The journey through Nagasaki Prefecture starts from a small town with a curious name, Obama, which has no relation with the former US president (but did make it globally notorious for a while) and only means a small beach.
It is in fact a small spa resort on Kyushu, Japan’s third-largest island, overlooking the open ocean. From here you get on a bus that climbs the sharp curves of the mountains up to a height of 700 meters. Then you finally reach Unzen, a mountain village that sprang around its famous thermal baths, the hottest in all of Japan, they say here, with temperatures reaching 120 degrees.
At some point in the 17th century, it was the site of Christian persecution when the rulers immersed Christians in the boiling waters to force them to renounce their faith.
Touristically speaking, it is the perfect venue for all those looking for a memorable snapshot to hang in that space of fleeting self-gratification on the various social networks. From the earth rise, for 20 or 30 meters, large fumes that surround a hotel whose foundations dig right into the boiling thermal waters. One wonders what technical tricks the engineers have put in place to keep those gigantic structures, some centuries-old, standing on that incandescent quagmire.
The gargling of the continuous bubbling of water, stones and mud evokes ghosts of otherworldly landscapes. It is no coincidence that the place is known as “Unzen Hell.”