Two years have passed since the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that led to the nuclear reactor accident in Fukushima, Japan in March 2011. This past month, Tamotsu Baba, mayor of Namie, a town only a few miles north of the nuclear plant, invited Google to explore the city shaken by the earthquake and abandoned following the spread of radiation from Fukushima. This slideshow contains scenes from our virtual exploration of the town that formerly held over 20,000 residents, and now plays home to garbage, a few cleanup crews, and many ghostly abandoned structures.
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A map of the roads around Namie that you can view with Google Maps. The town's mayor, Tamotsu Baba, invited Google to tour the town evacuated in March 2011 following the Fukushima plant disaster.
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The shuttered post office in central Namie. When citizens were evacuated, they were moved to temporary housing in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima, where the town's government installed a whole-body dosimeter to evaluate former Namie residents' internal radiation levels.
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Outside town, there are many piles of garbage and debris as well as abandoned buildings. Namie and its outskirts were damaged during the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that affected the Fukushima plant.
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A close-up of the disheveled building.
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A collapsed stone building across the street from a Toho Bank.
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A fallen building next to another with its roof tiles coming loose.
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An abandoned gas station and highway. Before the disaster, Namie was home to 22,000 people who were evacuated following the plant meltdown.
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A couple of men wearing hard hats who appear to be doing some kind of cleanup outside this building. We spotted a few people moving around town, though all seemed to be part of a cleanup crew.
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An abandoned hospital with garbage scattered along both sides of the street.
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According to Google Maps, there's a McDonald's inside this abandoned shopping mall.
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An overflowing garbage locker on a street in town.
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The empty Namie Elementary School.
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The playground across the street from the elementary school.
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The fallen buildings in Namie are presumably a result of the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake. Even though some fell...
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... A good number of roofs slid off with barely a tile out of place.
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A convenience or grocery store (though there's a clothing rack outside of it) bursting with abandoned goods.
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A closeup of the storefront.
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A car drove by Google's own vehicle while it toured the evacuated town. Namie is about 14 miles from the Fukushima nuclear plant site.
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A desolate parking lot, store, and apartment complex.
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A shopping mall with a few abandoned vehicles in the parking lot.
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A Shell station in Namie. A year after residents were evacuated, they were given health handbooks to track their medical state following the Fukushima meltdown a few miles away.
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Plenty of drink machines around Namie remain stocked with presumably irradiated liquids. Remember what happens in Fallout, kids.
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Another roof that slid off its respective building into the street.
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The Hotel Namie in town.
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A close-up of Hotel Namie's doors and window.
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A flower shop and laundromat stand empty behind a deserted parking lot.
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Two shuttered stores in central Namie, with an abandoned bike outside of one.
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A collapsed building next to a convenience store purveying "hamburg steak," among other delights.
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A bike store's doors loll open, offering its goods to passersby.
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Only one part of this building seems to have crumbled, leaving the other half without a facade.
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Mangled cars on the outskirts of Namie that may have been damaged during the earthquake.
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Garbage bags line the coast to the east of Namie.
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