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.
