Go-Figure wrote: ↑23 Dec 2019, 02:38
Nice report Janni.
We could organise a forum group tour next time :)
As you said in the other thread, your photos are familiar to me....except for the green cookie!
Massimo
I would appreciate a forum group tour :-)
Here is the second part of my report:
So as I stayed some days in that area, I also went to Fukushima City and stayed there in a hotel. Fukushima City is more than 30km away from the exclusion zone and not on the coast, so there was no tsunami and no radiation there. It is a medium size city that has a good connection to Tokio by Shinkansen train.
So I wanted to explore the surrounding of the exclusion zone for one day for myself. On a map in the internet I found a place called Litate that was very close to the exclusion zone, but not inside. I decided to go there and found a way to get close to there by public transport (I could not rent a car because I would have needed a Japanese translation of my German drivers license, and I was too lazy to care about such formality).
So there was no bus going directly to Litate. I found out that a bus goes to a village called Kawamata, from where I would have to walk about 15km. But I did not consider this as a problem because I like hiking and the weather was so good…
The bus stop was close to my hotel, but it was not easy to find the correct bus. There was not much written in English. So I asked different bus drivers that stopped there, but all of them went in the wrong direction. One bus driver get out and showed me on the Japanese bus schedule the word Kawamata. So from then on I compared the Japanese signs on all buses that came until this one arrived. It was really not so easy with these signs…
It was around 10 or 11 in the morning and it was already very hot, but I was prepared and had some water bottles in my backpack for the long walk. The bus tour took really long (as I remember about an hour) because the bus stopped many times. The landscape was beautiful, but not much inhabited. Not because of the tsunami, I think even before it was more a quiet area. The closer the bus came to Kawamata, the more people got out and at the end station I was the last passenger in the bus.
So from there I started my long walk to the direction Litate. The walk was much harder as I expected because it was already about 38 degrees. I walked along the main road and there was not much shadow to hide from the sun. Besides I did not consider that the whole way lead uphill. I was already dead tired after two kilometers, this was one of these moments in life you think: Normal people on holiday would now be on the beach relaxing…
But I was lucky because a car stopped and the driver asked me if I need a lift :-)
So I got in the car and had a nice small talk with this Japanese guy. He was a worker with a lot of tools in his car and cool guy with long hair listening to Japanese heavy metal music. I told him that I like the music and he said he knows “Wacken Open Air” (big metal festival in north Germany)!
After some kilometers he dropped me at a brand new roadhouse with a 7-Eleven. This roadhouse was like an oasis of convenience in this hot summer area with air condition and nice toilets, an area to sit and eat. I bought new cold drinks and something to eat and then continued my way walking after a rest.
