Abandoned Kansai

Shin-Hakodate Golf Club

2026/09/30 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

With up to half a year of snow, Hokkaido isn’t exactly a prime location for country clubs / golf courses – so it’s probably no surprise that you can find quite a few abandoned ones there…

Unlike in America, places in Japan and Germany featuring the term new (shin / neu) are usually close to the original spots, not completely new settlements. Shin-Osaka and Shin-Kobe, two Shinkansen train stations, were built a little bit outside of town, because it was impossible to bulldoze half a city just for some new train tracks. Neu-Ulm is just the Bavarian counterpart of Ulm, which is on the other side of the Danube in Baden-Württemberg – and the older version of Neuschwanstein Castle, Schwanstein Castle, is less than a kilometer away and now known as Hohenschwangau Castle. And that brings us to the Shin-Hakodate Golf Club… which is not in a brand-new settlement called Shin-Hakodate, but also nowhere near Hakodate or Shin-Hakodate Hokuto (the Shinkansen station in the city Hokuto, neighbouring Hakodate). Fact of the matter is, the thing is in Oshamambe and therefore closer to Lake Toya than to Lake Onuma – and with Nakanosawa Station closed for good on March 16th 2024, closer to Oshamambe Station than to any other one (for example Kunnui Station). Why it was called Shin-Hakodate? Nobody knows. But I guess to have uninformed fellas from Hakodate sign up for a membership, despite the one and a half hour long drive. Or maybe to make Oshamambe people feel like they are part of the big city now… (The history of the place is rather short and tragic: Opened in August 1988 as a luxury country club featuring Hokkaido’s first helipad, offering shuttle services and sightseeing flights, sold 15 months later, suspension of business due financial trouble in 1997 after an expansion into a resort failed because of the burst of the economy bubble, officially closed in 2004, kind of abandoned ever since.)
Anyway, lots of geography in the introduction, so let’s get to the exploration! I arrived on foot after taking the train to Nakanosawa Station – not a single soul in sight, neither around the station nor around the golf club. The building itself was in pretty bad condition, which wasn’t really a surprise, after almost 25 years of neglect, the Hokkaido winters, and being located 300 meters away from the coast (salty air!). The remote location definitely attracted more than its fair share of metal thieves and vandals, so plenty of entry and exit points, for both myself as well as the elements – which meant lots of moss and mould, despite excellent ventilation. Personally, I prefer my abandoned places to be in good condition (fewer health hazards, easier to breathe, less smelly), but if decay is your thing, you’ll probably enjoy the photos even more. Next to the club house main building with locker rooms, saunas, and a restaurant were two rather large wooden buildings for overnight guests – and 100 meters down the road an apartment building, probably for employees.
Was the Shin-Hakodate Golf Club worth coming all the way to Hokkaido? Heck no! But for me it was just a stop on the way from Hakodate to Sapporo as I made the trip for a few other places – two of which so spectacular that I haven’t even mentioned them here yet to protect them. And for a stop to stretch your legs it was a pretty good exploration. I have fond memories! Vague, but fond… 🙂

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Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Golf, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex | 2 Comments »

Pyramid Park

2026/09/15 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

The first time I saw the Pyramid Park must have been around the beginning of the pandemic on a photo a friend of mine took with a drone – I fell in love with the place instantly, because it looked like an abandoned amusement park wedged between two pyramids carved from mountain peaks somewhere in the Japanese Alps or so; with a chair lift leading up to it, like some weird Machu Picchu theme park in the sky. I avoid asking for locations, even urbex friends I’ve explored with a dozen times, so it took me a while to find it – and it turned out to be in Kansai, in day trip range, actually!

I was super excited, so I invited an acquaintance of mine to come along – they asked me before if they could join me on one of my explorations, and I thought a promising remote location like that would be perfect for a first timer. We agreed on a day and when I updated them where we would go a day or two before the planned day trip, one of the weirdest conversations I ever had developed. It went something like this:
“We’ll take a train from Osaka to X, and then a bus into the mountains.”
“Uhm, that bus… will it take us through Y?”
“Yes, how do you know?”
“Oh, then I can’t come!”
“What?! Why?!”
“Well, I was an English teacher there and quite well known, because I was on local TV. When I moved away a few years ago I said I would stay in touch, but I never did. What if somebody sees me on the bus?”
“Are you kidding me? So what if somebody sees you on the bus?”
“Well, it would probably hurt their feelings, because I didn’t stay in touch and now I came back without telling anybody!”
“So what? Apparently, those people weren’t important enough to you to stay in touch, so why care about their feelings now, after all those years?”
“No, I can’t go…”
I felt a bit taken aback, but then I remembered that this was actually the second time they did that. The first time we planned weeks ahead and the day before we were supposed to go, they canceled, because they forgot that it was their birthday weekend. Not the weekend of their birthday – their birthday weekend. The birthday was on Tuesday and this was the following Saturday! I’ll never understand the obsession a lot of Americans have with their birthdays… Some already talk about their birthday months! Just make it your birthday year and you can have a little party with a little hat and a little cake every single day of your little life! Who’s a good boy/girl? You are! Yes! You are!
So, if you ever wondered why I explore more and more by myself and became reluctant to meet up with strangers to go exploring – it’s people like them. And there’s been quite a few like them over the years. I probably could write an article just about people like them. The dumb excuses I’ve heard… after they contacted me! Some were even worse…

Anyway, the Pyramid Park! Three trains and one bus to the middle of nowhere! And, of course, a breathtaking hike up a mountain…
The Pyramid Park was opened in 1998 as an addition to a town run *leisure facility* already featuring an onsen hotel, a tennis court, a large putter golf course, a dog park, and a restaurant. The park itself was basically a sports facility featuring inline skating, skateboarding, archery, punk shot basketball, and climbing – plus a bouncy dome and several slides; and of course a restaurant plus gift shop. In 2004 a typhoon hit the area and caused severe damage. When that happens, you either read on social media that “only in Japan, which lives in 2050!” the place reopened within days of the time the damage was done (for example the sinkhole in Fukuoka or the bridge to Kansai Airport) – or you’ll never hear about those things again, for example the Hidaka Main Line (partially closed for good), the Tsuragu Line (partially closed for good) or the Meisho Line (partially closed for more than six years). Or this place. Which took an additional hit by bureaucracy in 2005, when the town was absorbed into a bigger city. The new municipality kept the undamaged main facility running, but let the Pyramid Park rot, before closing it permanently in 2011.
A little more than a decade later yours truly finally showed up, huffing and puffing up that darn mountain on a godawful hot and humid September day. You’d think that early autumn in the mountains of Kansai would already be nice, but noooooooo! Maybe in the 1950s, but not anymore!
Unfortunately the place didn’t look nearly as spectacular from the ground as it did from the sky, but overall, it was still a darn good exploration! To this day the place is virtually unknown and rather hard to access, so despite the nearby hot spring, there was basically no vandalism – all natural decay. Wedged between two pyramid sides. In the mountains. Fresh air on a cloudy, humid AF day. What more can you ask for? (Other than reliable people in your life…)

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Travel, Urbex | 5 Comments »

Miyamoto Musashi: Miyamoto, Okayama / Ganryu-jima

2026/09/04 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Musashi Miyamoto was one of the most famous sword fighters in the history of Japan and has been depicted in countless works of art – novels, movies, video games. In real life he fought in famous battles, for example in Sekigahara, and almost equally famous duels, like against Kojiro Sasaki. Later in life he became an artist and writer, penning The Book of Five Rings about strategy and martial arts. Since Musashi Miyamoto is part of pretty much every school curriculum, virtually every person educated in Japan knows about him – and yet even the most significant places of his life are still hidden gems.

I’ve been interested in Japanese history ever since I watched the original Shogun mini-series in the early 80s with my dad. As a teenager I read the book, in my early 20s I traveled to Japan for the first time, later I studied Japanese history at university, and in my late 20s I moved to Japan. I think I had the book Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa as a teenager, though I don’t think I got far into it… I always struggled with Japanese authors. Kenzaburo Oe, Haruki Murakami, even Soseki Natsume – though I love the beginning of “I Am a Cat”, one of the few books I can quote: “Gestatten, ich bin ein Kater! Unbenamst bislang.” (The other language versions I had to look up: “I am a cat; but as yet I have no name.” / “吾輩は猫である。名前はまだ無い。And German sounds so much more poetic than English in this case!)
Anyway, in late autumn of 2025 I decided to finally visit the birthplace of Miyamoto Musashi – which was in day trip range of where I live, meaning it’s in day trip range of about 90% of the overseas tourists visiting Japan; none of them to be seen there even on a gorgeous Saturday with fantastic weather!

Miyamoto, Okayama
Musashi Miyamoto, unlike Shigeru Miyamoto, was (most likely) born in Miyamoto, Okayama prefecture – halfway between Himeji and Tottori, right at the border to Hyogo prefecture; an area usually described as “deep in the mountains of Japan”. The easiest way to get there? By highway bus, despite a train station in nearby Imaoka (which all are part of a city called Mimasaka) named after the most famous guy from the area. Yeah, I had no idea either. Took me 19 years of living in Japan to find out that there is a train station called Miyamoto-Musashi Station! It’s a small one with only about 15 connections in each direction per day, about once an hour in average, hence the highway bus from Himeji – it’s easy, cheap, and doesn’t require several vehicle changes. (As of early September 2026: 10:30, bus stop 11 at Himeji Station, get off at Ohara Inter, 1900 Yen.) Getting back to Himeji, you can either take the bus from Ohara Inter at 16:13 or the 17:20 train from Miyamoto-Musashi Station via Kamigori Station.
I arrived at Ohara Inter to beautiful weather on a gorgeous Saturday in late November. The highway is a bit elevated, so you can see the train station in the foreground and the Miyamoto Musashi Budokan in the back – a large modern multi-purpose venue dedicated to martial arts, designed after a tsuba (sword guard) crafted by Miyamoto Musashi (I was told that on location, Wikipedia claims that a samurai helmet called kabuto was the inspiration, so… who knows?).
Upon arrival in the really, really lovely small town, surrounded by rice fields and dotted with kaki trees, there is so much to see – first there is the train station, which featured several statues, area guides and even some stamps, if that’s your kind of thing. From there I went over to the Budokan, which was surprisingly busy due to a singing contest held by NHK. Interestingly enough, that had no influence on all the other sightseeing spots in town. The Musashi Memorial Park, the Sanomo Shrine, Musashi’s birthplace, the Musashi Shrine, the family grave… all void of people.
There’s a small sightseeing center in the tiny center of the town, so I went there in search of some souvenirs. And they actually had quite a nice collection of non-perishable items like wallets, T-shirts, coasters, … Probably not enough customers for senbei or manju. Which is a shame, because Miyamoto is a super nice small town, absolutely gorgeous. The guy running the shop / tourist center was extremely friendly and closed the place for almost an hour to give me a guided tour of the birthplace area, including the Musashi Shrine; which he apparently does regularly, according to reviews on GoogleMaps. He even opened the Musashi Miyamoto Museum for me, which was closed during Covid and never reopened, so I could have a look.
Overall one of the best day trips ever, doable from pretty much everywhere between Kyoto and Okayama. Unlike Otaru or Hakone, this is really a hidden gem off the beaten tracks!

Ganryu-jima
Ganryu-jima or Ganryujima is a small island in the Kanmon Straight between Honshu and Kyushu. Known at the time as Funa-jima, because it was shaped like a boat, it’s now famous for the duel between Musashi Miyamoto and Kojiro Sasaki – who ran a sword fighting school named Ganryu and apparently used the term as his nom de guerre, hence the new island name. Both Miyamoto and Sasaki were successful and ambitious swordfighters at the time, and rivals from afar – so they had a duel arranged by daimyo Tadaoki Hosokawa on April 13, 1612. The two had never met before, but Miyamoto, being a bit of a prick that he was, arrived hours late to unsettle Ganryu… and to whittle a spare oar into a heavy wooden training sword on the way to the island. Upon arrival Sasaki lost his shit and Miyamoto cracked his head open with the whittled oar. The end. In August 1917 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries started to expand the island from 17k square meters to more than 103k square meters in 1980 for their shipbuilding business. They owned the vast majority of the now uninhibited island until 2003, when they transferred about a third of it to the city of Shimonoseki… so I guess they still own the majority, but now allow visitors to the public park, which has been turned into a tourist attraction and memorial of the famous fight.
Access is rather easy – just take a bus from Shimonoseki Station or Shin-Shimonoseki Station to Karato bus stop, and then a boat from the nearby wharf to Ganryu-jima. There is not much to see or do on the island, so you’ll probably leave after an hour or so, but the Shimonoseki / Moji area is also surprisingly nice, so check out the Kaikyo Yume Tower, the Moji harbor area, and / or walk through the Kanmon Tunnel underneath the straight from Kyushu to Honshu. A really lovely way to spend a day, which I did in March of 2026.

Posted in Chugoku, Japan, Kyushu, Okayama, Photography, Sacred Site, Travel, Yamaguchi | 6 Comments »

Kochi Shipyard

2026/08/12 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Almost 15 years passed between my first abandoned shipyard in Japan and the second one. That’s a really long time, considering that Japan is an island nation with a huge shipbuilding industry! And those places couldn’t have been more different…

My first solo trip to Kyushu is one I have very fond memories of as it included an exploration of the *Kawaminami Shipyard* as well as a day trip to *Ikeshima*, virtually unknown back then. Now the management of every overseas urbex tourist is sending their “L@@K what I found BY CHANCE” clients there as it is one of the low hanging fruits; you know, like *Kinugawa Onsen* and *Kejonuma Leisure Land* (those photos are from 2014, a few years before it became a tourist attraction…) The Kawaminami Shipyard was a really interesting exploration, despite being one of the more touristy urbex spots of its time. Mainly because it was used to build kaiten during World War 2 – basically the underwater version of kamikaze bombers; one-man suicide torpedoes.

No such reports about the Kochi Shipyard, which dates back to the year 1900. Commercial shipbuilding and repair only. And while the Kawaminami Shipyard went bankrupt for good in 1955, the Kochi Shipyard stopped all activities in spring of 1961 – only to be re-founded in summer of 1961 after being restructured by a company from Kobe. 25 years later, in September 1986, the shipyard closed for good. After about 20 years of decay the staff accommodations were demolished in 2013, followed by most of the factory site in 2018. In spring of 2024 yours truly showed up finally have a look; fashionably later, but better than never…
At first sight, the Kochi Shipyard looked like a dystopian nightmare. The former administrative building was 110 meters long, four storeys high (plus signage on the roof!), and just massive; like an outbuilding of the Ministry of Love from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Including some smaller building attached, the whole thing stretched to about 200 meters in total with only a few access points, all featuring the usual “Do not enter!” signs. Not to mention the concrete wall and the included massive metal floodgates. Part of me was really excited about the look of the place, part of me was devastated that it turned out to be an impregnable fortress.
10 minutes before my bus was scheduled to leave, I decided to have a quick look at the waterfront and maybe get a quick shot of the back of the building, despite the large fence. Towards the end of it, the road leading there was elevated to get over another one of those concrete walls with floodgates… and there it was: A hole in the fence, below street level and therefore out of sight of the main road. All the time I spent on the outskirts of the shipyard, being frustrated that there was no way in – and there it was, the way in! There also was a bit of activity on some of the boats, including a small yacht, so I was hesitant at first, but… it had been a really long time since I’ve explored an abandoned shipyard – and who knows if I would ever get an opportunity again, so I squeezed myself through the hole and past the thorny scrubs.
First I took a few quick shots of the waterfront, but then I quickly went a little bit further inland, away from the boats and the road – towards the main building, which looked a lot less threatening from the back, which probably actually was the front. Unfortunately it was completely locked and untouched by both vandals and metal thieves, so I guess all the signs on the other side fulfilled their purpose. Large abandoned industrial sites like that are rare in Japan, so I progressed slowly and carefully… and finally made it to some kind of large metal workshop, loose parts squeaking in the wind – a constant reminder to be extra careful. It was a windy day, so the sky constantly changed between sunny, cloudy, and light rain. Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful solo exploration. A picture says more than a thousand words, so instead of dragging this out, I’ll leave you to almost 40k words worth of photos. Please enjoy! (And check out the links at the beginning for more seafaring explorations!)

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Factory, Haikyo, Japan, Kochi, Photography, Shipyard, Travel, Urbex | 10 Comments »

Forest Playground

2026/07/22 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Most neighbourhood playgrounds / parks in Japan are a disgrace! Some compacted dirt ground, possibly a small patch of gras, with good fortune a tree or two, maybe a swing and a climbing frame – on the compacted ground, not the gras! In most of Europe they would probably be considered a health hazard and closed for good. Of course there are plenty of good ones, too, usually as part of rest stops or sightseeing spots. But the vast majority of them are shite and not even worth going to for reading a book! Once a fee is charged, they can be downright spectacular though!

The Forest Playground was part of the latter category, though I’m not sure if it was a direct or an indirect fee. I had seen the park on social media once or twice and thought it looked interesting, so whenever I randomly looked at GoogleMaps, I kept looking for what could be an abandoned outdoor playground on a forested slope. The thing is: Japan is a large country that mostly consists of forested slopes. The needle in a haystack comparison is a joke when put next to my chances of finding that playground! But… abandoned places in Japan seem to have the wonderful ability to find me, so after a few sessions on GoogleMaps a small miracle happened and I spotted what looked like a large playground on a forested slope. It was in the outskirts of a resort consisting of a hotel, a dozen holiday houses of various sizes for rent, an indoor sports center, a gateball hall, an athletic field, some tennis courts, a town hall, and three museums – all tied together by a large park. And the best of all: It was in day trip range!
The road leading up to the parking lot of the Forest Playground was blocked off by one of those accordion gates, a really low one, but there was plenty of parking in the vicinity. And most of the playground parking lot was actually covered with tree debris – looked like somebody was cleaning up the surrounding and probably stopped due to Covid. The whole thing was actually much larger than expected (since I’ve only seen a few photos of one small area), so we spent more than 3 hours exploring and documenting the place.
Next stop after the parking lot was the lower playground – a really nice, rather big playground at the bottom of the forested slope. From there were followed a nice path up to the goal of the Adventure Coaster… which wasn’t a (roller) coaster at all, but a dry toboggan run – or Sommerrodelbahn, as we say in German, a summer luge track. Right next to it: A small cable car for those too lazy to walk up the slope to the mountaintop area. Well, mountaintop… The height difference was maybe 60 meters. And we didn’t have a choice anyway, for obvious reasons. So we continued to follow the regular path, sometimes cobbled, sometimes asphalted. Next stop was the event square or rather event area, because nothing there was square – the area was actually a really nice and rather flowy brutalist outdoor… place, apparently for events, and with a nice view down into the “valley”. I love structures like that, so I very much enjoyed that part, despite the brutal humidity and rising heat of an overcast early summer / late rainy season day. Then we finally reached the mountaintop area with the start of the toboggan run, the upper cable car station, a rest house selling snacks at ridiculously low prices by today’s standards (softcream for 200 Yen, kakigori for 300 Yen, chicken pilaf for 400 Yen). Looks like the park was opened in the early 1990s and closed in 2003 – almost 20 years before I took some photos there. Well… some. I actually liked the place so much and it is that rare that I decided to publish a gallery consisting of 75 photos. By far the largest ever in Abandoned Kansai history – but history has shown that nobody cares about second parts and hardly anybody cares about revisits, so I can as well publish them all at once. Which brings us to the final part: The descent along the gigantic climbing contraption on the slope. Hardly ever was I that heartbroken to see something abandoned, because that thing was a work of art! As a kid I would have gone crazy, but even as an adult and despite its condition after 20 years without maintenance, I tremendously enjoyed the careful descent back to the entrance area.
The Forest Playground is without the shadow of a doubt one of my all-time favorite locations. Rare, unique, natural decay, great company, outdoors. It doesn’t get much better than that. Basically the *Viewpoint Playground* on steroids… but in a good way! 🙂

Posted in Abandoned, Chugoku, Haikyo, Japan, Okayama, Photography, Roadside Attraction, Travel, Urbex | 10 Comments »

Upside Down House

2026/07/15 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Let’s do a quick one this time since the last article apparently interested nobody… The number of comments has gone down significantly over the years. Blogs are a dying medium – but 0? That’s rare.
Well, whatever…
The Upside Down House, some strange structure welded onto a truck. Not sure if it was ever moved. Not with the staircase on the side, that’s for sure. The earliest StreetView is from 2013 and it was already abandoned back then. Quirky little thing. Enjoy.

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, House, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex | 20 Comments »

Ghibli Ryokan

2026/07/01 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

There is probably no cheaper and more desperate cry for attention than slapping the Ghibli label onto something – and yet there have only been a few abandoned places I’ve been to that deserve this label more! 🙂

It was on a cold autumn morning when I found myself deep in the mountains of Shimane after a 5 hour long drive that started in the middle of night. If you would have told me that I was the first Caucasian to ever come through this little town, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I probably also was the second one when I came back almost 10 years later. Strangely enough those are the places where I feel comfortable the most. After almost 20 years in the big city I loathe places like Tokyo and Osucka more than ever, though that feeling caught me pretty quickly after moving to Japan. Unfortunately that’s where the jobs are, especially for foreigners, so the countryside as a place to live will have to wait until retirement… For now rural Japan is for the weekends – and by God, this was as rural as it gets. I actually had no idea where I was exactly until I paid attention to road signs on the way back since a friend was driving, but I was excited to be far away from grey skyscrapers and miserable suit wearers – and a bit disappointed when my friend pointed towards the rundown ryokan behind as. Apparently this was the main attraction of the day. Really? We must have passed about half a million abandoned places in those 5 hours. Did we really have to continue through the night to this one? Well, as it turned out, yes, we really did!
One thing I learned rather early on at the *Deathtrap Hotel* was that you never ever enter an abandoned building on a higher floor – you enter as low as possible, because otherwise you never know what’s underneath your feet. Much like the Deathtrap Hotel, the Ghibli Ryokan was built onto a slope – and my friend headed straight to the top for an easy entrance away from the “main street”. Well, his decisiveness implied that he knew that he was doing – and he learned it the hard way, as I found out later while exploring the building. At first we took pictures of the upper part, but when we made our way down, he told me: “If you want to go to the kitchen there on the lower floor, don’t take the small wooden stairs – go left and then right, and take the staircase that the guests used! The wooden stairs are not good anymore…” “How do you know?” “I crashed through them when I came here first. This is my third visit.” Well, there you have it…
The building itself, despite being pretty rundown, was just awesome to explore, because it wasn’t one of those generic hotels with a main hallway and rooms to the left and the right. It looked like it was expanded at least once, maybe two or three times, and you never knew what to expect behind the next corner… and there were plenty of corners! Probably more corners than rooms. One of which was the home to a large butsudan, a Buddhist altar usually found in private homes. Thinking of it, this might actually have been the private area of the ryokan owner… In any case, it was spectacular, and I’ve never seen anything like it before or after! Also really cool: The lobby and the bar of the ryokan, both Showa AF! Urbex at its best – time travel via natural decay. Well worth driving 5 hours there… and then back again.

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Showa, Travel, Urbex | 2 Comments »

Kinugawa Onsen

2026/06/10 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Kinugawa Onsen is not abandoned. Kinugawa Onsen is also not a ghost town, despite what clickbaiters are trying to make you believe! Fact of the matter is: Kinugawa Onsen is one of the busiest onsen towns in all of Japan, attracting more than 2 million visitors per year!

Believe me, I get it. Kinugawa Onsen has a lot of abandoned buildings, quite a few of them prominently along the banks of the river Kinu (or kinugawa in Japanese, hence the name). But despite what urbex tourists from both overseas AND Japan want to make you believe: The town is far from being abandoned! Quite the opposite, it’s actually one of the most successful onsen in Japan – just not among foreign tourists, despite being only a short train ride on the Tobu line away from UNESCO World Heritage site Nikko, which is usually swamped with white tourists. But Nikko is often done as a day trip from Tokyo, so why venture even further into the countryside, away from the perceived safety of the Shinkansen lifeline?
Anyway, Kinugawa, plenty of large abandoned hotels – yeah, but mostly in the very northern part, around Kinugawakoen Station. The Takimi Bridge, a suspension bridge offering stunning views, and the surrounding area is where probably 90% of the abandonment photos are taken, because it’s such a low hanging fruit where every dummy with a smartphone can take decent ghost town photos and bait some clicks on social media. The next bridge just 500 meters down the river, Kurogane Bridge, already marks the border between closed Kinugawa Onsen and bustling Kinugawa Onsen – looking north, most buildings on the right side are abandoned, but most buildings on the left side are still in business! Looking south you almost exclusively see large modern hotels along the river. A view most “explorers” leave out, because it doesn’t fit their narrative. From here it’s 400 meters to the Fureai Bridge with the Demon Steps and about a kilometer to Kinugawa Onsen Station – and if you stay within that kilometer radius of Kinugawa Onsen Station, the town looks basically like any other successful onsen place. Sure, there are some signs of struggle, Japan has a tendency to abandoned the old in plain sight just to line up for the new right next to it, but it’s far from the horrible wasteland social media clickbait wants to make you believe.
If you want to be an urbex tourist yourself, no matter whether you have 1 follower or 1 million followers, by all means, go to Kinugawa Onsen and take the same photos as everybody else from the Takimi Bridge – but please, spend the night in town and tell the whole story. First hot spring found in 1691, at first exclusively for feudal lords and Buddhist monks, from the late 19th century on (after the Meiji Restauration) open to the general public. Increase of popularity after the 1920s, when the area was connected to Tokyo by rail. Extreme boom during the bubble era in the 1980s (more than 3 million visitors per year), steep decline after the bubble burst (hence the abandonment in the north, where there were only hotels and not much else, while the area around Kinugawa Onsen Station had all kinds of attractions and entertainment) – now consistently more than 2 million visitors per year, making Kinugawa Onsen one of the biggest and most successful onsen towns in Japan.
All the photos in the gallery below have been taken from public ground. Abandoned places, especially hotels, can be found without looking for them, but I advise you against entering them for several more than obvious reasons. In addition, the town seems to be aware of its reputation, and I’ve seen several police cars casually roaming the streets. “But none of your photos have people on them. Kinugawa Onsen is not so busy after all, eh?” Yeah, there are no people on, because I went there on a Sunday afternoon when most of the Tokyoites that came for the weekend were already on their way back to the big bad city. In addition to that there was a steam locomotive about to leave, so the Kinugawa Onsen Station area was super busy – and I didn’t take any photos there, because Japan has extremely strict privacy laws I just don’t want to deal with. It’s also the reason why I waited several minutes to take photos at the Demon Steps, because I just don’t take pictures with people on if I can avoid it.

Oh, but if you are interested in other urbex places for tourists, *please give this Special a chance by clicking here*.

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Restaurant, Spa / Onsen, Tochigi, Travel, Urbex | 1 Comment »

Non-Urbex: ALFA-X (Class E956, Experimental Shinkansen)

2026/05/30 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Usually I don’t post current photos, because… well… there is no urgency to urbex and my kind of photos actually age rather well, because… well… they don’t actually age, while the locations keep on doing so.
Today I was sitting in a Shinkansen waiting to continue my travels (spring exploration season is basically over, it’s already hot and humid in parts of Japan!), when all of a sudden a gray Shinkansen pulled up next to us. Its destination? Test Run. Now that’s unusual… Half asleep I grabbed my camera and took a photo without paying attention to the settings – so of course it turned out to be way too dark. (In moments like this I wish I’d had a smartphone and let that damn thing do all the work…) That’s when the realization kicked in that this might be a really rare sighting, so I got off the Shinkansen I was on, not knowing when it or the gray one would leave, to take some more photos – and I once again was made aware why I like taking pictures of abandoned places so much: no time pressure, no movement, plenty of opportunity to check the results before moving on. Of course I had none of these luxuries in this situation, because both trains were about to leave and neither would wait for me. So my apologies that the results are not exactly great. Most photos are too dark and/or blurry, either because I was moving or because the gray Shinkansen was…
BUT… It turns out that the photos are worth publishing anyway, because afterwards I learned from the almighty Google that the model ALFA-X ” is a one-of-a-kind prototype and is virtually impossible for the general public to ever see” “Catching a glimpse of the ALFA-X is considered a major highlight for railfans. It serves as the physical test-bed for Japan’s future high-speed fleet (expected to debut commercially around 2030).” ” It is not part of any passenger or commercial schedule. It only runs trial test runs on select nights or early mornings, usually once or twice a week.”
I guess I was really lucky, because I saw it neither at night nor early in the morning. According to the photo time stamps, it took about four minutes for ALFA-X to stop and leave. When I took the photos I had no idea what I had in front of me, but some of the greatest moments in life are in hindsight, so I am glad I took those pictures – and I hope you’ll enjoy them, too, especially if you are a railfan / gunzel / densha otaku / trainspotter!

Posted in Asia, Japan, Non-Urbex, Photography, Transportation, Travel | 1 Comment »

Minami Royal Country Club

2026/05/21 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Just a short one this week, because I am super busy…

The Minami Royal Country Club was established in 1998 with 18 holes as a par 72 course with a rating of 68.1 (whatever that means…) – apparently it was designed by William Edgar “Bill / Billy” Dunk, an Australian golfer who won more than 100 tournaments, including two on the Japan Golf Tour. The course fees were as follows:
Weekday price: 9,580 Yen
Holiday price: 18,190 Yen
Weekday caddie price: 13,550 Yen
Holiday caddie price: 19,450 Yen
As you can see on the few photos – we came too late, which is what usually happens when it’s about abandoned country clubs in Japan. You are either too early and the place doesn’t look abandoned / isn’t accessible… or you are too late and all you find is a solar park. But it was late in the day anyway and we saw a promising nagashi somen restaurant on the way (which turned out to be wonderful!), so in the end it was still worth driving halfway up a mountain in the Gifu countryside… 🙂
This article? Not nearly as good as the nagashi somen! I am aware of that. But the previous location was pretty spectacular, and you can rest assure that I have still dozens more on my pile of unpublished places. So the next one will be better at worst and spectacular at best! *And if you click here, you will be linked to a much better abandoned country club you might have missed when I originally posted it!*

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Sports, Travel, Visited in 2017 | 1 Comment »

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	Emily on Shin-Hakodate Golf Club
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	Stealthflower on Pyramid Park
	alculprit on Pyramid Park
	alculprit on Pyramid Park
	Emily on Pyramid Park
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	Florian / Abandoned… on Miyamoto Musashi: Miyamoto, Ok…

Abandoned Kansai

All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum – and many, many more! Plus: North Korea Special – 2 trips, 16 days / 14 nights! As seen on CNN…

Shin-Hakodate Golf Club

Pyramid Park

Miyamoto Musashi: Miyamoto, Okayama / Ganryu-jima

Kochi Shipyard

Forest Playground

Upside Down House

Ghibli Ryokan

Kinugawa Onsen

Non-Urbex: ALFA-X (Class E956, Experimental Shinkansen)

Minami Royal Country Club

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