Warship Island, Nagasaki

Mari has introduced a fantastic site with photos from Warship Island, in the ocean by Nagasaki. Coal was mined here from the 1870s, but now all that remains are ruins. The English website is here but actually, check out the Japanese site here, it is beautiful... As Mari says, "this is the movie set of Matrix".

Music, videos, and more photos here... Oh, and if you want facts, Cabinet Magazine has all the details:

The island "was producing about 150,000 tons of coal annually and its population had soared to over 3,000 when, in 1916, Mitsubishi built a reinforced concrete apartment block on the island to alleviate the lack of housing space and to prevent typhoon damage. This was Japan's first concrete building of any significant size. America's first large-scale concrete structure—the Ingalls Office Building, in Cincinnati—had been built only 14 years earlier."

Swedish directors Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Thomas Nordanstad made a documentary about the island in 2002, called Hashima, Japan. Have a look, please.

This mine and the entire island was closed in the mid 1970s. What will happen to the concrete buildings as trees and plants try to take over? I have a feeling this is what a large part of our world might look like, in the future.