Nozaki Times

On Thursday I picked up long time friend Gimmy in Sasebo. I had been four years since I had last seen her, but it was like old times, and we had a great time. My brother and S were also at my place so it was a full house in my little apartment.

Friday morning we woke up early, met my colleague T and drove all the way to the south of the island. We met up with A family and drove to the the harbour of Haifuku, one of the most remote villages on the island. We boarded a fishermens boat with some other local kids to and went all the way out to Nozaki Island.


Nozaki Island is an uninhabited island, once occupied by a small community but abandoned about 15 years ago. The school is turned into a campsite and the church sits on the slope looking out over the sea, the beach and the former rice paddies that have slowly started to collapse. Once the village was protected by a large fence to keep out the deer that live on the island, but now the people have gone, the fence has collapsed in some places and the deer now roam between the houses that are slowly falling apart. Electricty lines and everything is still in place, so its a very friendly looking ghost town.


We got of the boat, walked to the church, which has been kept in great condition and then we walked the last bit down to the beach. The boat had already thrown its anchor out in the bay and the kids had swom to the beach to tie the boat to some huge rock on the beach. The sea was a beautiful colour. Even more beautiful than I have seen on the island here. It was a perfect beach, it was like being in the carribean, maybe just without the palm trees.

(a stranded blowfish on the beach)

We swam for hours and hours, dived off the boat, looked for shellfish and ate cold japanese summer noodles on the boat. We went back in the afternoon via some beautiful rocky islands which had hidden caves and natural palm trees on the steep cliff sides. When we got back we had a barbecue at As house, and although it suddenly started to thunder it was a nice cool welcome after all the heat that had me burned red like lobster. It will take a while before I get rid of the burned skin, but Im sure the memory of the day will last a lot longer!

The old church on Nozaki Island

Gimmy looking out over the beach

Floating on water

Swimming to and from the boat

Catch of the day on the barbeque