much lower than Iitate probably because of geographical reason. I was surprised to find two Japanese restaurants were open there while all McDonald's shops were closed around there. One seems to have decided to function as a social infrastructure while the other gave it up.

from Tokyo