We hid the car in the courtyard of one of the still-abandoned houses in Namiya. Formally, this area has already been cleaned up and is now a green zone, but few people dare to return to their homes,
because they are afraid of radiation. The streets of the half-abandoned city were lit by the rising moon; we walked cheerfully toward the barrier that blocked the road into the red zone, along a street overgrown
with bushes.
After just two hundred meters, I spotted the approaching headlights reflected in the spherical road mirror on the corner and jumped into the bushes. A patrol car passed by slowly. The bushes turned out
to be roses, and after climbing out of them we carried on, constantly glancing over our shoulders.
In almost a decade and a half of visiting abandoned sites all over the world, I thought I had seen everything, yet we were stepping into a completely untouched, forgotten world. Walking in silence through abandoned railway tunnels, we slipped into the red zone of the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant from the north. In the unpredictability of a new adventure, this warm night took me back to what was perhaps my most impressive illegal trip to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Nothing there would ever be so thrilling and pristine again.
On March 11, 2011, the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s history and the tsunami that followed it caused an accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. The force of nature knocked out the external power supply and the backup diesel generators, so the cooling systems of several units went offline, and as a result the reactor cores of units 1, 2 and 3 melted down. The consequences of the disaster were truly horrifying.
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Almost immediately after the accident, the evacuation of people from nearby settlements began – first from a three-kilometer zone, then from a zone of 5 to 15 kilometers, and finally the exclusion zone became a circle with a radius of 30 kilometers. In all, about 160 thousand people were evacuated. Within the exclusion zone there are six cities and several villages, all heavily contaminated with radiation.
Futaba is one of the two largest towns in the Fukushima exclusion zone. It was about 2:00 a.m. when we entered the city. In many places the street lights were still on, and beneath them hung dome CCTV
cameras. After exploring the ghost town of Okuma the night before, we were extremely careful.
Sneaking in through an open window on the second floor, I opened the door for the others, and we made our way into the abandoned store.
We took a lot of photos, went outside, and stumbled across other people. I still don’t fully understand who they were, but I had no desire to find out. We saw them, they saw us, and we quickly slipped away, waiting for the right moment to continue along the streets of the abandoned city. From time to time I checked the dosimeter; its readings never exceeded 400 microroentgen per hour.
Toward morning, we headed to a huge sports complex.
After dawn, we went for a walk; this is what a blocked street looks like. In a few hours, a police unit would be posted here.
One of Japan’s distinctive features is its machines for selling just about anything. A village may not have a shop, but it will always have vending machines selling soft drinks.
Soon the trees will sprout up through the cars.
We decided to head to the outskirts of the city to climb the hill and take in the panorama.
Some houses have fallen into complete ruin. Inside, everything is turned upside down. Wild pigs force their way into the houses and turn everything over inside to find food.
Some houses have collapsed completely.
A panorama of the abandoned town.
An abandoned kindergarten in Futaba.
Surprisingly, even seven years later, this abandoned Japanese kindergarten looks far better than a Ukrainian one.
Time is running short; day has fully broken, and we are making our way to the exit from the red zone.
The green zone at the liquidation site is also a very interesting place, but we will write about it next time.
The Another.Kiev urbextour team can organize an adventurous hiking tour through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for you. Or, if you happen to be in Ukraine, join our Kiev urban exploration tour and explore an underground tunnel system and an abandoned Cold War bunker.