Tokyo (CNN) -- The cherry blossoms are in full bloom, the skies clear and blue in this seaside town. Yet apart from the occasional bark of a dog or the moo of a meandering cow, the most glaring aspect about life in Tomioka is the lack of it. Japan's government five weeks ago mandated that everyone must leave the town, amid concerns about dangerously high levels of radiation emanating from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant about eight kilometers (five miles) away. But Kazuhiro Shirato felt he had to go home. So, with a Japanese journalist and cameraman alongside, he got in a car and headed toward Tomioka, where he and many others hadn't been since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck on March 11.
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Kazuhiro Shirato went to his hometown of Tomioka, Japan, which has been evacuated
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The town is about 8 kilometers from the nuclear plant that's been in crisis since March 11
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He says he found the town was totally abandoned, except for dogs and some cows
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Angry at the plant's owner, Shirato says, "I doubt I will ever be able to go back"
He is one of more than 78,000 people who lived within a 20-kilometer radius of @placeholder who were ordered to flee, on top of another 60,000-plus in the next 10 kilometers who were told to shelter indoors.