Misaki, Kanagawa
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Misaki (Japanese:三崎港) is a harbour at the extreme south of the Miura Peninsula, in the Kanagawa prefecture of Japan. It is administratively part of the town of Miura (三浦市).
Misaki is a rather important fishing harbour, mainly specializing in the processing of tuna fish, for which it is the No2 harbour in Japan. It is Japan's 18th largest harbour, with a shipping tonnage of 49,084t. The harbour also has a quay which can accommodate sailboats from neighbouring marinas.
Closing the harbour to the south is the island of Jogashima, connected to the city by a bridge. It is a rather popular destination for week-end tourism. The lighthouse on top of Jogashima was built by the French engineer Léonce Verny at the end of the 19th century.
Misaki was badly shaken during the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, which had its epicenter in Sagami Bay just a few miles offshore from the city. The whole geographical area around the city was lifted by about 10 meters by tectonic movement, before subsiding to its original level during the next few days. No major tsunami however was recorded.
The city has also been known as the arrival point of several trans-Pacific sailboat races, such as the 1969 San Francisco-Tokyo Transpacific Yacht Race (The race was won by Frenchman Eric Tabarly, who arrived in Misaki 11 days before the second contestant, when nobody was expecting him yet. Tabarly rested for a few days in neighbouring Aburatsubo.). Misaki was also the arrival point of the record solo circumnavigation of 71 year-old Minoru Saito, on June 6th, 2005.
Misaki is home to one of Japan's specialist fisheries high schools. The school trains students in one of four fisheries skills; radio communications, engineering, food processing, and ocean fishing. The school maintains two fishing vessels, one of which is the ocean-going tuna fishing ship Shonan Maru, launched in 2005. The Shonan Maru is a frequent visitor to the port of Honolulu as part of the training of ocean fishing students from Misaki Fisheries High School. The high school's web site, in Japanese, can be found here: http://10.16.75.253/
