But recently, the bar reopened, although business has been slower than before. The town, like the rest of Japan, ground mostly to a halt. Cosmos Karaoke had to close under government orders, in an effort to stop the virus from spreading. Things changed in April, when the government declared a national emergency because of the coronavirus pandemic. In March, two giant screens on either side of the room flashed Japanese lyrics while a dozen patrons, mostly men, passed around microphones, singing at the top of their lungs, shaking tambourines and clutching ceramic cups filled with sake and tall glass mugs of beer. The Cosmos Karaoke Bar caters to that fraction, hoping to bring a sense of community back to a town that once thrived on it. Slowly though, as radiation levels have decreased, places like downtown Namie have reopened and are starting to come back to life - even if only a fraction of the population has returned. Nearly overnight, Namie became a ghost town - completely sealed off from the public for six years. Those who survived were forced to evacuate, to escape the plumes of radioactive material carried by the wind after the nuclear explosions. The earthquake rocked the city, while the tsunami devastated the coastal area, washing people and buildings out to sea. But on March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami triggered explosions at three reactors at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, just 5 miles away.
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