An old man desolate amid destruction in Japan

MINAMI SOMA, JAPAN - The farmhouse sits at the end of a mud-caked, one-lane road strewn with toppled trees, the decaying carcasses of dead pigs and large debris deposited by the March 11 tsunami.

Stranded alone inside the unheated, dark home is 75-year-old Kunio Shiga. He cannot walk very far and doesn't know what happened to his wife.

His neighbors have all left because the area is 12 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant -- just within the zone where authorities have told everyone to get out because of radiation concerns.

No rescuer ever came for him.

When a reporter and two photographers from the Associated Press arrived at Shiga's doorstep on Friday, the scared and disoriented farmer said: "You are the first people I have spoken to" since the earthquake and tsunami.

"Do you have any food?" he asked. "I will pay you."

Shiga gratefully accepted a one-liter bottle of water and sack of energy bars given to him by the AP, which later notified police of his situation.

The Odaka neighborhood where he lives is a ghost town. Neighboring fields are still inundated from the tsunami. The smell of the sea is everywhere. The only noise comes from pigs foraging for food.

Police acknowledged that they had not been able to check many neighborhoods because of radiation concerns. As radiation from the Fukushima plant has fallen in recent days, however, the police have fanned out inside the evacuation zone to cover more areas.

The AP crew, which had been watching the police search, later broke away to see if it could find any residents living inside the evacuation zone. Construction workers directed them to a part of town where some houses were intact.

The farmhouse where Shiga's family has grown vegetables for generations is at the end of a long mud- and rubble-covered road blocked by fallen trees and decaying animals.

Shiga was seen wandering in front of his house. The journalists went to greet him.

"The tsunami came right up to my doorstep," he said. "I don't know what happened to my wife. She was here, but now she's gone."

Shiga said he was aware of the evacuation order but could do nothing about it, since he is barely able to walk past the front gate of his house. His car is stuck in mud and won't start.