Pirate Ships & an Abandoned Island, A Spooky Weekend in Nagasaki Prefecture

This weekend was PACKED!

Kujukushima Cruising 九十九島パールシーリゾートターミナルビル

Friday after school, I hustled to the 99 Islands Port in Sasebo to board a Pirate Ship with Bryan and the rest of the USS America officers for a fun sunset cruise! Between the hail and bail festivities, we sailed around the famous 99 islands of Sasebo, and enjoyed a costume contest, some delicious Indian food and a beautiful view!

Hasamiyakimono Park 波佐見やきもの公園

Saturday, I talked Bryan into a day trip to Hasami! You may remember Hasami for the pottery festival from a previous blog post, but this weekend Hasami hosted the "largest antique sale in Kyushu," and while I'm not a big antique person, I was willing to check it out!

Bryan was more focused on the food options available, but we did leave with one really cool find: some antique dental mouth mirrors! For ¥900, I couldn't help myself, so we walked away with three SUPER old dental mouth mirrors to display in a future dental office. (I have this great vision of Bryan's future dental office being filled with unique finds that we pick up during our travels. So far, we have 3 mouth mirrors for the collection and a tiny tanuki statue as a reminder of our time in Sasebo!)

Takeo Shrine 武雄神社

After the antique show, Bryan and I *thought* we were going to a shrine in Takeo to see a Japanese bow and arrow ceremony event. I had spent a crazy amount of time researching it and trying to use Google Translate to figure out the festivities....but it didn't work out. I saw a date of October 29th somewhere....but it was wrong. There was no cool samauri-dressed, horse-riding, bow-and-arrow shooting guys at Takeo Shrine today. This is just one example of how hard it is to figure out local events...I'm telling you this language barrier sucks sometimes!

Toride Ramen - Haiki ラーメン砦 研究所

But we didn't let it get us down! Food always peps us up, so we stopped at Toride in Haiki for a delicious bowl of ramen!

That evening, Bryan and I were invited to Meg and Mike's place for a goodbye dinner with Tom, call-sign "Ron." Mike, Bryan and Ron have been roommates for the last three months, and Ron is getting ready to move back to the States. His wife, Phil, is already back home in Georgia preparing to give birth to their first baby! Mike and Meg were kind enough to host a dinner so we could all say goodbye and wish Ron the best as he prepares to leave the Navy and grow his family!

I obviously forgot to take photos of our dinner, but I was sure to take photos of the sunset from Mike and Meg's porch! check out that amazing view of the Sasebo Harbor!!!!

"Gunkanjima" Hashima Island 端島

Sunday morning came early! Mike had duty, so Ron took his spot for our day trip to Nagasaki to visit Hashima Island! As I headed to the ticket booth to purchase all 11 tickets for our group, I just prayed my website Google Translating and the broken English emails turned out better than my Shrine planning yesterday...

Nobody at the ticket window spoke English...BUT they charged me the estimate I calculated, so after many "hais," I grabbed our tickets and said another prayer! Lucky for us, our English-speaking tour guide found us (shocker, we were the only Americans on the entire boat) and we were set! Whew!

Hashima Island is called Gunkanjima by locals because of its resemblance to a battleship at sea. That may be true, but that's not what I called it.

What did I call it? The James Bond Island!

Gunkanjima was featured in the 2012 James Bond movie; "Skyfall." In the clip below, the scenes of Bond on the boat were actually filmed off the coast of Nagasaki! While they didn't film the dilapidated city scenes on the island, the crew did get a special tour of Gunkanjima to inspire the CGI recreation of the Bond setting.

And here is how I sold this island tour to the USS America wardroom families:

Anyway, once the tour began, we really enjoyed our time! We soaked in the sun during the 45-minute ride to the island (even if it wasn't aboard that cool yacht that Bond sailed on). As we disembarked for the guided tour, I realized that this was the *perfect* spooky event for Halloween time! We had to stay on the paved paths because many of the buildings are deteriorating rapidly. The main building we posed in front of for our group picture is estimated to collapse in the next six months!!!

During the tour, we learned that Hashima Island was a mining city from 1810 until 1974. The island is smaller than 18 football fields, so when buildings were constructed in the early 1900s, Japan established the first cement high-rise apartment buildings to fit the 5,300 people who lived there.

With the rise of oil-based power, the cost of mining coal 3,000 meters below sea level became too expensive. So in 1974 the mine closed, and thus the entire island was abandoned, almost, overnight. All of the men, women and children packed their bags and left behind their mining life to move back to the mainland.

Pardos, Meg, Ron, Us, Rugiles

In 2015, Hashima Island was established as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, and tours began to showcase this unique island to visitors! Who knows how much longer it will stand 3 miles off the coast of Nagasaki.

After re-boarding our tour boat, we circled the island a few times before returning to Nagasaki! Can you see the Gunkanjima "battleship" outline?

This weekend was packed full of time with our friends, and exploring new areas around Kyushu. I can honestly say, I didn't know we would spend Halloween weekend aboard a pirate ship and then exploring an eerie, abandoned island...! When in Japan, I guess!

'til next time,

Katie