It is now one and a half months since the Great East Japan Earthquake. We spent 2 days visiting the nuclear-disaster-struck Fukushima and the tsunami-struck Miyagi prefectures. We had two things to capture in mind: Miharu’s Takizakura near the nuclear reactors and the current situation in the disaster area.

Miharu’s Takizakura is a Cherry Blossom tree that is roughly in the middle of Fukushima in a town called Miharu. A tree that can be counted as one of Japan’s great Cherry Blossom trees, it is said that Takizakura is over 1000 years old. Incidentally, the name of the town Miharu means “Three Springs”. In the spring plums, peaches, and cherry blossoms bloom competitively, and the three of their comings give the name “Three Springs”.

We are now around 30 miles from Fukushima’s nuclear power plant.

The other area we wanted to capture was the place that was badly hit by the tsunami, Miyagi’s Sanriku and Ishinomaki. On television there were reports of both areas having been damaged by the disasters, however, we felt like we wanted to feel it for ourselves, so we decided to make this 2-day report.

First of all, Miharu’s Takizakura

Hearing that the best time to capture the beauty of the Cherry Tree is in the morning, we stopped our car in Fukushima and took a rest over-night to arrive at Takizakura at 5am. It’s still dark around.

As the sun came up at 6:30am, Takizakura was lit up a beautiful color, and voices of awe could be heard from all around.

It’s 7am and the sky is a beautiful blue.

We heard rumors that tourist numbers have dropped when compared to last year to around 10% of their usual level. This was probably not helped by the disaster at Fukushima nuclear power plant.
However, when we got there, due possibly to the fact that it was a Sunday, there was a very large number of visitors present.

Fukushima is famous for Cherry Blossoms so we looked around at others that were close that we heard about.

■ Ise Sakura

In both the shape and the color one could feel the vigour. It was beautiful.

■ Weeping Cherry Trees of the Battleground

Ever since a long time ago when there was a battle in this area, these Cheery Trees have been known as the Weeping Cherry Trees of the Battleground.

The combination of flowers and trees is so beautiful.

A Cherry Tree that was blooming on the road between the two sites:

So beautiful that we couldn’t help but take a photo.

■ Byoudoudan Sakura

Propping itself up magestically in the middle of a tobacco field.

That’s it for the places that we went to on the first day. Unfortunately, there were many places we visited that did not yet have their Cherry Trees in bloom.
However, perhaps it was because nobody had seen a clear sky in a long while which caused these crowds, but because there were so many people it was hard to notice the impact of the nuclear disaster.
It was wonderful to see so many people smiling and with such high spirits around the Cherry Blossom trees.