Completely Blown Away

Chanced upon this mind-blowingly amazing set of pictures of an abandoned island in complete ruin.

There are times when you see some things so wildly beyond your imagination that you feel your brain go numb and your scalp tingles and your heart skips as if you had just taken a wild stumble and you just righted yourself with a heavy thump of a foot forward.

That's how I felt when I scrolled through the entire set, partly also because the uploader remarked that he or she didn't know who the photographer was.

The answer is revealed in the comments at the end of the post. This is Gunkanjima.

Excerpts from Wiki here:

Hashima Island (端島; meaning "Border Island"), commonly called Gunkanjima (軍艦島; meaning "Battleship Island") is one among 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture about 15 kilometers from Nagasaki itself. The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island's most notable features are the abandoned concrete buildings and the sea wall surrounding it.

The island's nickname came from its apparent resemblance to a battleship, or gunkan (jima is a mutation of shima) due to its high sea-walls.

As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country. ... closing of the mine in 1974, and today it is empty and bare, which is why it's [also] called the Ghost Island. Travel to Hashima is currently prohibited.

At the end of the Wiki entry are more links worth exploring if you want to find out more. What I found most interesting is this, which leads to the Japanese photographer who took the above pictures, and this which leads to the pictures of Gunkanjima taken by American photographer Ross McDermott. There is also this, which leads to photographer Saiga Yuji's picture gallery. You should definitely check out the 1974 Gunkanjima link which leads to images of the island with its inhabitants, before it became desolated and isolated.

Isn't it amazing where the www takes you? I actually came upon Gunkanjima on this blog which documents abandoned places all over the world. But I find the Asian locations most fascinating, probably cos they are closer to home and thus more relatable.

Abandoned places fascinate and scare me. I have watched and been freaked out by way too many horror movies, plus my imagination is rather hyper active. I love the idea of them. It is very tempting, the thought of all the amazing pictures you can take away from them. But I don't have the guts to go into them. I grew up on a steady diet of True Singapore Ghost Stories and other scary Asian horror titles. That sort of upbringing ensures that even if I were to muster up the courage to step into these abandoned spots, I certainly would not dare to take pictures. I'm most happy to experience them vicariously through photos taken by other people.

Which brings me back to the Abandoned Places blog.

I also liked this set of an abandoned amusement park in Japan.



And this of an incomplete, abandoned pod village in Taiwan.




Okay. Enough. I'm going to look at some pretty stuff now to soothe my frayed nerves. Too creepy for 3am.