On the NTV show called 'The! Tetsuwan! DASH!!', the members of TOKIO were once able to personally experience an unspoiled lifestyle at the so-called 'DASH Village' in Namie, Fukushima. It has actually been one year now, since the village had to be shutdown due to the Great Tohoku Earthquake, but there is one member who is really determined to open it again someday, Yamaguchi Tatsuya.

Yamaguchi was filming in Namie when the Great Tohoku Earthquake hit Japan and heavily damaged the town one year ago. Moreover the town is too close to the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant and had to get evacuated due to the radiation threat.

The producers of the show had no hope of ever being able to return to the DASH Village in Namie, but Yamaguchi couldn't just watch and decided to move on his own. One of his first experiments included the decontamination of the sunflowers.

In February 2012, Yamaguchi also traveled to Ukraine and Belarus in order to collect data on the Chernobyl disaster. One thing he was impressed with the most was the large-scale migration of all the farmers in the area. "Japanese people would never be able to just abandon the land they've been working on for who knows how many decades," he said.

Furthermore he was amazed about how much the locals know about radioactive materials thanks to radiation and agricultural training. "I think we have to study more about it in Japan, because it's very important to know everything about your enemy. After all we can't just abandon Fukushima."

With the help of the show, it shouldn't be a problem to collect enough money to rebuild and to decontaminate the whole village, but there is another problem that makes Yamaguchi very anxious. Everything is going to become meaningless if the people from the village don't want to return together with them. "Whenever I feel this way, I recall my dream of wanting to be able to take a nap on the veranda of the DASH Village again someday."

On March 11th, the show is going to talk about this matter with a live broadcast from Kawamata, Fukushima (district west of Namie). Yamaguchi will also share his impressions from Chernobyl.

Source: Asahi Shimbun