VIDEO: Nature is reclaiming Fukushima's abandoned streets

Overgrown with vines and nature, parts of city of Fukushima looks more like a jungle oasis than a nuclear disaster zone.

Seven summers after a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, parts of the city have been reclaimed by nature.

The 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cut off the cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, which saw all three cores go into meltdown.

As a result, a dangerous amount of radioactive materials leeched into the environment.

An estimated 160,000 residents were evacuated from the area, with people within 20km of the plant ordered to get out.

While some evacuation orders have lifted, many homes nearby the power plant remain abandoned. 

Tetsuro Takehana, a photographer who lived in Fukushima Prefecture as a child, returned to the no-go zone in July to capture how the landscape has changed over the years.

And the results are stunning.

Desolate paddocks are now blanketed in shoulder-height reeds.

Vines snake their way up powerlines and plants fill the cracks in a carpark's asphalt, looking like bright green veins from above.

Video demonstrating the dramatic change in landscape was uploaded to the Asahi Shimbun YouTube channel earlier this month, and has clocked up more than 360,000 views.

"It was as if time had stopped," Takehana tells us.

"And yet the grass and trees continue to grow."

As of March this year, the regions directly neighbouring the power plant were still considered as "difficult to return" areas.

The latest estimates indicate roughly 80,000 people are still unable to return to their homes.