六島

The ferry "Hamayu" leaves Fuefuki port two or three times a day, crossing a short stretch of sea to an island shaped like a long ridge. Nozaki, part of Ojika town, is now uninhabited, though the brick walls of Kyū-Nokubi Church still stand on the slope where Hidden Christians built their settlement around 1800. The church, completed in 1908, is one of the components of the World Heritage listing, and from its windows the view opens onto thin terraces gone back to grass.

Further along the island, the Okinokōjima Shrine sits beneath the Ōigaishi rock, a place of worship older than most of what remains in the Gotō Islands. Between shrine and church, the school building has been converted into the Nozakijima Nature Juku Mura, where guides walk visitors through the brush and along the cliffs. Deer move through the abandoned village without much hurry.

Ojika itself, back across the water, keeps its small fishing harbors—Taira, Kaminoura on Uku, Mushima—and the rhythm of the boats sets the pace of the day. For someone considering a season here, or a base returned to over years, the appeal is not in scenery alone but in how a working island town holds its ground beside an island that has let its village go. The two readings of the same archipelago—occupied and unoccupied—sit close enough to cross in a morning.