FUKUSHIMA (Kyodo) -- A town that hosts the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is being swept up in Japan's tourism boom, with visitors from China and other countries eager to see areas impacted by the 2011 disaster that forced residents to abandon their homes and former lives.

While more than 80 percent of the town of Futaba is still inhabitable due to radiation contamination, some travelers are not dissuaded. In 2024, around 4,000 foreigners visited a memorial museum on the nuclear crisis that opened in the Fukushima Prefecture town in 2020.

In response to the influx of visitors, a public corporation supporting the town's development has hired one guide who speaks Chinese and another who speaks English to inform visitors at the former JR Futaba Station building where a tourist information center is located.

In one corner of the building, tourists can leave their mark by putting a sticker indicating their home country on a signboard. As of January, 43 countries were represented, with China making up roughly a third of some 180 stickers in total.

Futaba saw the third-largest foreign visitor growth rate among cities, towns and villages across Japan between January to August 2023 compared with a 2019 baseline, according to a data analysis by Navitime Japan Co., an app provider for tourists to Japan.

Futaba visits are sometimes considered a form of "dark tourism," a phenomenon where people are attracted to places where they can learn about and experience great tragedies. In Futaba, people learn what can be done to prevent nuclear accidents from happening again, according to staffers assisting tourists.

The multilingual guides are a Chinese woman who initially came to Japan to study and a Japanese man who speaks English and Arabic. Maps providing tourist information are available in English and Chinese.

The guides feel that foreign tourists' motives for coming to Futaba differ from those of domestic visitors, with some asking if they can enter zones designated as "difficult-to-return" and others saying that they want to measure the radiation level.

Many appear to be eager to see in person the impact of one of the world's worst nuclear crises, which was triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. Some even have traveled after studying radioactivity.

Futaba once had a population of 7,000. It and the neighboring town of Okuma co-host Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Futaba's entire populace had to evacuate due to the radiation contamination caused by the triple reactor core meltdowns. It was only in 2020 that the government's evacuation order was lifted for the first time, affecting areas including near the train station. In 2022, people were permitted to return to live in some parts of the town.

While welcoming visitors, the town is working with the police to ensure locals are not disturbed by tourists intruding on their private property or into public facilities.

Last year, a video of a foreigner breaking into what was an elementary school building and other areas went viral.

Ryohei Unane, 48, secretary general of the Futaba Project public corporation, called for measures to address incidents associated with the increase in tourism but pinned his hopes on the role of overseas visitors in conveying the town's situation, with domestic media turning its attention elsewhere in recent years.

"I hope visitors will talk to others in their countries about the once-empty town that is now in the midst of a recovery," he said.

Back at the old station building, a message written in Chinese by a visitor was left by the entrance.

"May the wounds left by the disaster in Fukushima soon heal," it read.