Getting over a natural disaster is difficult, but not being able to return to the city that you grew up in simply because it has been declared to be off limits? That is just heartache for some, but thankfully, with the help of technology, one is able to alleviate that heartache by some margin, although not much. Namie-machi, a small city in the Fukushima Prefecture, has a population of 21,000 or so before March 11, 2011, and two years later, they still cannot return. For the displaced townspeople who want to see just how their city looks like, Google decided to help them out by driving Street View cars through Namie-machi, capturing panoramic images of the abandoned city in a “what you see is what you get” manner.
These images can now be checked out on Google’s Street View over at Google Maps as well as at the Memories for the Future site, and best of all is, you will be able to journey with the natives of Namie as they reminisce of the good old days.
