The 11, 000 residents of Okuma town fled their homes almost a year ago because of the nuclear disaster triggered by Japan's giant quake and tsunami.<br/> <br />Miyoko Takeda is one of them.<br/> <br />This is her third trip back to check on her home and collect some of the belongings they left behind.<br/> <br />The house is intact but Takeda says her life certainly is not.<br/> <br />SOUNDBITE: 74-year-old evacuee Miyoko Takeda saying (Japanese):<br/> <br />"It's as if I have depression. I can't sleep, I can't eat. I've lost eight kilogrammes and when I went to the doctor I threw up everything I took. Now I can't sleep without medication."<br/> <br />Others used the few precious hours inside the exclusion zone of what they once called home to visit family graves and repair others damaged by the quake.<br/> <br />It's the first time residents returning to Okuma have been allowed to this graveyard.<br/> <br />SOUNDBITE: Minoru Fukuo, evacuee, saying (Japanese):<br/> <br />"We just prayed that we will come back soon and clean up the grave properly. We've just asked them to wait until then."<br/> <br />Throughout Fukushima prefecture nearly 80, 000 have been evacuated from their homes.<br/> <br />The evacuees live in accommodation ranging from apartments to hastily-constructed temporary shelters.<br/> <br />Tomiko Ikinobu and her four children have one of those specially-built temporary homes.<br/> <br />Unemployed since the disaster, she says uncertainty is a constant cloud over their lives.<br/> <br />SOUNDBITE: Tomiko Ikinobu, evacuee, saying (Japanese):<br/> <br />"If it's a normal disaster you recover from it and you go forward a bit every day but this time you don't. All that's left is uncertainty. I just don't know when I can go back."<br/> <br />The government says it could take up to 40 years to fully decommission the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.<br/> <br />About 2, 400 square kilometres of land around the site, an area the size of Luxembourg, may need to be decontaminated.<br/> <br />The day Fukushima's evacuees can return home without a radiation counter may be a very long way off yet<br/> <br />Paul Chapman, Reuters
