I toured Aogashima over 4 nights and 5 days. On the second day a typhoon hit directly, so I went around looking at graves and monuments that seemed fine to visit even in the rain. And one of them was this site of the nanushi (village headman) residence. It's at the bottom of a small staircase beside Tokyo Metropolitan Road No. 236. On the road I could feel a pretty strong wind, but this place is surrounded by walls of round stones. Maybe because of that, the wind was nicely softened. But there were puddles and wet grass growing thickly, so after going just 10 m in I was soaked below the knees. I thought about going further in, but the grass was even thicker further back. So I retreated and settled for scenery photos near the entrance. From the third day on, it was sunny every day. Perfect conditions for going further in. But although I passed in front of it several times, I never ended up going. Well, let's just say it's that kind of place... 2026.3.24

(2022/09) Go about 200 m down below Seijuji Temple. This area is the original Yasundo (休戸). Next to the nanushi residence site is a house with a cowshed. Apparently there used to be more houses. The stairs are well maintained, as you'd expect from a village headman's residence. Round-stone walls appear too. A characteristic of the round-stone walls of Hachijojima and Aogashima is that they form curves rather than corners. There isn't much to see now, but you can tell it was a fairly large plot with plenty of space set aside for various work areas. It's curious that it's far from Okabe, the current center of the village, but this may show that the center of farming was Ikenosawa. Ōsato Shrine is close by, and so is "Yari no Saka," which was the main road to Ikenosawa until 1958. It's a location from which you could rush to either Ikenosawa or Okabe if anything happened.

While driving along the road you'll see a small sign. If you're heading toward Ikenosawa (the port), there's a slightly wider spot on the roadside just before it where you can park. As you go down the mossy, slippery stairs, round-stone walls spread out and an atmospheric place surrounded by tropical plants opens up.

Go down from the metropolitan road The entrance is hard to find. I ended up parking at a nearby house, but apparently the right way is that there's a small parking space along the metropolitan road and a hard-to-spot sign, and you go down the stone steps from there. There's just cycads and round-stone walls; it's not a place with anything in particular. November 1, 2023

In the great eruption of 1785, the entire island was evacuated to Hachijojima. But a local explained to me that during the evacuation not everyone could get on the boats, and since the young people with a future were boarded first, many people, mostly the elderly, lost their lives. About half a century later, in 1835, the islanders' return was apparently achieved thanks to the efforts of the nanushi (village headman) Sasaki Jirodayu. This is the site of Sasaki Jiro's residence, and the stone walls made of beautiful round stones are striking. It's located away from today's settlement, a little way down the mountain. Did people go out to sea from here in the old days?