Rice has been planted in a Japanese town which hosts Fukushima’s damaged nuclear power plant eight years after residents were first evacuated.

Officials and locals in Okuma town planted several crops, including sticky rice and premium quality rice, across more than 17,000 square feet of paddy fields.

The rice planting is the latest sign of life slowly starting to return to Okuma, one of a string of so-called “ghost towns” that were immediately evacuated due to soaring radiation levels after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.

Evacuation orders for Okuma - which along with Futaba town, co-hosts nearby Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant - were lifted last month, while its municipal government building also reopened earlier this week.

New public housing for former residents displaced by the disaster is also expected to open next month, while an agricultural manual is being prepared to encourage people to start growing crops again.