Fukushima Documentary trip

For my group's main project, we went to Fukushima to film a documentary on how people were affected by the disaster that earlier this year in the Tohoku area of Japan.  Specifically, we interviewed mothers in Fukushima that were worried about the unstable conditions of the radiation in the air from the damaged nuclear plants.  We also interviewed a local apple, pear and peach farmer whos business has been affected because of the radiation scare.
About Fukushima: I had no prior knowledge of Fukushima before our trip, the town is quite small and quaint basically based around one train station.  As you go away from the station, there is mostly farms and fields and wildlife, which is, naturally, quite different from Tokyo.  We stayed about 60km or more from where the nuclear plants are located as well as from where a lot of the tsunami damage is, yet, one can tell that the whole area is affected.  There is a large amount of energy saving going on as well as smaller businesses had their hours cut or are closed down.
We made the trip to Fukushima twice, the first trip was mainly to obtain b-roll of the city and make some more contacts with mothers and anyone that felt like telling their story of how they are affected.  We also interviewed Nakate-San who is the leader of the "keep your kids safe" kind of campaign for Fukushima as well as the mayor of Fukushima.  On the second trip we filmed some quite successful interviews with the mother and Mr. Anzai, who owns the Orchard. 
Overall, I believe the trip was successful.  Here are some pictures:


This is the area we stayed in:

There were signs posted all around Fukushima saying 'good luck,' or 'keep fighting,' to keep the people's spirits high.

While shooting b-roll:

In between Fukushima City and Minami Soma we drove through the mountains, this picture shows what the area is like:

After we interviewed with the mayor, he had some people show us around to the 20km radius (the area that is suggested too close to the nuclear plants and considered dangerous) as well as the tsunami damaged areas of Minami Soma.  The 20km zone is blocked off to the public and there are also places where you can enter, but they are guarded by the police; to get in you must have proper credentials.  Some of the police officers tried to talk to Akihiro and Will to tell them it was dangerous (even though we already knew).

here is a 7-11 at the 20 km radius, only open from 11am-3pm.

Here is some of the damage we witnessed

It was quite amazing to see how destructive yet how quickly the area is being cleaned up.

aaronkubodayinthelife youtube

Day in the Life with Aaron Kubo

For my Day in the Life project, I followed around my friend/new roommate Aaron Kubo.  The day was somewhat uneventful, given it was a Tuesday, but he's a quite interesting person nonetheless.  Before he moved to Tokyo, he lived in Nagoya/Nagano but he came to Tokyo for a trip we took in early May.  Since then he ended up just moving to Tokyo couch hopping/sleeping in parks.
Anyways, for the day in the life, we got a late start on the day because I went to buy a memory card for the camera I was going to use to shoot the short video.  After buying the card, we went to Tokyo for a skate session at Shibaura Island, near Tamachi station.  We met up with some friends then, once the session got boring, we went to meet some other friends at Shibuya's new Miyashita Koen Nike skatepark.  We bought the cheapest ticket, which technically they don't want you to use, but since the park was only open for 30 more minutes they let it slide.  Once the skatepark closed, we went to the front of a nearby Family Mart and drank a few beers with some friends and skate the flat ground in front of the store.  The police ended up kicking us out because the sidewalk was to crowded and they considered it dangerous, so we moved to the front of the Nike park to drink more beers and skate the ledge/watch some friends skate the ledge.  The police came back to tell us to leave there so everyone parted ways and went off to home.  We got home and Aaron was slightly drunk so we made some toast then called it a night.

Edit: I forgot to post the video so here it is.



Note: The video turned out different than I expected it too, but it was slightly more difficult to get the shots i thought about in my head when out with Aaron.  Its not that he is difficult to work with, but things move more quickly than I was ready for (haha). 

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