I felt a bit like John Rambo at the beginning of First Blood when I was walking through the mountainous countryside of Shiga prefecture, kilometers away from the next train station or bus stop. But only in that way that I was completely out of place, expecting some xenophobic misanthropic cop to pick me up and drive me to the city limits (where another xenophobic misanthropic cop would pick me up to bring me to the other end of the city limits, where… this repeats until I would have been back to Osaka) – luckily the only police car I saw ignored me…
This April day started with an uncomfortable decision: Being halfway through a cold with general weariness and a serious cough I felt a little bit under the weather, I had no plans for weekend and my haikyo buddy was busy – on the other hand I just spent 5 days in an artifically lit office and this was the last sunny day before another period of rain. The choice was between staying at home and watching a sunny day passing by or going for a haikyo all by myself (which I enjoy less and less since I’m more and more aware of the dangers involved) or going on a hike – which I did the weekend before.
I decided to do a hybrid of the last two options. A while ago I marked a spot on my very personal haikyo map that I labeled “Taga Mine”. The problem with that was, that the name given by the (online) map creators was completely different and that there was another Taga Mine that is still active till this very day (and usually only active mines are marked on online maps like GoogleMaps and Mapfan anyways). So in the end I was hoping for a nice hike to find out if the marked spot is the active or the abandoned Taga Mine; or if there was anything at all. The only hint I had about the abandoned Taga Mine was a Japanese video on Youtube, which could have been mislabelled – so my trip was a long shot.
A few minutes after I left the country road to walk up the mountain I found the T crossing where I should walk to the right. Sadly it turned out to be a dead end with heavy machinery. So I gave up hope finding the abandoned Taga Mine and continued to the left, expecting either to find an active mine or nothing at all, switching into hiking mode. After a while I found another T crossing and I continued to the right. I kept walking and I reached an unimposing forest road to the right again. I don’t know why, but I left the paved road and followed it for a while, dragging my coughing self up that mountain – you can’t imagine the joy I felt when I reached an open rusty gate in front of a stone pit!
The excitement calmed down quickly when all I found was a rusty shack and a concrete room at one side of the slope – was this really the Taga Mine or just something else? Getting closer I saw that there was a machine in the ground that was obviously used to crush the rocks from the stone pit. At that moment I heard some twigs cracking. Would there be security at a remote and long abandoned place like that? I coughed a bit louder than usual, but I got no response. Maybe a fellow haikyoist? Well, I minded my own business taking pictures and after I was finished I heard the cracking twigs again, so I went towards the direction where I assumed the sound was coming from – that’s when I found the main remains of the mine with a huge conveyor belt and several other buildings, built very closely to the steep slope. I heard some noises as if somebody was walking across corrugated iron and when I got closer and looked down I saw lots of it lying on the ground in front of the mine – by nobody was there.
Not really feeling well thanks to the mix of fatigue and adrenaline rush I slid down the mountain a little bit to reach the main part of the mine. The ground was covered with metal, concrete and tons of leaves from many, many autumns. It was hard to tell if the next step would be solid earth or something else. I got closer to the buildings and then something happened that really, really scared me: I heard two animals fighting on the ground behind me, must have been pretty close to where I stood, maybe 100 meters away. At that point I looked at the ground and realized that there was wild boar feces everywhere all across the mine. I’m not a wildlife expert, but I know what a boar sounds like – and I know that you don’t want to run into one in spring, especially when exploring a seriously rotten mine at a steep slope all by yourself.
I continued my explorations, but I could feel how both my fatigue and the adrenaline rush got stronger by the minute, trying to make my way through the concrete and metal structure while taking pictures, expecting a wild angry animal at any second. To be honest, at that point I didn’t enjoy the haikyo at all and I only realized when I was looking at the pictures from the safety of my home how great of a location the Taga Mine was (and still is until it collapses – which I guess will be relatively soon…). That’s when I also found out that it took me a whopping 2 hours to take pictures, although the place wasn’t that big and I felt like I was hurrying; man, was I in a hurry…
Looking back at the adventure I consider it one of the dumbest and at the same time most exciting things I’ve ever done. Yes, I worked hard all week, I wanted to take some haikyo pictures (for the first time in three weeks) and I wanted to be in nature enjoying this beautiful spring day – but being sick and exploring a hillside rotten mine in the middle of nowhere on your own is pretty much the urban exploration definition of stupidity. If you are ever happy enough to find the abandoned Taga Mine and not the active one make sure that the weather conditions are perfect, that your gear is top notch and that you have at least one person at your side. As much as I like my pictures of the Taga Mine… this is the first place I’ve been to that I consider a deathtrap and I highly recommend to stay away from it if you don’t know exactly what you are doing. I definitely learned my lesson from that trip!
Abandoned Kansai 
Sounds like quite an adventure!
I’ve heard of having to watch out for dogs when on a Haikyo but never a wild boar.
Usually mining Haikyo bore me but I enjoyed this set because of nature beginning to reclaim the area. Especially the last shot with the concrete 🙂
The crack in the concrete was one of the last shots I took. Fortunately. If I would have seen it earlier I might have gotten out of there right away.
And boars can be a serious problem! I was haikyo hiking at Mount Hiei in April, just a few weeks after I went to the Taga Mine, when I ran into another boar just a few meters away from a popular hiking trail – my heart rate went from “relaxed” to “superfast” in about half a second. NOT fun. Not at all! But that is a story for another time…
Nice find Florian! And well told in your story. Although I admit, I was kinda hoping the boar did come out so you would have had to write about your dangerous encounter :p. Nice pictures too by the way. You’re right though – haikyo and colds do not mix. The air in some of those stagnant rooms makes you feel groggy enough as it is!
Part of me wanted to see the boar, but since it was obviously in a fighting mood I’m glad that it stayed wherever it was. Especially now, since I ran into another one just a few weeks later… But no more haikyo when recovering from a cold, this lesson I learned well that day!
Great find Florian, nice work- especially as you had to push through a cold to do it. That’s dedication.
One small change I’d love to see on your site though- an easier way to look at your photos. At the moment (unless I’m doing something wrong) I have to click on each photo individually, then click out, then click on the next. In this way I usually only look at a few photos because it feels too much work to click on them all. Could you either make them full size on the main page, or have them in some more easily scrollable gallery? That would be great.
It was a unique experience, that’s for sure.
And yeah, I see what you mean with the photos – on pages like mine I usually open all of them in tabs within the window by clicking the mouse wheel, but I get how it can be annoying for people who don’t do that. The layout of this blog is still as it was when I was setting it up in January, so I’ll keep the picture problem in mind. (I tried the gallery mode at first, but then the pictures were awfully small. I’ll figure something out…)