FUKUSHIMA, Japan -- Flying over the city of Tomioka in Fukushima Prefecture seven years ago revealed a landscape checkered with green farms. The quilted pattern remains visible today, but many of the farms have been replaced by rows of plastic sheets covering bags of radioactive soil.
A similar sight from the air can be seen in nearby Futaba, another city ravaged by the country's March 2011 earthquake and home to a temporary storage facility for radioactive waste.
