Raptured

July 7, 2006 8:50 AM

"[T]he 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 people disappeared overnight, as if by some mysterious act of God." (MainPage)(Thumbs)(Gallery)
posted by sluglicker (22 comments total)

Double.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:52 AM on July 7, 2006

My ideal vacation would be to visit an island like that and listen to post-rock all day. Seriously.
posted by Mach3avelli at 8:55 AM on July 7, 2006

Yeah, I'm with you on that Mach3avelli. Abandoned places like that are amazingly fascinating.

I wonder what sort of shape it's in now?
posted by vernondalhart at 9:04 AM on July 7, 2006

Gunkajima: 1974
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 9:11 AM on July 7, 2006

Wait, are you not allowed to go there?

That's a definite shame. Would LOVE to see the place firsthand.
posted by kafziel at 9:13 AM on July 7, 2006

Badass!
posted by shoepal at 9:16 AM on July 7, 2006

very interesting
posted by edgeways at 9:19 AM on July 7, 2006

Lovely, amazing. Thanks.
posted by Divine_Wino at 9:24 AM on July 7, 2006

Fascinating.

The banner on the wall in this photo is for the mine's closing ceremony.
posted by adamrice at 9:30 AM on July 7, 2006

Dude I totally played this map in Half Life 2.
posted by quite unimportant at 9:36 AM on July 7, 2006

Good find.
posted by marvin at 9:43 AM on July 7, 2006

Too bad all the fun abandoned stuff is always, far, far away from me. Nice post format, by the way.
posted by AdamOddo at 9:47 AM on July 7, 2006

Fascinating post.
posted by TedW at 9:49 AM on July 7, 2006

Fascinating post with beautiful photography. Who cares if its double posted; I say triple post stuff like this to make sure people don't miss it.
posted by somnambulist at 9:51 AM on July 7, 2006

I'm always joining urban decay/entropy/ruins type groups on Flickr, hoping to see stuff like this.
posted by BoringPostcards at 9:58 AM on July 7, 2006

Triple.
posted by yhbc at 10:02 AM on July 7, 2006

I don't want to vacation there, I want to live there.

I want to drop ship a year or two worth of supplies, wire up a bunch of solar panels and batteries, a satellite broadband link and just... I don't know, probably go out of my fucking head with the solitude and decay and all the ghosts.
posted by loquacious at 10:06 AM on July 7, 2006

AdamOddo, plenty of abandoned sites around closer by. Not nearly on the scale of this, but here is a bunch of abandoned airfields in Fla, and here are some Fla. ghost towns. This kind of shit is all over, just need to look for it.
posted by edgeways at 10:20 AM on July 7, 2006

"Who cares if its double posted; I say triple post stuff like this to make sure people don't miss it."

Let me tell you about this great new comic strip ...
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:29 AM on July 7, 2006

Hey cool, thanks - there's some new Get Your War On!
posted by Flashman at 10:55 AM on July 7, 2006

Fascinating. I predict at least two post-apocalyptic movies are filmed there in the next ten years.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 11:08 AM on July 7, 2006

Double, triple, OK, but thanks for this. Beyond the striking nature of the photograph the descriptive essay is a lovely piece of "Japanese" writing, even in translation.
posted by persona non grata at 11:30 AM on July 7, 2006