I recently stumbled across Sekigahara Menard Land again after seeing pictures a while ago; it opened in 1972 and was closed in 2000 – at first under the pretext of renovating it; 3 months later it was closed for good. This time the pictures came with a map, so finally I had the exact location and although I’ve read it was destroyed I thought: “Great! 2 hour train ride, 1 hour hike – nice and easy Saturday trip!” Man, was I wrong…
Living in the Osaka area snow becomes little more than a memory. It snows on maybe two or three days a year, but it hardly ever sticks to the ground. 5° Celsius is considered “really cold” by the locals and overall Osaka winters don’t deserve to be called winters.
When I started my little Gifu vacation it was about 10° Celsius and sunny outside, perfect for the usual T-shirt and leather jacket combination. Reaching Lake Biwa the sky became cloudy and when I started to head east patches of snow were lying on the ground. When I arrived in Sekigahara I was welcomed by the iciest snow storm I experienced in years – horrible weather. After about an hour of walking along country streets I finally reached Menard Land, freezing like hardly ever before…
Entering was as easy as it can be, if you ignore the fact that the snow was about 20cm high even right along the street leading to SML; I was never that glad to wear hiking boots on my explorations. The few remaining fences can be passed on the side, but there was not a lot to see – except for lots and lots of snow. The entrance was quite disappointing, even the buildings I saw on the satellite pictures were gone. I followed a former maintenance road / hall and a way uphill to the right where I assumed was the main part of the park. That turned out to be a dead end: After I sank about 50cm into deep snow several times I gave up since I had no clue what was under the snow, if the way I assumed underneath would lead somewhere, and what was left of SML anways – especially after the entrance was very discouraging.
3 hours to get there, 10 minutes of taking pictures… great.
But it got worse. Completely wet from the snowstorm (it came down almost horizontally!) and sinking knee-deep into the snow I decided to go to another station just so I didn’t have to walk the same way back – not a smart decision since that other station was further away and made me walk along a highway. When I reached the other station more than 1.5 hours later my umbrella was destroyed, I was soaking wet and my hands were stiff from the ice cold wind. Of course the waiting room at the station was closed so I had to wait another 25 minutes in the chilly weather for the train to come. And it was no surprise that only 2 stations later the sun was shining and the weather was great…
Hiking in the snow was kinda fun, except for the fact that I wasn’t prepared for it at all. But overall the whole trip was a total disaster – especially in winter Sekigahara Menard Land is a total dud! (I might come back in summer though to find out if there is still something left behind the little hill that was covered by half a meter of snow… maybe with a quick sightseeing stop in Hikone.)
Oh, and by the way: Technically this haikyo is in the Chūbu area of Japan, but from Osaka it’s way easier to reach than certain places in Wakayama or the northern parts of Hyogo and Kyoto prefectures…
Addendum: In spring of 2010 I went back to Sekigahara Menard Land – you can read about it here.)
It’s quite an achievement to go there with the usual Florian black t-shirt+leather combination… I would have frozen to death.
Nice pictures, F.
I was thinking of you when I was freezing my fingers off – and I was so glad you didn’t join me because I knew you would have hated it; and probably me!
Quite a brave excursion you did there. Menard is a cosmetics company, right? Unbelievable how all kinds of companies used to have theme parks some decades ago.
I stumbled across your blog because I have a thing for urban decay myself.
Actually I’d like to share some pictures I took at an obake yashiki in Koza, Okinawa. It was the most amazing ruined building I’ve seen in Japan 😉
Check out my flickr site – the first picture is from another place in Kagoshima which was used as a site for an art project, so the inside of the building rather reassembled than demolished.
Yeah, Menard is a cosmetics company and I can just praise the Japanese humor again as the mascot of the park seemed to a rabbit; or a bunch of them…
Thanks for the link to the pictures. I haven’t seen the place(s) before anywhere on the net, but since Okinawa and Kyushu are quite far away I didn’t look into those areas a lot so far. Did you find them by chance on your own?
Oh, poor rabbits.
The place in Okinawa – friends took me there.
Also the building in Kagoshima, someone told me about it. Located at the based of Mt. Sakurajima it used to be a hotel but it was closed down because a rock from the vulcano crashed down on it. So both places I visited coincidentally, I wasn’t actually haikyo-ing.
How do you find your haikyo??
I find my haikyo by internet research. A lot of internet research – like dozens, maybe hundreds of hours. But at least it keeps me busy on those rainy weekends when I can’t go outside hiking / exploring. It’s just frustrating to research a place for hours, finally pin down its location and then find recently taken pictures that show proof that the location was demolished a while ago. But I guess that’s part of the hobby…
Man, I went to Menard a couple of years ago and was disappointed too.
I posted my pics on the urban exploration resource site, probably gone by the time you searched on the internet though.
I couldn’t find your Menard pictures on UER, but if you are MCP from some other postings then you’ll be sad to hear that many places changed their appearance since you went there: The Shime Mine is now surrounded by a park, the Kappa Pia amusement park in Gunma is demolished and the Koga Family Land is gone with the exception of two buildings.