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Wide streets still lie empty, scavenging boar and monkeys the only signs of life.

Only wild animals, and the 6ft weeds, which have rampaged through deserted homes and businesses, suffocating once-chatty barbers shops and bustling grocery stores; strangling playgrounds and their rusting rides which lie empty and eerily still.

Laundry hangs where it was pegged out to dry, clock faces are frozen in time, traffic lights flash through their colours to empty roads, meals laid out on tables in family homes, remain uneaten.

Once unextraordinary, mundane symbols of everyday lives have taken on the appearance of a horror film set in these areas closest to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station on the coast of north-east Japan, eight years after the devastating tsunami which caused a meltdown at three of the plant's reactors, forcing tens of thousands to flee.

The earthquake on March 11, 2011, claimed 19,000 lives, and triggered the world's largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Radiation leaking in fatal quantities forced 160,000 people to evacuate immediately, and most to this day have not returned to their toxic towns and villages.

(Image: AFP)

Yet there are now areas, ever closer to the plant, beginning to show signs of awakening.

The government is keen residents return as soon as it is safe, and this month around 40% of the town of Okuma, which sits just west of the plant, was declared safe for habitation thanks to ongoing decontamination efforts carried out on an superhuman scale.

The official mandatory evacuation order was lifted, and while reports reveal just 367 residents of Okuma's original population of 10,341 have so far made the decision to return, and most of the town remains off-limits, the Japanese government is keen this be seen as a positive start to re-building this devastated area.

"This is a major milestone for the town," Toshitsuna Watanabe, mayor of Okuma, told Japanese news outlets, as six pensioners locally dubbed 'The Old Man Squad', who had taken it upon themselves to defy advice and keep their town secure, finally ceased their patrols.

"It has taken many years to get to where we are now, but I am happy that we made it."

(Image: Caters News Agency)

The Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, visited to mark the milestone.

The government is particularly keen to show progress before the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Six Olympic softball games and a baseball game will be staged in Fukushima, the capital of this prefecture, which is free of radiation.

The torch relay will even begin at J Village, which was once the base for the crisis response team. Hearteningly, it is now back to its original function, a football training centre.

(Image: Caters News Agency)

But the truth is, it is mainly older residents who have decided to return to their homes.

Seimei Sasaki, 93, explained his family have roots here stretching back 500 years.

His neighbourhood in Odaka district now only contains 23 of its original 230.

“I can’t imagine what this village’s future looks like,” he admitted.

(Image: Caters News Agency)

Young families are few and far between – these areas are still a terrifying prospect for parents.

But the re-built schools are slowly filling a handful of classroom seats.

Namie Sosei primary and middle school, less then three miles from the plant, has seven pupils.

One teacher said: “The most frustrating thing for them is that they can’t play team sports.”

A sad irony as the Olympics approach.

(Image: Caters News Agency)

And with so many residents still fearful, so the deadly clean-up operation continues.

Work to make the rest of Okuma safe is predicted to take until 2022. The area which was its centre is still a no-go zone.

In the years following the disaster, 70,000 workers removed topsoil, tree branches, grass and other contaminated material from areas near homes, schools and public buildings.

A staggering £21billion has been spent in order to make homes safe.

Millions of cubic metres of radioactive soil has been packed into bags.

By 2021 it is predicted 14million cubic metres will have been generated.

(Image: AFP)

The mass scale operation uses thousands of workers. Drivers are making 1,600 return trips a day.

But residents understandably want it moved out of Fukushima for good.

As yet, no permanent location has agreed to take it, but the government has pledged it will be gone by 2045.

At Daiichi itself, the decontamination teams are battling with the build up of 1m tonnes of radioactive water.

The operator has also finally begun removing fuel from a cooling pool at one of three reactors that melted down in the 2011 disaster.

Decommissioning the plant entirely is expected to take at least four decades.

The efforts to return this area to its former glory are mammoth, and even if they ever fully succeed, it will surely take many more years until most former residents and their descendants gain enough trust to return.