FIVE YEARS AFTER: Fukushima towns co-hosting nuclear plant frozen in time

As reported by Asahi Shimbun, the host towns -- Okuma and Futaba -- of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant -- now radioactive ruins -- are ghost towns, five years after the catastrophe began. A clock in an abandoned convenience store stopped the moment the 9.0 earthquake struck on 3/11/11, not unlike the clocks and wrist watches that stopped when the atomic bomb struck Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Ordinary lives suspended -- such as laundry hanging on the line, is very similar to the ghostly, iconic images from the Chernobyl Dead Zone. Both homes and businesses are just like they were left (only, suffering the effects of the elements) by their former occupants, who had to flee immediately to escape the spreading, hazardous radioactivity.