When visiting the Mt. Atago Cable Car you should have a look at the Atago Hotel, too – there’s not much left, but after climbing about 640 meters 20 more won’t kill you.
The Atago Hotel was opened on 1930-07-20, shortly after the cable car, and closed down together with it in 1944. Like the top station of the cable car the Atago Hotel is nothing more but a bunch of walls, just in a slightly better condition – but without floors. It seems like the hotel, located at a slope, was built with the entrance at the ground floor and an “open basement”. The ground level is almost completely gone whereas the walls of the basement are still there, or at least some of them are; including openings for windows and doors. If you get to the hotel from the southern side and on a lower level the remaining walls look very massive, almost like an ancient Japanese castle.
Overall the place is quite unspectacular and only worth going there since the cable car station is so close-by. At one side of the hill is kind of a dump with lots of old cans, cups and plates. I’m not sure if everything there is from the time when the hotel was still open or if later visitors left their garbage there, but it’s nevertheless interesting and offers quite a few items worth taking pictures of – if you are into that kind of stuff.
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