As much as I love to talk about the food we eat,
there's a lot to say about the food we don't eat.
The stuff we don't like,
can't afford,
or I've just never been offered
like, fried tarantula in Cambodia,
or jellied moose nose in Canada.
But then there are foods we're afraid to eat.
We went to a region in Japan were fears about food grown there
because of a very major and very tragic event
have made consumers weary,
which makes life really hard for growers.
FOOD FEARS
(Noboru) A lot of sparrows would come eat the rice.
We fly kites instead of using scarecrows.
Rice from this area has the highest rating,
and it tastes great.
This one is called Gohyaku Gawa.
The green ones are Koshihikari.
This farm has been in Noboru Saito's family for eight generations.
A decade ago, Saito quit his government job
to help his mom run the farm.
I'm 82 years old.
After my son came back,
my responsibilities lightened.
But a year after he returned, disaster struck.
There was a massive earthquake.
When I looked around, the mountains--
there are lots in this area--
so these mountains looked like
they were being swayed or sliding.
That earthquake was a 9.1 magnitude.
The fourth most powerful ever recorded
that triggered a massive tsunami,
killed more than 15,000 people,
and damaged more than a million buildings,
including the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant,
which is still leaking radiation today.
There's still piles of radioactive topsoil
under black tarps near Saito's property,
which is 50 kilometers from the power plant.
(Noboru) Some people decided to stop farming
and fled to other regions with their entire families.
Personally, I didn't run away.
I tried to make things work in this region and fight the radiation.
It's catching the B-waves from the radiation.
We have to make sure the rice doesn't carry radiation.
So every spring,
we put potassium in our paddies.
It'll absorb potassium instead of [radioactive] cesium.
This is known as inhibition of resorption.
The disaster has forced Saito to find new ways
to make sure his produce is safe,
including raising money on the internet
to buy a 22,000 dollar radiation tester.
(Nobuoru) Here, we have some peppers.
You have to measure their weight first.
560, 550 grams.
And then you put it inside.
The machine will measure the radiation
and you can see whether or not it's below the standard.
It won't confirm until after 15 minutes.
But already after 30 seconds,
it's stabilizing at zero.
The Japanese government says the food from Fukushima is safe.
Two years after the meltdown,
it reported the 1.5% of food products were over the radiation limit.
By 2017, that number dropped to 0.05%.
But people are still reluctant.
(Noboru) If I bring my produce directly,
I can answer questions.
I can sell while talking to people.
Then, because they understand.
They buy productos from Fukushima
with a peace of mind.
More customers are visiting every week.
Whether it's our peaches or vegetables,
they keep coming back because they taste delicious.
Just because customers are coming back,
doesn't mean the disaster is completely over.
By 2022, the nuclear plant will run out of storage facilities
for radioactive waste water,
and experts have advised the government to release the water into the ocean,
which could impact fishing
and raise new concerns about the region's produce.
Koji Furuyama is also a farmer in Fukushima
who specializes in luxury peaches.
His strategy for shaking the region's stigma
is to be the best in the world.
Japanese agriculture is about making
the highest quality produce in the world in limited space.
This has sugar content of over 20%,
so it's easily 50,000 yen [$471] per peach.
Also, this is the world's biggest kind of peach.
It will be this big
and it will keep growing bigger and sweeter.
His best peaches have three times as much sugar as a supermarket peach,
and they're priced at 20,000 dollars a piece.
Last year, the highest sugar content
we achieved was 40.5%.
I tried it myself.
It was hard to describe with words.
When someone eats something that delicious,
words won't come right away.
Even his more affordable fruits are pretty expensive.
These usually sell
for 12,000 yen [$113] each in city department stores.
That means altogether, these boxes cost around 70,000 yen [$660] each.
As Japan prepares to showcase its recovery by hosting the Olympics
10 years after the earthquake,
it's announced that the baseball and softball events will happen in Fukushima.
Farmers here are excited that the games may give them the opportunity
to reintroduce the world to their produce.
(Koji) Well, the people involved in media
will present to the world the actual, recovered Fukushima.
So an event like the Olympics
will become a plus for a prefecture like Fukushima.
Fukushima is stuck with this image of danger.
That reputation is global.
Instead of keeping that bad memory of Fukushima,
please visit Fukushima yourself
and see with your own eyes
that Fukushima is not what you imagine it to be.