Japan lost its claim to a part of the Pacific Ocean after one of its islands disappeared.
The small island, called Esanbe Hanakita Kojima, is assumed to have slipped beneath the waves, apparently unnoticed by residents living in Sarufutsu, a village on the northern tip of the main island of Hokkaido 500 metres away, as per reports in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
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Esanbe Hanakita Kojima lies 500 meters before Sarufutsu on the northern main island Hokkaido int the Sea of Okhotsk.
No one realized that the islet disappeared until a man, who was working on a picture book about islands, went to find it.
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Locals were alerted about the islet’s possible disappearance in September this year, after the author Hiroshi Shimizu visited Sarufutsu to write a sequel to his picture book on Japan’s ‘hidden’ islands, according to the Asahi Shimbun.
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