In the evacuation centre inside Yamagata stadium, every new arrival is scanned for exposure to radiation with a Geiger counter.
Only then are they given a new home on the hard wooden floors of the basketball court.
The stadium is a small city of refugees, many of whom have fled the 12-mile exclusion zone that surrounds the Fukushima nuclear plant.
As Japan's nuclear crisis has worsened, the authorities have gradually extended the compulsory evacuation area from an initial 1.8-mile radius to six miles, and now the present limit.
Beyond that, the Japanese government insists there is no threat to human health.
See our interactive graphic on the state of the four reactors at risk at the Fukushima nuclear power plant
The camp is well supplied with blankets, floor mats and food - though the Japanese media have reported other refugee centres are running short of basis necessities.
Elsewhere in quake-hit Japan, residents are doing without heating, electricity and running water.
The spirit inside the stadium is one of cheerful stoicism.
The camp is kept meticulously clean; there are orderly queues for food and other supplies.
But as Fukushima's reactors continue to overheat, many must question whether they will ever be able to return to their normal lives.
Across town in a local primary school, the classrooms have also been turned over to refugees.
One of them is two-week-old Sakura Ko.
In her short existence she's already lived through a deadly earthquake and the ensuing tsunami.
Now she and her mother have fled their home, just 15 miles from the nuclear plant.
"If it had just been me, perhaps I would have stayed," said her mother Shoko Yasukawa. "But as things got worse I thought I should leave for the sake of the baby."
Others in the camp give an insight into how profoundly the nuclear crisis has shaken Japan.
"I'm shocked," said Hiroshi Monma, who fled his home inside the exclusion zone. "They didn't tell us what was happening, so I'm very angry with the people who are running the plant. It's a joke."
He is not alone in his rage.
Though Japan's government continues to urge calm, the country's media has reported that privately Prime Minister Naoto Kan is furious with Tepco, the company that manages the six reactors in Fukushima.
But one evacuee in Yamagata said anger with the company involved was pointless.
Instead, in an unusual display of emotion, 65-year-old Mitsuru Fujita, wept as he described his sense of betrayal.
"The government told us it was safe," he said. "Now I feel angry with myself for ever having believed them."
:: The official toll of people dead or missing stands at 14,650.