The harbour that shipped out gold and silver is now the ferry port. Ogi grew as the place where the output of the Sado mines was loaded, and the boat from Naoetsu still comes in here. Timber-walled townhouses and stepped lanes survive above the quay; the ground rises almost immediately behind the water, so the houses stand stacked up the slope rather than spread along it, and the settlement is deeper than it is wide.

Climb to the shrine on the high ground and the shape of the inlet becomes clear, along with the reason this particular indentation was chosen: it is the one that keeps the wind off. Ryōtsu and Sawata are each a little under an hour away by car, and Ogi continues to work as the island's southern entrance, with people and goods moving through it as they always have. A shipping harbour needs two things at once — enough depth to bring a vessel alongside, and a form that shelters it from the weather — and on any island the number of places offering both is very small, which is why ports end up where they are rather than where anyone would prefer.

The lanes in a port town are stepped because loads were carried up them on people's backs. Before vehicles, everything landed on the quay had to be moved uphill by hand, and under those conditions a flight of steps is quicker than a ramp and less treacherous in rain. The steps were transport infrastructure, built to a specification set by the weight of a load and the length of a working day. What now photographs as a picturesque lane was, for most of its existence, the least bad way of getting a barrel from a boat up to a storehouse.