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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*.

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Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Restaurant, Spa / Onsen, Tochigi, Travel, Urbex | Leave a 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!

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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!*

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

Konami Sports Club Kansai

2026/04/29 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

I still remember very well when I first heard about this spa/gym being closed about 12 years ago. My first thought was: This will be a great abandoned place one day! My second thought was: Konami will never allow that to happen! I guess I was wrong… and right… within seconds. It’s actually a pretty spectacular abandoned place now – and one of the worst at the same time!

I’m sure most of my audience knows Konami as a great developer of video and arcade games in the 1980s and 90s, to some extent in the 2000s and past that, too. Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, Silent Hill, Contra, Dance Dance Revolution, classics like Gradius and Frogger. When Konami developed the Diet Mode for Dance Dance Revolution, they partnered with a company called People, which itself was a subsidiary of Nichii, later renamed to Mycal, before finally bought and absorbed by Aeon. People ran gyms and other fitness facilities, some as designated operator for a few municipalities all over the country. In 2001 Mycal sold People to Konami (or rather the subsidiary Konami Sports) and their fitness clubs were rebranded to Konami Sports Club. When Aeon took over Mycal in 2009, the Konami Sports Clubs in Aeon malls became Aeon Sports Clubs – for reasons I still don’t fully understand, but as you can see, the whole situation is rather complicated, both regarding the facilities and the corporate structures.
I actually was a member of Konami Sports Club for about 5 or 6 years from 2007 on – and mine was basically a gym with two studios for classes and a large indoor pool for laps. So when I first heard about this soon to be closed gigantic fitness club with more than half a dozen studios and a spa area, I couldn’t believe that it actually was a Konami Sports Club; now that I’ve done all this research, I assume it’s one of those rather fancy People locations Konami took over in 2001.
Anyway, the Konami Sports Club Kansai was closed in August 2014 and at first I was eager to have look, but given that the chain was still active and that Konami was involved, I was convinced that the building would either be used in a different way or torn down. Initially I thought about it once in a while, but then I simply forgot about it…
Until 6 weeks ago or so. In March a bunch of urbex tourists from overseas with a huuuge following across all kinds of social media accounts (several with +500k followers each on Facebook alone!) published a dozen or so photo sets and videos of their tour through Japan. Now, I never hid my disgust for those locusts ever since the *Nara Dreamland* days and it only got worse since one of them dragged the *Billionaire’s Mansions* from their cozy shadowy place into the spotlight right before the pandemic hit – I wrote an article *about them being vandalized* in 2023, but the situation has gotten so much worse since then. They are basically a pile of trash now. I’m not saying that those urbex tourists vandalized these places, but the Japanese urbex scene is rather small and secretive, so when some money driven, management organized, international self-promoters with millions of followers draw that many eyes on a location, including locals of course, it’s only natural that it gets a lot more visitors all of a sudden. Despite the rumors, some Japanese people actually understand English – and even worse: While those urbex tourists are all high and mighty about not revealing places while in their home countries, they apparently couldn’t care less when in Japan. “Sorry, we don’t reveal location names!” Dude, you have the logo with the name of the place on two or three of your photos! There are stores visible in the background! Yes, YOU can’t read Japanese and YOU are too lazy to run your photos through basic Google functions, but there are about 127 million people who can speak Japanese and potentially billions who are familiar with the internet, especially now in the days of smartphones and AI… FFS!
Anyway, one of the locations the urbex tourists presented was a really cool gym/spa facility. They didn’t reveal the name on pictures in this case, but the building looked strangely familiar and there were big company logos visible in the background. I started to google one and their locations, when it hit me suddenly: That Konami Sports Club! This could be the Konami Sports Club from back in 2014! 30 seconds later I had the location confirmed and an urgent exploration scheduled. Why did those morons not reveal the name of this place? Because it closed in August 2014 and by March 2015 Konami had the branding removed from the building! I’m not sure who owns the building now, but of course a company like Konami didn’t risk to be associated with a large abandoned fitness club. The tourists probably didn’t even know that it was a Konami Sports Club, because as it turned out, the facility was basically empty. All the training machines were gone, all the equipment was gone. The star was the building, which I am totally fine with. The location should always be the star of urbex… and if only the building is left, so be it. Unfortunately the building wasn’t just empty, it already had been vandalized, most likely by metal thieves and bored local youth. Japan is in steady decline, vandalism and graffiti become more common by the month. With the vandalism came the water and with the water came the mold. As cool as some of the photos of this set look, it was a really nasty, uncomfortable exploration, especially since I went in the afternoon on an overcast and slightly rainy day – and I’m glad that I didn’t wait till August… Not much else to say about this solo exploration though. Empty, spectacular building, nasty conditions. I wish I would have not forgotten about the place and gone there right after the metal thieves swept in, probably sometime during the pandemic or just after Japan opened the floodgates.
Oh, and in case you wonder why I’m rather open with pictures and information about this place now: Last weekend, about 4 weeks after my initial exploration of the Konami Sports Club Kansai, I went back with an old urbex buddy for a quick look to show him around. Turns out that the place had gotten a lot worse in the month that had passed. We could smell the mould and decay from the street as there were more windows broken. There was more graffiti everywhere, there was a lot more vandalism – and as a result whole areas were flooded. Only a few centimeters, but it’s not the kind of water that you want to be exposed to or even touch. I guess I wasn’t the only person after all who recognized the place based on a bunch of shitty flash photos taken with mobile phones. (I don’t know a single even somewhat serious explorer in Japan who doesn’t use a proper camera…) So why wait with an article? I don’t reveal much of the surrounding area, the full real name or even a pin on a map… If you are good enough to find the place based on my article and you really want to go: Be my guest! Enjoy your lung full of black mould air and shoe full of still water…

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Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Sports, Travel, Urbex | 5 Comments »

Black Mirror Hotel

2026/04/15 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

9 years ago I did an amazing Hokkaido road trip with one of my best buddies. We explored some spectacular famous locations (*Glückskönigreich*), we explored some spectacular not so famous locations (*Hokkaido Ski-Jumping Hill*), and we explored some completely obscure locations where a single photo made the place spectacular – like the Black Mirror Hotel!

The Black Mirror Hotel was actually a rather small, completely trashed, run-of-the-mill abandoned hotel in the outskirts of a large city in Hokkaido, 4 kilometers away from the next train station, no bus stop nearby. It is absolutely beyond me why anybody would build accommodation like that… or why anybody would stay there. Upon entering I also wondered why anybody would explore the place, because at first sight it really was the worst kind of abandoned places there is, combining pretty much everything I dislike about urbex. But we made it all the way to central Hokkaido, so we could as well have a closer look. Trash, vandalism, mold. Misery within seconds. Towards the end of the trip or late in the afternoon instead of early in the morning, first location of the day actually, I probably would have left after a few minutes, but… again… we traveled all the way to central Hokkaido. On the ground floor I found one of those mechanical boxing toys – one of the figures looked like an in-shape version of the orange peril, who had just become president for the first time and was years away from bombing girls’ schools in Iran, so I had a giggle about that.
The upper floor also was in bad shape, though not as horrible as the ground floor. At one point I found myself in the door frame of a room and I thought it might be cool to take a photo of a TV in one of the corners… or rather alcove. Imagine the following setup: I was standing at 6, the TV was at 3, facing across to the room towards 8 – the upper half of the dial gone. I put my tripod on the ground, pointed the camera towards the TV, probably knee-high, took a photo, and then moved on. The shared baths weren’t anything special either, most rooms were trashed by vandals and/or metal thieves, so after a little over an hour we finally called it quits and moved on to the next location.
It wasn’t until a few days later back home, when I had a closer look at the photos I took on a larger monitor, that I realized that there was one special gem amongst the hundreds and hundreds of photos I took on that trip. This photo of a TV wasn’t just a photo of a TV – it was a perfect black mirror shot! On the screen of the TV you could see a reflection of the room with the tatami mats, cushions, a round lacquer box and several other items – everything extremely well-framed. It almost looked like as if the TV was running, but of course it was off. Till this very day I consider it one of my best photos, even though or maybe because there was so much luck involved. On a sunny day the room would have been too bright. On any height other than the lowest, the tripod would have been too tall. Any angle other than the one I pointed the camera at by chance would have changed what’s visible on the TV.

The Black Mirror Hotel was one of the worst locations I’ve ever explored – but it gave me one of the best photos I’ve ever taken!

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Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Travel, Visited in 2017 | 3 Comments »

Nara Dreamland By AI Is Exactly As Bad As It Sounds!

2026/04/13 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

AI slop just hit a new low! This ‘blogger’ talks about “Real abandoned places” in their profile on Facebook and then creates/publishes atrocious AI pictures of ‘Nara Dreamland’, even claims “I got through a gap in the perimeter fence alone before demolition began.”
You did jack, mate! You sat in your parents’ basement, farted towards your computer running some AI abomination – and it vomited some pictures for you that look nothing like Nara Dreamland…
Pages like that should be banned on all platforms! At least be honest about it and don’t lie! It’s not like there’s a lack of real Nara Dreamland pictures. By the time it got demolished, everybody and their dog has been there.
I tend to stay away from drama, especially urbex drama, both international and domestic, though a lot of things could be said about a lot of people – but this case is borderline stolen valor! What a terrible waste of electricity and oxygen…
Here you can find all my Nara Dreamland material. 100% real, 100% shot on DSLRs, 100% without any enhancing post-production:
https://abandonedkansai.com/special-nara-dreamland/

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Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Nara, Photography, Travel | 4 Comments »

Sakura Sports Park

2026/04/01 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

“Don’t go up to the right! It’s dangerous. There has been a bear sighting. If you want to continue here, stay low and to the left!” Wise advise from a senior citizen foraging spring herbs – the favorite food of bears after hibernation. I’m sure he knew what he was talking about, unfortunately left would have taken me away from what I suspected was an abandoned driving range halfway up a hill, so I mumbled an out of breath Arigato while huffing and puffing in my track like a tank from WWI.
Tohoku is the perfect place for some late season hanami urbex, and just a few days before I left for the big, bad, cold north I did a last quick check on GoogleMaps, when I accidentally turned left too early and desk explored a valley that I had deemed boring before. This time I stumbled across what looked like an abandoned driving range behind a large onsen just outside of a formerly famous hot spring town. Of course I changed my plans last minute to include this new original find to my itinerary, because only a few things in life are better than exploring previously unknown abandoned places. (Namely: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!)
Finally halfway up the hill I found myself in the “range” end of the driving range, took a few photos and made myself on my way to the “driving” part. The main end of the facility featured a rather large parking lot and a concrete structure reminiscent of a small sports stadium. This was a 2-storey driving range on steroids!
The exploration went rather smoothly overall, though the beginning was a bit unnerving, because the caretaker had their maintenance area decorated in a rather cozy way, so it kind of looked like somebody was living there, though hardly anybody had been there regularly for quite a while – and so it took my brain a while to figure out what was going on. I might be an experienced urban explorer, but sometimes my head goes into noob mode and is urging me to run home and play video games instead, like in the good old couch potatoe days. The driving range part was super cool and way less unnerving, so there’s not much to tell. Enjoy the photos to see what I saw…
Back at the parking lot I had the choice between backtracking (the safe choice, considering bears and the scarcity of buses in that part of Japan) and trying to find a way down the mountain along whatever path once lead up there. Since my noob brain part acted up earlier, my urbexer brain part went into punishment mode and looked for an entrance to the parking lot, which appeared to be surrounded by a forest. After a while though I found a road back down, completely covered by leaves from at least a decade or two. Steep, rather slippery, the occasional fallen blocking the way. By the time I reached the foot of the hill I was running out of time, so I took a few quick shots of the sports facilities there (including several tennis courts) before approaching the large onsen that I mentioned earlier, which was now between me and the main road with the bus stop. What if there was no way around? What if some onsen employees would spot me? What… was I doing worrying so much? So I packed my gear and tackled the situation, which could indeed have been a problem (THAT is why I was worrying so much!), but fortunately the gated road lead just past the onsen – and the gate was open with no onsen employees in sight. So off I went to enjoy the last fading cherry blossoms in a much more relaxing environment…

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Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Sports, Tohoku, Travel | 2 Comments »

Sakura Car Shop

2026/03/11 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

The main cherry blossom season is about to begin soon, two weeks earlier than last year, so I guess the timing is right to present the Sakura Car Shop, a small car repair shop and store somewhere in the Japanese countryside.

I’m not really a fan of beaten paths and prefer to create my own, in all aspects of life, including urban exploration. So instead of exploring the same locations over and over again with the same people, I rather go on day or weekend trips with friends who are technically not urbexers… and to locations that haven’t been photographed to death. Of course I don’t miss the famous ones if they are on the way, but I take an original find over places trampled to death by management guided tourist explorers at any time. That also means that I spend a ton of times on GoogleMaps and on the road, but well… it is what it is… You have to put in some time to hone your craft. The Sakura Car Shop was a lucky find when I zoomed into StreetView again after finding what I thought was an abandoned hotel near the coast. (It turned out to be a kokumin shukusha, affordable accommodations usually run by local government near scenic spots – which means that it was completely boarded up and probably still had electricity / alarms.) Since both places were in a gorgeous area of Japan, I didn’t mind a long walk on a sunny spring day and so I headed from said hotel to the car shop in the picture book perfect countryside.
The sales room, the office, and the private living area were inaccessible, so I took a few quick shots from the outside and the accessible repair area… and that’s pretty much it. In and out in less than 20 minutes. According to StreetView the shop was still in business in 2013, but already in bad condition in 2021. 8 years between StreetView updates – welcome to the Japanese countryside…

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Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Mie, Photography, Transportation, Travel | 4 Comments »

Mie Minshuku

2026/03/04 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Creaky old places can be fun to explore. Especially when they are so creaky, that even small people get scared… 🙂

Around the same time as I was exploring the *Green Plaza Akakura* with a few friends and strangers, two of those friends dragged me to a slope with a creek in Mie, to explore an old abandoned minshuku. It was built mainly using wood – and over the slope towards the creek. Even before entering I knew that this was a potential death trap, so I stayed behind and took photos through windows. Curiosity won after a while, but I made sure that I stayed near the entrance and in the hallway closest to the ground, where I couldn’t crash through the floor and fall a meter or two… or three. My friends of course were much braver (as they were much lighter) and so the creaky symphony at the Creek Inn started. At first it was strictly instrumental, but the further my friends ventured, the more often they “sang” by making short, high-pitched noises I used to make in the past at similar places. Much like the suzumebachi situation at the *Kyoto Ski Resort* with another explorer friend of mine, those things really depend on which foot the shoes is on…
Unfortunately I know nothing about this abandoned accommodation, before we arrived I didn’t even know it existed. A calendar on the wall was dated October, November, December 2004, but that doesn’t mean much. The place being abandoned for about 15 years sounds plausible, but it could as well have been 5 years or 25 years. The “for how long” guessing game is a really tough one in Japan. But at least I got somewhat equal with my friends that day. A rather refreshing role reversal. And a good reason to finally write about the Mie Minshuku. A two article story arc… 😉
Oh, and on the way home through the mountainous countryside we ran into a bunch of monkeys and quickly took some photos. I added them at the end of the gallery. One more aspect you have to consider when eyeing one of those cheap akiya – the area might be ruled by a group of primates…

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Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Mie, Photography, Travel | 4 Comments »

Kitakitsune Farm (Non-Urbex)

2026/02/17 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Despite their often more than questionable reputation, Japanese animal cafés. aquariums, zoos, and other animal parks are super popular – some of them have cartoonishly long lines that can rival those of branded theme parks. One of the most bizarre stories I’ve heard in recent years was when a high school classmate told me at a reunion that their daughter has been to Japan recently and that her favorite place was a capybara café in Tokyo, because, as we all know, nothing says Japan like large South American rodents that are hunted for their meat… I’m not really a fan of animal prisons (or animal ownership, for that matter – and if you unironically refer to yourself as the mommy of a fur baby, you don’t want to know what I refer to you… not to be mean, but to keep the terminology consistent!) and even after 20 years of living in Osaka I’ve never made it to the local and super famous aquarium, let alone any of those animal cafés, but during an urbex trip in late 2018 I basically passed by one of the more unusual and “off the beaten path” parks that is actually rather mainstream by now – the Zao Fox Village near Sendai. So I had a look. *And you can read all about it here.*
Three years later, during the best time to “explore” Japan (Covid…) I spent a spectacular week in Hokkaido. On route from Abashiri (to see the drift ice and the prison museum) to Asahikawa I made a stop in Kitami (for the mint museum – not coins, peppermint!) and took a bus from there with an overnight stop in Sounkyo Onsen, which held its annual ice waterfall festival, despite being mostly shut down at the time. The bus ran 3 or 4 times per day back then, so I decided to get off and on again in Onneyu Onsen to check out the local Michi no Eki, the freshwater aquarium and the Kitakitsune Farm.
Like I said, I usually avoid animal prisons, so I’m in no way qualified to judge how good or bad the Kitakitsune Farm is run. To me the foxes looked healthy and peaceful. But in comparison to my visit at the Zao Fox Village the weather was sunnier, it was colder outside, the ground was snow covered, I was there earlier in the day, the variety of foxes was much lower (1 VS 6), there was a lot less fighting among the foxes (none that I can remember half a decade later…). I spent an hour there and had a good time. Nothing I would travel to Hokkaido for, but it was a nice way to break up the day, considering that there were also other things to do in Onneyu Onsen. On GoogleMaps the Kitakitsune Farm has a rating of 3.9 after almost 2000 reviews, the Zao Fox Village is at 3.8 after more than 7000 reviews – predominantly in English… 500 Yen and open every day (Farm) VS 1500 Yen and closed on Wednesdays (Village) are important differences though you might want to keep in mind, As for the photo gallery – most of the pictures were, of course, taken at the Kitakitsune Farm, but I also added some bonus snapshots of the other locations I mentioned in this article. The next one will be all urbex again… and following few most likely, too. (That being said: My favorite animal place in Japan is still Barbacoa. Just kidding! It’s the *poison gas / rabbit island Okunoshima*. 🙂 )

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Posted in Animals, Asia, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Snow, Travel | 1 Comment »

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