Nara Dreamland, Japan

Nara Dreamland was a theme park near Nara, Japan which was built in 1961 and inspired by Disneyland in California. On August 31, 2006, Nara Dreamland closed permanently.

The entrance to the park was designed to look almost identical to Disneyland, including the Train depot, a Main Street, U.S.A. and the familiar Sleeping Beauty Castle at the hub. It also had a Matterhorn-type mountain (with a Matterhorn Bobsleds-type ride, called Bobsleigh), and the skyway running through it, as well as an Autopia-type ride and a monorail. The park also had its own mascots, Ran-chan and Dori-chan, two kids dressed as bearskinned guards.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amCZA877cnY?rel=0]

The park contained several rides prior to closing, including: aska, a wooden roller coaster based on The Cyclone at Coney Island, screw Coaster, an Arrow Dynamics designed double corkscrew steel roller coaster, Bobsleigh, a steel roller coaster modeled after the Matterhorn Bobsleds, fantasy Coaster, Kid's Coaster, Figure-8 monorail.

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Blood Pond Hot Spring, Japan

A hot spring is a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are geothermal hot springs in many locations all over the crust of the earth.The water issuing from a hot spring is heated by geothermal heat, i.e., heat from the Earth's mantle. In general, the temperature of rocks within the earth increases with depth. The rate of temperature increase with depth is known as the geothermal gradient. If water percolates deeply enough into the crust, it will be heated as it comes into contact with hot rocks. The water from hot springs in non-volcanic areas is heated in this manner.

Blood Pond Hot Spring is one of the “hells” (jigoku) of Beppu, Japan — nine spectacular natural hot springs that are more for viewing rather than bathing. The “blood pond hell” features a pond of hot, red water, colored as such by iron in the waters. It’s allegedly the most photogenic of the nine hells.

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Hashima Island, Japan

Hashima Island, (or correctly Hashima, as -shima is Japanese for island), commonly called Gunkanjima or Gunkanshima (meaning Battleship Island), is one among 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture about 15 kilometers from Nagasaki itself.

The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island's most notable features are the abandoned concrete buildings and the sea wall surrounding it. The island has been administered as part of Nagasaki city since 2005; it had previously been administered by the former town of Takashima.

It is known for its coal mines and their operation during the industrialization of Japan. Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890 and began the project, the aim of which was retrieving coal from undersea mines. They built Japan's first large concrete building (9 stories high), a block of apartments in 1916 to accommodate their burgeoning ranks of workers (many of whom were forcibly recruited labourers from other parts of Asia) and to protect against typhoon destruction. According to a South Korean commission, the island housed 500 Koreans who were forced to work between 1939 and 1945, during World War II.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6msT4eBba4?rel=0]

In 1959, the 15-acre island's population reached its peak of 5,259, with a population density of 835 people per hectare (83,500 people/km2, 216,264 people per square mile) for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare (139,100 people/km2) for the residential district.

As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country, and Hashima's mines were no exception. Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine in 1974, and today it is empty and bare, which is why it is called Ghost Island. Travel to Hashima was re-opened on April 22, 2009 after 35 years of closure.

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