Ushibuka, Amakusa
About the Ushibuka, Amakusa Camera
This camera covers Ushibuka, at the southern tip of Shimoshima in the Amakusa islands. It is one of the more remote corners of Kumamoto Prefecture, reached by a long drive across the Amakusa Five Bridges from the mainland, and its life has always been tied to the sea.
Ushibuka is a fishing town first and foremost, historically strong in sardine and kibinago fishing. Its other claim is the Ushibuka Haiya-bushi, a folk song said to have travelled north with sailors and influenced festival songs as far away as Hokkaido — an unusual case of a small port exporting its music along the shipping routes.
The Ushibuka Haiya Bridge, completed in the 1990s to a design by the architect Renzo Piano, curves across the harbour and has become the town's landmark. For anyone watching the sea, this camera is practical: wave state and sky conditions here change quickly, and the area sits in the path of typhoons from summer into autumn.
Highlights & Nearby
- •Watch for: the fishing port, sea and wave conditions, sky, boats coming and going
- •Nearby: Ushibuka Haiya Bridge, Amakusa Shimoshima, Ushibuka Kaichu Nature Aquarium
- •Note: typhoons affect this coast from summer into autumn and conditions change quickly
