And then there was us: amongst the first tourists to take a day trip to one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. As it stands only a small handful of companies run tours in Fukushima. YouTuber Paul Logan faced a backlash at the beginning of the year after posting a video from the forest, where he had discovered a corpse. by An ungoverned, daring place,” said Masami Yoshizawa, whose cattle farm is 14 km (9 miles) from Dai-ichi. The four stalls that still line the bar have been unoccupied since the ground shook at 2.46pm eight years ago. 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. We met our guide, Yoko Kitamura, just outside the restriction zone at the J-Village soccer training facility, where we were staying. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future. FACEBOOK She had a calming demeanour, which actually had the opposite effect on me. 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. “If you look at your reading, you will see that the total amount of radiation you have been exposed to today is lower than the amount of a flight from London to Tokyo,” she told me. 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. A tour of the Fukushima disaster zone is raw, harrowing, at times desperately sad. Japan's Reconstruction Agency and Fukushima Prefectural Government are considering legal action over the episode of Netflix's Dark Tourist, which visited places still dealing with the aftermath of the March 2011 triple nuclear meltdown. All rights reserved. The parts of the video that the authorities have taken objection to are the section showing the high radiation levels, but not saying where they were filmed, the speculation about food contamination and Farrier's excursion into the off-limits area. “The people who live here will be completely different than before. Magnets on the fridge, a small child’s toys scattered across the floor, a pan was left on the hob. The buildings, the local culture, it’s all come to a halt, so it’s about new things starting here. 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. 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. ”If people come and learn about Fukushima, they will know it’s safe. Despite what the clicks may suggest your Geiger Counter reading won’t go anywhere near truly dangerous levels. So don’t expect spooky, well-placed dolls or unnecessary HazMat gear. In „Dark Tourist“ erkundet der neuseeländische Journalist David Farrier die düsteren Seiten des Freizeitspaßes. Privacy | Is this something that I can recommend with my journalistic integrity intact? Almost 100,000 foreign tourists are estimated to have visited Fukushima last year on what have been dubbed nuclear tourism tours. The Hollywood Reporter is part of MRC Media and Info, a division of MRC. 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. We didn’t need breathing apparatus, she said with a smile as we climbed into the car. Are the horseflies themselves radioactive, I wondered? EMAIL ME What I saw inside was a snapshot of a life left behind at a moment’s notice. Gavin J Blair Tours start from Tokyo (23,000 yen/person; approx £179) and last 12 hours. In this moment I realised that Yoko’s reassuring approach is tonally spot on. 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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 would have preferred a foaming-at-the-mouth conspiracy theorist if it meant she was pinging a gas mask around my cheeks and handing me a lead codpiece. The group eventually decides to cut the tour short, but not before eating at a restaurant in the area and Farrier leaving the group to enter an off-limit gaming arcade. Farrier also stays in a robot-run hotel and takes a tour to the abandoned Hashima Island. Other episodes feature tourism related to voodoo, drug barons, mass murderers and survivalists. The version that this family knew eight years ago is long gone. We aim to challenge sensationalism, be that images, fictitious experiences, or any other disrespectful behaviour towards this area. The truth is there are very few places to spend your money in Namie Town, or anywhere in the exclusion zone for that matter. One man, however, never left. A reading of 0.7 on the Geiger Counter went up to 1.2 then jumped to 2.9. The first thing that strikes you about Yoshizawa’s farm is the smell of the place, a putrid mix of dung and pineapple; I later found out a Californian fruit farm donates its spare rind to help feed Yoshizawa’s livestock. Check the Foreign Office advice on Fukushima before visiting (fco.org.uk). Eight years on, much of the area has been classified as safe to return to and the diaspora has started to trickle back. What on earth was I doing here? 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. Ours were rattling away like an orchestra of digital crickets. And of course people spend money here, which will be good for the economy.”. "We're examining the video content," a senior official from the prefecture told news agency Jiji. Comment below to join the conversation. But after a magnitude 9.1 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan, that all changed. “This is a place that stands outside the rest of the country. We welcome people from all around the world to join our tours, but we will not accept those who show disrespect and thoughtlessness.
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