Nagasaki Observatory was added to Your Favorites!
Ogasawara NP, Tokyo
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Just 500 m of water separates the lookout from Anijima, the uninhabited island across the strait. Its Ogasawara tiger beetle is found nowhere else, and visitors may land only on beaches, leaving its interior off-limits.
Some of Anijima’s dry-forest trees grow only 1–3 m tall, with small, thick leaves suited to dry conditions. Across Ogasawara’s dry-forest type, 68 endemic plant species have been recorded.
For Anijima’s endemic snails, mud on a boot can carry predatory flatworms. Rangers clean footwear before landing to keep these tiny hunters from hitchhiking onto the island.
When rat numbers rose on Anijima in 2024, officials dropped bait by helicopter. In 2025, rangers hand-spread more at camera-detected hotspots to protect the island’s endemic snails.
At the nearby Nagasaki Tunnel, pillow-shaped lava records an underwater eruption: hot rock chilled rapidly in seawater, forming rounded lobes. It’s a snapshot of Chichijima’s volcanic past, just down the road.
