Thursday, December 13, 2012

Nichitsu by Day

We didn't get a good idea of the scope of the Ghost Town of Nichitsu until day broke, so deep was the darkness permeating the area. It was when the sun rose that we could see all the houses on the cliffs above and down the streets below, and so we wasted no time in delving deeper, exploring the town high and low. What we found didn't disappoint.
  Before going ghost, Nichitsu was fully operational as an independent town: it even had its own grocery store. Early that morning, we hit several points of interest. Nichitsu town was built up-cliff, with public buildings being located at the lower points, and residential ones located higher up. We didn't truly know about the lower point of the city until it was quite literally lit up to us, and the first construction we entered was the hospital.

  The hospital bore all the remnants of a full modern medical facility, including hardware and shelves full of medicine. Each room seemed to have served its own purpose: a first one was littered with nondescript black vinyl sheets, which, upon lifting for examination, we discovered to be x-rays. I beamed in delight as I realized I stood in a pile of such sheets big enough to be that of every bone ever broken in the town.
Other rooms included a sick persons' rest room, stained bed and all, a surgery room, complete with tools such as scalpels and an operating table, a chemists lab, with compounds such as hydrochloric acid still sitting on the shelves, and a dentists' room, with its floor completely smashed in. We delighted as every room brought us something completely new and seldom expected. One room even included organ tissue encapsulated in jars, but we could scarcely recognize the contents of the vials we lifted to the sun, but many of them were not human: several contained insects and other unrecognizable myriapods.
As we stumbled back out into the sunlight, we had little doubt that the next discovery could not be as interesting as the last. And we were wrong.
Surprisingly enough, the small town even had its own theater. Decades of wear weighed down upon the ceiling, planks of it littering the floor already. The place had a VIP room with windows looking straight at the stage, interior balconies, and a backstage room, the latter which decayed worst than any of the other parts of the building. It was easy to imagine the townsfolk gathering here every now and then for a show or a play.

Only after we were sure we had visited every single building there was to visit did we leave Nichitsu. We were satisfied. Our curiosity about the skeleton of the town, so desolate and remote, had finally met its answer, and after spending a massive twelve hours session of exploring, it was fatigue that finally claimed us, rather than any spirit or ghost.

I think I will, one day, return to Nichitsu, but for now, I leave the place to its eternal resting state for the next set of adventurers brave enough to climb up the mountain and face the village in its cold, deathlike trance.

PS: All photos on this post were taken courtesy of Lo. My camera died out the previous night.

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