In June 2017 I visited Nagasaki, where I stayed at Hotel Monterey Nagasaki, which is located a very short walk from the departure point for the Gunkanjima Concierge Company (https://www.gunkanjima-concierge.com/en/). I joined one of their tours to visit Hashima Island, commonly called Gunkanjima (or Battleship Island), an abandoned island lying 15 kilometers from Nagasaki. Its nickname comes from the resemblance of its profile to a Japanese battleship. The island was known for its seabed coal deposits, which were mined, sometimes by forced labor during World War II, from 1887 until 1974, when the mine was closed, leaving the island abandoned. The island was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites in 2015 as one of the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution, and has only been open to tourists since 2009. Battleship Island served as the villain's lair in the James Bond film Skyfall.

Most of the serial World Heritage Sites include what I would characterize as "strong" and "weak" components, and I typically don't tick a site unless I have visited a strong component. Battleship Island, in my view, is the strongest component in the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution. (On my same trip to Japan, I visited the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, one of the Architectural Works of Le Corbusier that's been inscribed on the list of WHS, but to me it was too uninteresting to justify a tick of that site, which I will only tick after I visit Notre Dame du Haut, which, to me, is Le Corbusier's only outstanding building).

Ōura Church, built in 1864 soon after the end of Japan's period of seclusion, is a short walk from Hotel Monterey Nagasaki. Ōura Church is the oldest church in Japan, and, along with a dozen other sites in and around Nagasaki relating to the history of Christianity in Japan, is on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

I also visited Nagasaki Peace Park and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum commemorating the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the second city upon which an atomic bomb was dropped, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. On my last day in Nagasaki, I visited the Nagasaki Penguin Aquarium, the only aquarium in the world that focuses on penguins (https://penguin-aqua.jp/english/). Of the 18 typically recognized species of penguin, the Nagasaki Penguin Aquarium exhibits nine, more than any other aquarium.