I Explored Japan's Largest ABANDONED Island | Why 10,000 People Disappeared

it really does look like a post-apocalyptic town that's a four or five story building that's completely been consumed by this forest i've never seen anything quite like that [Music] good morning everyone and welcome back to journey across japan the lost islands and this morning we are in holland i think so [Music] so this is japan's biggest theme park it's called house 10 bosch and it's modeled on holland because the dutch were like the first people to arrive in japan from europe they kind of commemorate that by building this theme park and the scale of it it really is quite impressive like they've got windmills to scale they've got some sort of cathedral spire to scale they've got canals to scale everything i've never been to a theme park quite like this in all my time in japan it's a lot better than disneyland let me tell you now but anyway last night we stayed in a dutch house and uh how was it guys did you enjoy staying in the dutch house good morning by the way good morning how was the how was the house that's quite good maybe you're looking to live yeah yeah how was your room do you sleep well yeah grocery oh yeah my room mmm smell chilly or like chillips that's the true european experience enjoy the theme park because this afternoon we are going to an abandoned island fantastic ikoshima before that let's get today's challenge so every day on this trip you guys have been sending in challenges we've had 5 000 submissions whittled down to just three by our production team every day and today's challenge is all right today's challenge is from ryan t who says natsuki never gets to go on holiday sad face see who can make the most bad boy natsuki postcards get viewers to vote on the best natsuki bad boy postcards no i am good today you're going to be bad boy bad boy natsuki postcards well i mean we've got plenty of scenery to choose from here we do we've got holland and an abandoned island so i guess first things first let's go and check out the theme park and i saw some bicycles as well let's get right somewhere to buy skills let's do it [Music] i'm gonna find your man your man house 10 boss is probably the best way of feeling like you've left japan without physically leaving the country and though i'd heard of it for many years i'd always written it off assuming it'd be some kind of dodgy imitation of the netherlands but it turns out i was wrong the moment you set foot in the park and see the impressive brick buildings and witness married couples being whisked away by horse and carriage you know that this is a place that means business wow amazing like i'm still down i'm never been given the park is so damn big and we've only got the morning to explore we quickly grab ourselves a bike and begin our desperate race across town fastanaski faster faster let's go faster faster i feel like we've just i feel like we've just committed a really a really shitty underwhelming heist and we're escaping on like a bicycle the cops will never catch us in this machine [Music] this is the most exercise nasty's done in about three years exercise journey across japan oh my god we're gonna run over the car can i run the schoolgirls over i'm dangerous can you help us pedal obviously sorry can you help us pedal off his oh i've got a film i'll uh yeah come on oh what this bikes are sound heavy for some reason how dare you as we make our way across town it's not long before joey spots his first opportunity to one-up me on the challenge of the day bastard so this is quite lovely this little uh umbrella installment thing i think this would be a pretty nice place to film a cool shot and ask you maybe from underneath looking down at the camera [Music] oh my god it's quite the workout on those bicycles but i have to say like you know theme parks that try to mimic a town or place it often feels kind of fake and artificial this feels like the real thing apart from the massive ferris wheel but like this is like amazing i don't know when asking joey are they no in that ski probably gonna get a beer [Music] cheers real life real holiday real beer time nice touch it doesn't get any more dutch than heineken um lunch beer psycho it is beer our claw that's for sure helicht helix oh god i'm starting to worry natsuki's enjoying this too much like a genuine holiday and so before joey natsuki can have too much fun i drag them out of the park and force them into the car to begin our journey to the island of ikeshima it's a journey that will take us to nagasaki prefecture's coastline and onto an hour-long ferry ride across the sea ikishima isn't to be confused with gunkanjima it's more famous visually striking neighbouring island which we plan to visit in the next episode gunkanjima which literally means battleship island is more concrete than ireland and its towering buildings have been the backdrop of films such as attack on titan and the james bond movie skyfall however ikishima is far larger about 10 times in size and unlike gunkanjima which you can technically only visit as part of a guided tour thankfully here we can explore the island freely few things capture the passage of time better than a crumbling forgotten building the appearance of which can feel haunting poignant and profound all at once and the thing is they're not that hard to find in the japanese countryside where the population is declining rapidly and companies often shut up shop but leave the buildings behind for nature to take care of it's a far cheaper and less bureaucratic solution in recent years i've become obsessed by japan's many abandoned buildings known as haikyo but despite everything i've seen on my travels nothing prepares me for what we find on ikeshima because this isn't just one abandoned building it looks more like an entire abandoned city [Music] i don't know what to say it's just i've only seen settings like this in film and books and stuff like that but it really does look like a post-apocalyptic town just something happened and it's just stuck in time look at it there's more trees than building there that's a that's a four or five story building and it's completely been consumed by this forest like i've never seen anything quite like that what do you think natsuki ecology ecology [Music] as we wander through the endless abandoned cityscape we see the numbers painted on the side of the towering apartment blocks to our amazement we count over 30 abandoned buildings it just makes you think like how long has this been like this because that doesn't happen overnight that's like 10 20 plus years of abandonment ikishima was once a bustling industrial island with over 10 000 inhabitants calling it home the island's coal mine which opened in 1959 was at the heart of the local economy with 44 million tons of coal being excavated over a 40-year period then in the 90s the mines fell victim to cheaper imported coal and finally in 2001 mines closed their doors forever with most of the residents heading back to the mainland the population collapsed to a little over a hundred residents most of who live around the port while the rest of the island fell into decay the island that was transformed by man has now begun to return its way back to nature no animal no human only me island scary natsuki island if yesterday's episode was red dead redemption this this is certainly the last of us all right there's like barbed wire blocking the concrete block entrance most green monster building green monster yeah i thought it was like a tree at first or a wall i didn't even realize it was building it's crazy it's maybe nice merry christmas what it's funny this morning we were in the uh the dutch theme park that somebody had spent billions of dollars on and yet i'm having more fun here on an abandoned island where there's not really anything to see or do apart from this and this is more fun just exploring an island like this like this is where the whole name the lost islands came from like forgotten islands that have been preserved in time just left to their own devices it's kind of cool as you turn each corner you don't know really what you're gonna find there's usually some cats while wandering around ikishima outside of the port the streets and buildings remain eerily silent occasionally amongst a huge rundown building you'll see signs of life somebody who's made their home amidst it all and presumably there must be someone around here who feeds the many friendly feral cats that quietly roam the streets throughout the island [Music] it's weird you think like because there's no humans around these cats would be a little bit more wary but this one's loving it hey hey don't you no japanese island will be complete without dozens of cats a lot of islands in japan have cats because fishermen just toss fish to the feral cats that usually live around and they breed and then they get out of control and and then it becomes a cat island and japan already has like four or five cat islands they all claim to be the cat island but it's rather odd given we haven't seen any humans in the last i think an hour joey's essentially the cat whisperer like all the cats are flocking to him it's his exciting coloured hair and fantastic australian accent the trick actually if you want to get a cat to like you don't look at it in the eye oh my god what do you have to do what's this getting out of hand what you have to do is kind of look at it and then look away in cat language that's a sign of affection if you actually stare at a cat in the eyes a sign of aggression sneakily amidst the sea of cats joey the cat whisperer takes the opportunity to get one of his natsky postcards with everything going on in the world this last year exploring somewhere like this certainly feels all the more powerful particularly given ikoshima is just 40 kilometers west of the city of nagasaki one of the two cities to experience the terrifying destructive power of an atomic bomb through the pandemic watching countries around the world fall silent under quarantine airports and international connections we took for granted suddenly close up and livelihoods fall apart amidst the economic devastation it's all felt like a serious reminder about the fragility of humanity and clearly i'm not the right guy to give a monologue about a serious topic but with around 4 000 active nuclear warheads around the world each far more powerful than what nagasaki faced it doesn't feel outside the realms of possibility to imagine a world that could one day look something like this and though ikashima met its demise at the hands of economic ruin the island has huge potential for those who want to appreciate a truly post-apocalyptic setting and experience a powerful reminder of what the world might one day look like should we make some truly catastrophic decisions someday in the not so distant future [Music] unsurprisingly on ikashima you feel compelled to use a drone i've been doing some drone shots and uh i think natsuki came around the corner and saw this uh it's a crashed dji drone that says vaughn vinyl on it unfortunately someone wasn't so lucky with their drone so there you go need a good pilot like like me i mean i've only crashed three drones but i'm getting better this would be like a great place to shoot any kind of like post-apocalyptic zombie film or like a music video well the rap video we did two days ago yeah we could have filmed it here it could have been perfect yeah that would have been it's got a challenge on a different day instead you've got to film a postcard and i'm getting natsuki's postcard shot here oh yeah that's my one go for it crazy machine maybe train crazy trail oh [Music] crazy maybe crazy [Music] don't judge me [Music] there's no food on the island so i had to bring japanese pringles it tastes like cardboard but it will do i'll admit i have mixed feelings on ikoshima like it's sad that 10 000 people used to call this island home now it's just 130. you know islands across japan the populations are shrinking and this is clearly no exception it is beautiful absolutely beautiful and i think when the whole virus situation clears up people are going to start coming here as tourists to kind of appreciate the kind of forgotten city i don't know where joey natsuki are i think they're taking a photo on a pile of rubbish in the distance over there so we're near one of the outskirts of the island and we found this giant trash heap i know natsuki's already out there looking for treasure i figured this would be the perfect place to shoot my third and final postcard [Music] holding a flower see this is artistic impression right here this is the juxtaposition between life in your hands surrounded by death all right it's art i think we got ourselves a winner here originally we'd hope to stay overnight on the island but the sheer lack of amenities quickly makes us realize it's probably not worth starving to death and sleeping in the back of the car for and so after six hours spent exploring the island we board the ferry once more and head to a hastily booked hotel on the outskirts of nagasaki city [Music] oh great great fantastic holiday no misread [Music] so we're here to show you the postcards that joey and i so carefully took today i haven't seen yours i don't think you've seen mine no so we're going to go through each postcard and natsuki's going to give it a score from one to ten and then the winner will be the person so the magazine's 30 points 30 points all right all right what we got what you got what's your first one joey this is my first one umbrella and there's an umbrella yeah this one's called uh don't rain on my parade that's quite good that's good what do you think that ski um nice and colorful as well i thought you're trying to sell your coast guard yeah good strong start 10 points to joey very nice i'll call this one we're going to need a bigger gardener and the idea is oh bad does that he's a bad gardener that's a bad boy bad gardener eight eight but look at the building i mean that's that's better than an umbrella this is uh i call oh the king of [ __ ] oh but look look i i i yeah fuzzy king king and [ __ ] but look at this look i got a perfect timing where the cat is not only right next to natsuki but looking up at his king it looks like natsuki is about to sit on the cat same eight eight okay i'll take that i'll take that eight i'll take that egg oh that's what i call i'm definitely not carrying drugs oh yeah that just doesn't even look like japan it's crazy nine nine yeah it's close i've saved the best till last this is not only a postcard it's a piece of art this one right here oh beautiful oh my god it's natsuki on a mountain of trash but look he's holding a single flower in his hand meditating i call this life and death life and death a ray of hope in a sea of [ __ ] exactly peaceful peaceful yeah very nice see there that is pretty good yeah you've you've outdone me this time like usually i'm the one that tries to put in too much effort but i think joey's learned his lesson from the last series of journey this one's just called the sex sexy windmill six oh sexy windows that's actually quite good 11 11 11 well you have to cap it at 10 10. you got i got 28 out of 30. 28 and you got 27 27 ah robin one point very good unbelievable which photo do you think was the best guys let us know in the comments but for now guys thank you for joining us on our journey through japan's biggest theme park to holland by all means and uh japan's biggest abandoned island i hope you've enjoyed this journey and uh tomorrow it's our last day last night natsuki's holiday it's fine now it's final as we journey into nagasaki once and for all it's going to be a good one for now guys as always man thanks for watching we'll see you right back here on jenny across japan the lost islands all over again in the next episode bye for now cheers cheers [Applause] i've been wanting to see this place for years that is like the weight of a small child king of [ __ ] can we put that in the video is that going to get demonetised no it'll be all right famous last words [ __ ] japan that's definitely demonetised brilliant better stop it before it gets really [ __ ]

Channel: Abroad in Japan

Views: 1,930,427

Keywords: abroad in japan, journey across japan, abandoned japan, the anime man, trash taste, ikeshima, huis ten bosch, abroad in japan natsuki

Id: 5-VTyEZV0LQ

Length: 21min 8sec (1268 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021