It goes by the name of Hashima, or Gunkanjima ("Battleship Island"), or even "The Dead Island", since it inspired the water-locked cyberterrorist HQ in Skyfall. As you can now see for yourself, courtesy of Google Street View, it's a very a real place off the coast of Japan's Nagasaki Peninsula, and it's even lonelier than its fictional counterpart in the Bond film (which wasn't actually filmed there). There are no tourist offices or giant Oedipus Complexes, as far as we can see, just long stretches of overgrown roads and collapsing apartment blocks that once housed 5,000 people, before they abandoned the island in 1974 following the demise of its coal industry. It took a Google employee two hours to map the place and preserve its crumbling visage for posterity using a special backpack, but don't be surprised if you want to leave it after just a few minutes.
Filed under: GPS, Internet, Google
Source: Google's Japanese Blog
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