I found via boingboing a link to this site with photos of a deserted island (click on ‘thumbnail’ for the actual photos) off the coast of Japan, this reminded me of the town near Chernobyl that has been deserted, I have been interested in visiting that for years. There are tour groups that will take you to it now, I am very seriously considering going in the summer.
Off the westernmost coast of Japan, is an island called “Gunkanjima” that is hardly known even to the Japanese. Long ago, the island was nothing more than a small reef. Then in 1810, the chance discovery of coal drastically changed the fate of this reef. As reclamation began, people came to live here, and through coal mining the reef started to expand continuously. Befor long, the reef had grown into an artificial island of one kilometer (three quarters of a mile) in perimeter, with a population of 5300. Looming above the ocean, it appeared a concrete labyrinth of many-storied apartment houses and mining structures built closely together.
Eventually, the mines faced an end, and in 1974 the world’s once most densely populated island become totally deserted. The island, after all its inhabitants departed leaving behind their belongings, became an empty shell of a city where all its peopl disappeared overnight, as if by some mysterious act of God.
Ten years later, I returned to the island, equipped with food and drinking water. The island was devastated, with the smell of people gone. Inside the buildings, however, evidence of people’s lives remained strongly. The strange atmosphere led me to wonder if island had remained in sleep ever since all its inhabitants left.
