Journeys to the edge: Tourism in Fukushima makes more sense now
One windy city surviving on the cusp of Japan's nuclear frontier is ready and waiting for visitors.
Far from any scenes of devastation, Setogaro Gorge will reward hikers with unrivaled scenes of natural beauty and plenty of picturesque waterfalls.
Iwaki City is a cluster of exurban hamlets about 200 kilometers north and east of Tokyo, on the coastal Hamadori region of Fukushima Prefecture.
A few years ago I rang for a taxi from my apartment in Iwaki to the train station in the middle of town. I forget where I was going, but I do recall with great clarity the conversation I had with the cab driver.
It was a windy day. From my veranda I could see the metal marquees of the neighborhood shops flailing in the wind. Power lines and traffic signals, too, swung wildly in the breeze. From above, I saw the taxi park in front of the red brick walk-up, a placed called Maison Kuramae, that I called home.
The taxi's automatic passenger door seemed to struggle to open against the wind. As the cab rolled toward the station, I made a comment to the driver about how windy of a day it was.
"What are you talking about?" he replied to me, "this wind is normal for Iwaki."
Years later, some six months since the entire northeastern region of Japan was ravaged by the massive earthquake and monster tsunami on March 11, 2011, I found myself back in windy Iwaki.
City on the cusp
Iwaki: Clean, modern and as safe as any other gleaming Japanese station.
Iwaki is a last frontier of sorts. Hundreds of years ago, in the city's lush forests to the south, the Nakoso Barrier once demarcated the so-called "civilized" Japan to the south and the land of barbarians to the north.
Today, Iwaki is is one of the largest cities in Japan by area, and its population of more than 350,000 makes it the second-most-populated city in northeastern Japan.
Now it's the last stop.
The northern limits are on the cusp of the government-mandated 30-kilometer evacuation zone around the beleaguered Fukushima nuclear reactors. Virtually everything due north of Iwaki, all the way up to the city of Sendai, has been evacuated, abandoned or destroyed.
Life in this region of Japan will never be the same. The rice paddies, usually impeccably maintained, grow wild; a clear indication of abandonment and a sad reminder of a terrible day.
In the Toyoma neighborhood of Iwaki, virtually everything was destroyed by the killer tsunami. The lone torii in the background is a haunting reminder.
I was only back in Iwaki for a week, just to see how the place was getting on after the quake. So much had changed.
Portions of the city were eradicated by the killer tsunami, entire neighborhoods reduced to nothing more than the foundations upon which they were laid. The hardest-hit area of Iwaki, the neighborhood of Toyoma, which rested inside a beautiful coastal enclave, was completely washed away.
Peter Gillam, an English teacher and long-time Iwaki resident, volunteered with cleanup in Toyoma in the aftermath of March 11. He took me to Toyoma to see what it was like with my own eyes.
We walked along a wasted road, amid ghostly foundations and piles of debris. I had never seen such devastation. Yet Gillam said he couldn't believe how much the scene had improved since he'd last been there.
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