Most residents are in the same position as 19-year-old seamstress Sayaka Kurihara, who is filling out a form in an office on the ground floor to report the destruction of her house in the tsunami. “Somehow I’m afraid, but the information is all so technical that I don’t understand what it’s supposed to mean.”
The daily microsievert readings, which are announced like weather reports, are as much a part of life in the wake of the nuclear accident as the lists, updated daily, of which shops are open on a given day. Midori Takano’s beauty salon was one of the first shops to reopen. Like many others, Takano had also fled the city, but she returned after a week. Her son had to go back to work, and she wanted to get her house in order. “Somehow life has to go on,” she says.
Takano’s customer, a chemist, nods in agreement. Today is the first day in three weeks she has ventured out of her house. She plans to invite friends over on the weekend and wants to have her hair done first — a cautious attempt to lead a normal life despite the radiation. “This attitude is already a big step for me,” says Keiko Iwanami. She has accepted that the nuclear accident is now part of her life. Before that, she sat in her house and thought to herself: “There is no future. But this is no way to live. Life has to go on.”
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