Ghost towns in Japan

We usually associate ghost towns with the American west, but it turns out that Japan has some truly spectacular abandoned places.

Here are two web sites which feature several of them. The first features an abandoned amusement park, and the images are arresting. (This site has several additional collections of photos of abandoned sites.)

An equally fascinating place is Gunkanjima, the "Battle Ship Island," a small island completely devoted to coal mining off the southwestern coast of Japan. It was abandoned in 1974 and travel there is no longer permitted.

There are several sites devoted to Gunkanjima, but this one by Saiga Yuji is particularly haunting.