Well, kind of. Sort of. It had to happen sooner or later, but finally I got caught by a pitbull like person during one of my explorations.
First of all I have to say: It was my own fault. You always risk getting caught by somebody when doing urban exploration as it is technically trespassing. (I guess…)
But most places are far from civilization and closed for monetary reasons, so nobody really cares – only a few owners hire security and that’s when it gets risky.
I enjoy urban exploration because I like old things and photography. I’ve studied history and I take pictures to keep the memory about those places alive. I don’t destroy things and I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings or property. I just come, take pictures and go – and publish the photos on the internet so other people can enjoy those places, too. If somebody doesn’t like that then just tell me, I delete the memory card of my camera and go home. No problem. I’m not a troublemaker.
Recently (well, very recently…) I went on a haikyo trip and while I was taking pictures minding my own business a guy in a white minitruck almost ran over me. I ignored him making my way towards where I entered (trying to avoid trouble…), but of course he jumped out his car and ran after me. He yelled at me in a strange mix of Japanese and English: What I was doing here, that this was his place and that I should be quiet – and of course he threatened to call the police, like, in every second sentence. Totally puzzled I tried to calm the guy down, but he got right into my face yelling like a mad man. He didn’t get violent, but he clearly was in a big rage. He asked me where I was getting in – I told him that I would show him and slowly went to direction I came in, away from his car, but he stopped me.
He demanded my camera. I didn’t give it to him. Then he wanted my memory card. I didn’t give it to him either, but I apologized (several times at different points in the “conversation”…) and offered to switch the camera to Japanese so he can see that I will delete the pictures. (Which I gladly did since I wasn’t there alone and actually took pictures of a friend – who, to my joy, escaped and with him the pictures he took.) But to my surprise neither the apologies nor deleting the pictures did calm him down. He still wanted my name (surprise, I didn’t tell him), threatened to call the police and demanded that I would go with him in his car. At that point he turned his back to me walking a few steps towards his car – and I ran. I ran like I was never running before in my life. Then I jumped over the next fence (since he was in a car…) to a public street and got away without looking back once.
Like I stated earlier: I shouldn’t have gone to the place I went to and there is no discussion about that. But there are several ways to handle things. One is to be calm and talk to each other like civilized people – or you can go ballistic, yell, threat and treat the other person like shit… Too bad Japan took over two things from Prussia without changing them in 150 years: Medicine and the way to deal with people – to crawl the bigwigs and to bully the underlings. And it seems like trespassing foreigners are kind of the definition of “underlings”…
(BTW: Did you know that “doctor” and “butcher” are the same word in Japanese? Okay… that’s not true, but it could be! Should be…)
Addendum 2010-02-07: Now that I think about it… I actually ran into security twice before. Once at the already posted Koga Family Land, another time at the Osaka Expoland. But I never felt “busted” or even unpleasant, most likely because on both occations there was no yelling or threatening involved. The guy at KFL was nice and I left “his” property according to his wishes to find another way to get to my goal. The other guard I met was actually super nice – and he had every opportunity to not let me leave. I guess overall Japanese security people are not that bad. Nice guys: 2, Pitbulls: 1…
I Busted My (Haikyo) Cherry…
2010/02/06 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai
“Violence is fools’ reasoning.”
You are the first one to admit that you shouldn’t be there in the first place. However, being a witness (behind the bushes) of what happened, I totally believe the “kanri” over-reacted. Not only because his threatening of calling the police… but also because the way he was yelling at you.
Either he is totally sick of people entering there for doing their own photo-tours or they got some other serious problems (people stealing stuff from them for instance).
Well, whatever reason he had to be that aggressive… he really reminded me of the supermarket owner in Capcom’s Dead Rising. THIS IS *MY* PLACE!!!
He obviously takes his job very seriously! Glad you got away though! (^-^)
He sure does! Like I said, Nara Dreamland is tricky – is a place with security really abandoned? Or just closed?
i don’t think you’re ‘minding your own business’ if you’re trespassing private property….that’s like a thief minding their own business in your bedroom…but that’s just my opinion… 😛 but great photos!
Well, I think there’s a huge difference between taking photos at an amusement park nobody seems to care about (one security guard hardly qualifies as caring…) and getting into somebody’s bedroom. But I see your point. My explorations of Nara Dreamland were never pleasant because for me it’s not really abandoned. Luckily most urbex locations in Japan really are abandoned, while many others in the west have much tighter security. Furthermore the article is more than two years old, it was one of my first 20 explorations. Today I probably won’t write an article like that anymore…