Japan's World Cultural Heritage Site Sakizu Village

#Japan Attractions The Sakizu settlement in Amakusa, Kyushu, Japan, is one of the three World Heritage sites I know of in Kyushu. Sakizu is located on a bay of Japan's Amakusa Shimoshima Island leading to the East China Sea. It is not an ordinary port. The first envoys sent by Japan to the Tang Dynasty departed from here, and Western Christianity was also introduced to Japan from here. It was also listed as a World Cultural Heritage because of the early existing Christian churches and cultural landscapes. The most culturally and historically valuable is the Sakizu Church (Figure 1), also known as the "Church on the Sea", which was designed and built by the church architecture master Yosuke Tetsuka. Built around 1934 during the time of Father Harvey, it is located in the center of the village overlooking the Sakizusuwa Shrine, and from the chapel's bell observatory park, it looks like it is floating on the Kawaura Bay in the background, so it is also called the Cathedral on the Sea. It is said. The spire rising in front is made of reinforced concrete, and the interior is mainly made of wood and has tatami mats, which is rare in churches. Although this place is listed as a World Cultural Heritage, let alone commercialization, there is no place to eat even if you want to eat. There is only a coffee shop and a snack bar, which is something I did not expect. There is no need for tickets here. Of course, almost no one would come here even if there is no tickets, because the location is too remote. I stayed there for about two hours and only saw a Japanese tour group. The tour guide seemed to be over 70 years old, but he was in very good spirits. Here you can also see some old Japanese houses, which reminded me of my lost childhood. The windows are single-layer glass with a thickness of 0.5 cm (my home was like this when I was a child), which has very poor thermal insulation. There are paper-pasted sliding doors on three sides of the windows, about one meter away. One of them is an inner wall, and although it is only paper-pasted, with this distance, the temperature in the house may increase by 5 degrees in winter. #Overseas Travel #Japan Travel #Japan Destinations #Japan Free Travel #Japanese Culture #Bay #Christianity #Christian Buildings #World Cultural Heritage #World Heritage #Kyushu