Last night I stayed up late, well, quarter past ten which is late for me these days what with my early morning swim - have I told you about - oh, right, moving on - in order to watch the latest Bond movie, Freefall, on Sky Movies. Thus, once again I saw the scenes of that devastated city which I remembered seeing in the cinema months ago and wondering then if it was real or a studio set. Lo and behold, this morning The Mail explains and illustrates everything:
Gunkanjima, also known as Hashima, is all too real. It is an uninhabited island just off Japan. It once boasted a very profitable coal mine which attracted workers and a town rapidly grew up. Then coal went out of fashion, the mine closed and the workers instantly deserted back to the mainland leaving a ghost town.
I don't know if there is, but there jolly well should be, an Oscar for location finders for films. How they find these places beats me. (More pictures at the link courtesy of Google Earth.)
When an extractive industry has extracted what it economically can, then c'est bleedin' ca.
Posted by: dearieme | Wednesday, 03 July 2013 at 21:29
Exactement, mon brave!
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 04 July 2013 at 09:39