Want your own deserted island?

Sick of your neighbors? Want a bigger yard? Looking for a bit more Robinson Crusoe in your life, but would like the creature comforts of the city to be a few minutes away?
Why not put in a bid for the uninhabited island of Touge-jima in Minami-ku?

The island, at around 220,000 square meters in area, is small but perfectly formed, 2km south of Hiroshima Port in Ujina and 1.5km east of Ninoshima. The asking price is a cool 200 million yen, and you’ll need your own boat to get back and forth as it not serviced by any ferries.

The island is uninhabited and completely undeveloped; the only structure on the island appears to be a dilapidated building on a small beach in the south-east of the island. You can see this building in some of the photos on this blog post [ja]. You can also see a seemingly more recently constructed stone torii gate. The torii is inscribed with the characters “黒八大明神　瀬戸内蛇体大神”. When searching for the first part, kurohachi-daimyoujin, all I could find was this folk tale about an old man who befriends some wolves, which in turn protect the crops of the old man’s village. I can’t find anything about the second part, setouchi-jatai-ookami, but the characters conjure up images of some kind of dragon god – can anyone cast any light on this?

You can also see some nice shots of the coast of Touge-jima on this blog post.

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December 2012