Google earth

Google Street View is giving the world a rare glimpse into one of Japan’s eerie ghost towns, created when the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami sparked a nuclear disaster that has left the area uninhabitable.

The technology pieces together digital images captured by Google’s fleet of camera-equipped vehicles and allows viewers to take virtual tours of locations around the world.

Now it’s taking people inside Japan’s nuclear no-go zone, to the city of Namie, whose 21 thousand residents haven’t been able to return to live since they fled the radiation spewing from the Fukushima nuclear power plant two years ago.

Street View was started in 2007, and now provides images from more than three thousand cities across 48 countries, as well as parts of the Arctic and Antarctica.