The police spotted me at 11:26 on January 2nd, four days after having entered the zone. It's very disappointing that I had to end my trip as I felt I was just getting started and wanted to cover a lot more territory.

A few kilometers north of Namie station I found myself in a rural area composed of farmlands and only sparsely populated with houses. With a sunset time of 16:30, by 20:00 the temperature had dropped to zero and it already felt like midnight. I setup camp behind a house located near the train tracks and a small stream. My dosimeter measured just 4.1 microsieverts (µSv) per hour--the highest reading I'd witness during this trip, but still well below any level for concern. For comparison a dental x-ray exposure measures about 5 microsieverts; a chest x-ray, 20 microsieverts; and an airplane flight between NY and LA, 40 microsieverts.

Despite the freezing temperature, I had worked up a sweat while trekking with my heavy gear, so I built a campfire to to dry off and warm up. The light also helped with pitching my tent and preparing a meal. Later in the night I heard some monkeys nearby, perhaps attracted to my fire light.

I woke up just before sunrise, prepared a breakfast of oatmeal with water I purified from the river nearby, then set out for a four-hour walk with my camera.

I spotted some monkeys on the road so I lifted a hoe from a farmer's shed in case I needed to defend myself. There were at least a dozen feral cows in the area, most of them were too spooked by my presence to pose much of a threat, but one a few of them did attempt to rush me. Luckily they veered off when I raised my camera to record my final moments for posterity. Being from Texas I know a feral cow can be quite dangerous, so I was careful to avoid getting between any cows and their calves. One of the poor cows had some kind of plastic container stuck on it's head. I assume it was trying to drink some rain water and got stuck. I spent a couple hours trying to free it but failed. It appears the cow can still manage to feed itself though.

Back at base camp around 11:00, I washed myself in the river and proceeded to cook lunch. I had mistakenly let my guard down. I assume such a rural place wouldn't be patrolled as aggressively as towns like Odaka, so while eating I look a stroll and was spotted by a police patrol car.

The yellow "X" marks the location of my camp.

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I decided it was best to travel only at night but decided to leave Odaka about an hour before sunset in order to take advantage of the evening light for photography. I headed to the station and lowered myself down to the tracks from the platform. No sooner had I walked for five minutes than a police car starting approaching on a road which ran parallel to the train line. I dropped down on the rails, nearing pinning myself under the weight of my 25kg backpack, when my Russian-made radiation dosimeter--which has a habit of turning on when bumped--began beeping alarmingly. I laid there for several minutes. I expected to hear the sound of a car door followed by shouting as the officer approached my hiding spot. Nothing. I waited a bit longer to be safe, then popped my head up and scanned the road. The car was gone. I continued walking south.

On the way to Namie I crossed bridges over rivers and roads, passed though some wooded areas, and traveled though the unsettling black abyss of train tunnels at night, a few over 300 meters long. The loose rocks on the tracks made it difficult to keep my footing, especially as I had to balance my heavy rucksack of food, camping equipment and photography gear. To make matters worst, in some places a formidable tripping hazard was posed by vines which have grown over the tracks, as if trying to reclaim them to Nature.

Other perils--besides the radiation of course--included crossing bridges over roads and waterways at night, where a misstep could have sent me plummeting a solid five meters down.

Unlike Odaka station, where the power had not been restored since the earthquake, the station at Momouchi, on the way to Namie from Odaka, was lit up like an oasis in the night. I felt extremely vulnerable walking into this brightly lit platform as if standing in the middle of a baseball field. I took shelter from the wind in a glass-walled waiting room at the station and prepared a quick meal. While eating I again dropped to the ground when car headlights appeared along a nearby road. Not sure if I'd been spotted or not, I quickly packed up and slipped back onto the tracks and heading further into the zone.

Click to proceed to: NAMIE

On April 21, 2011 the Japanese government established a 20km "no-go" zone under the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law. The zone covers a 20-km radius from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station where some 80,000 residents were instructed to evacuate under the Law on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness.

I first managed to evade the police and illegally enter this off-limits area in May of 2011 for the purposes of this long-term documentary photography project. I crossed the entire 40-km zone, from north to south, by bicycle in May--a perfect way to survey the roughly 600 square kilometer region which includes towns, mountains, rivers and streams, stay cats and dogs, feral cows, countless farmlands and businesses, woodlands and ponds...all tainted now by radiation leaks from the TEPCO operated reactor. I returned a couple more times in the summer of 2011.

On December 30th 2011, with camping supplies and a week's supply of food, I set out to continue my project, this time by trekking the zone. Taking a bus to Minami-soma from Tokyo, I had a taxi drop me off at Iwaki-Oita station in Haranomachi at night, just outside the perimeter of the off-limits zone. I walked in by following the now defunct Joban railroad line which traverses the area from north to south.

I had hoped that by started my walk during the holidays I could avoid an encounter with police patrols, utility workers or any other recovery or construction personnel. But even during the holidays the town of Odaka, just about 4 kilometers inside the zone, was heavily patrolled and it seems my arrival had not gone unnoticed. I spent a good majority of my time pinned down during the first couple days--hiding behind houses, between buildings and in gutters--in order to avoid car and foot patrols which seems to be looking for me. Because of it's proximity to the northern perimeter of the zone the town of Odaka, I would later learn from police, had become a bit of a hot-spot for burglars as it was more accessible than towns further in.

Many of the buildings damaged by the initial quake and tsunami had held initially, but collapsed weeks or months later after further insult by aftershocks, wind, rain and time. The wind was strong the night of my arrival and the the air was fully of eerie groans, creaks, bangs and shrieks as loose metal siding flapped about.

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Click to proceed to: TREKKING TO NAMIE

A month after meeting Kobayashi, I returned to Minami-soma. Succumbing to pressure from police and government officials Kobayashi finally left Odaka. Having lost both his job and his home to this disaster, he joined his wife in a small, minimally furnished apartment in Haranomachi.

Click to proceed to: ODAKA IN WINTER