TOKYO, Japan: Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida joined a ceremony this week marking the reopening of sections of Tomioka, a Japanese town just southwest of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was destroyed in 2011.

Evacuation orders were lifted in small sections of the town, just southwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, in time for the cherry blossom season.

While strolling along a street known as "the cherry blossoms tunnel," former residents and visitors of Tomioka celebrated the town's reopening.

In an interview with NHK television, Koichi Ono, 75, who was visiting the neighborhood where he lived his entire life before being forced to evacuate, said, "After 12 years, I can finally return to my life here."

At the ceremony, Kishida pledged to continue working to reopen all no-go zones, stating, "The lifting of the evacuation is by no means a final goal, but the start of the recovery."

More than 160,000 residents had to evacuate from across Fukushima, including about 30,000 who are still unable to return home, after the 2011 tsunami that caused the disaster.

Tomioka is one of 12 nearby towns fully or partially designated as no-go zones.

"The living environment and many other things still need to be sorted out," noted Tomioka Mayor Ikuo Yamamoto.

In the newly reopened Yonomori and Osuge districts of Tomioka, just over 50 of about 2,500 registered residents have reportedly returned or expressed their intentions to go back in the future.

Since large areas of Tomioka reopened in 2017, only some 10 percent of the town's pre-disaster population of 16,000 have returned.

Last week, the evacuation order was lifted in several sections of another hard-hit town, Namie, northwest of the plant, with the reopened area accounting for only about 20 percent of the town.

At an evacuation-lifting ceremony, Namie Mayor Eiko Yoshida said, "I have mixed feelings, because there are many residents who still cannot return or have no idea when they can return."