Plenty of heart with the darkness
to, but Farrier and his fellow passengers find virtually everywhere they visit is completely deserted.
Their upbeat guide Yo suggests they shouldn’t only be concerned about radiation level readings above 0.2, saying that his repeated exposure to the region hasn’t left him ‘‘growing extra horns or fingers’’.
However, everyone else is armed with geiger counters, and the readings certainly lead to disquiet among the group.
But, in the interests of compelling television, that doesn’t stop Farrier from deciding to take a sneaky peek in an area that even the authorities believe should be cordoned off.
Along with a cameraperson, he takes a five-minute tour around an abandoned arcade before being rumbled by security guards. Only some sweet talking from Yo prevents potential incarceration, although it then takes some of that special Farrier charm to win his guide’s trust again.
By the time they get to Grandma’s Cafe, everyone has lost their appetite, especially when Yo can’t confirm whether the food is sourced locally.
Lamenting a lost opportunity to sample Onigiri or Oshinko, Farrier nevertheless prepares to carry on as the tour heads to the site where a 15m wall of water washed everything away.
Taking note of the less-thansombre, selfie-obsessed behaviour of some of his travelling companions, he doesn’t have much time to be appalled before the geiger counter begins to trill at an increasingly alarming rate.
A brief stop by one of the many ‘‘temporary’’ stores for radioactive topsoil (places now in their sixth year of operation, despite being only designed to last three) adds to the tense atmosphere on the bus, before panic sets in as the reading reach 50-times over that 0.2 limit.
At that point, brilliantly captured by the crew’s hand-held camera, the tourists mutiny and their transport heads directly back to base. After that fascinating and frightening firsthalf, the rest of this inaugural episode feels quirkily odd and sweet in comparison.
Checking into a robot-staffed hotel, Farrier gets to live out a boyhood Jurassic Park fantasy, before journeying (again with the help of the seemingly unflappable Yo) to Aokigahara – Japan’s infamous Sea of Trees, a mysterious forest at the base of Mt Fuji.
Known as a popular suicide spot (allegedly thanks to the country’s answer to Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Seicho Matsumoto’s 1960 novel Kuroi Jukai), Farrier thankfully doesn’t encounter any bodies, but does stumble across what looks like a makeshift noose and a fellow Dark Tourist attracted enough by the ‘‘creepy, atmospheric vibe’’ to make this his first trip outside of his native Ontario.
The final, sadly Yo-free, stop is to Battleship Island (so named because it’s shaped like it). Sixty years ago the most densely populated place on the planet (3500 inhabitants on a slab of rock the size of a few football fields), it’s now abandoned.
Naturally in his understated, slightly bumblingly charming way, Farrier manages to persuade two former inhabitants to take him on an all-access tour.
It reveals a haunting and spectacular combination of weathered concrete, rugged coastline and places seemingly hastily abandoned.
Informed that the island was essentially a coal mine that became uneconomic, Farrier then reflects on his entire Japanese journey, summing up that it’s left him with the overall feeling that he’s even more happy to be alive than he was before.
With its bite-size travelogues, black humour and bonkers destinations, Dark Tourist seems destined for cult status and is definitely binge-worthy on a cold winter’s night.
With its bite-size travelogues, black humour and bonkers destinations, Dark Tourist seems destined for cult status.