fisher mann petuhiro nishiyama lost his home and his workplace was reverely damaged. >> translator: i lost everything except my boat. >> reporter: immediately after the big jolt, nishiyama got in his boat and sailed it offshore to protect it from the tsunami. only 8 of the 500 boats belonging to local fishermen survived. nishiyama has mixed feelings about this. >> translator: if i hadn't gone out in my boat, i might have been able to save a few lives. >> reporter: one day, nishiyama, his spirit battered, found the carp streamers in his hometown. he hoisted it at his former elementary school. the japanese word for carp, koi, also means come back. nishiyama thought he could raise more carp streamers to encourage former residents and the spirits of the deceased to come back. but it wasn't easy to find carp streamers in the disaster-hit area. volunteer worker seichi watanabe came forward to help. >> reporter: nishiyaa told me carp streamers symbolized his return for people to return to the town, i suggested calling them carp of hope. >> reporter: watanabe put a request for carp streamers

nhk world's junko noda sat down with hidehiro nishiyama to talk about the current situation at fukushima daiichi and the lessons learned since march 11th. >> as the work continues at fukushima daiichi to bring the crisis under control by january 2012, what is going well and what problems persist? >> we are doing our work according to the roadmap tepco and the government announced. and what is going well is the cooling of fuel core and spent fuel pools. actually the unit two's spent fuel pool is now cooled by the special equipment. that is the most advanced work. on the other hand, treatment of stagnant water is the challenge of us. and another challenge is how to overcome high radiation dose in every place of the plant. so that's the very difficult thing we have to deal with. >> the seriousness of what happened on march 11th only became public months after the accident. why did the government and tepco let people know about the best-case scenario rather than the worst? >> i don't think that is the case. actually, we have been trying to let our people know, let other countries' people kno