If you are a regular reader of this blog then you know that I have a love-hate relationship with Nara Dreamland. Abandoned amusement parks are quite rare, especially those without any destroyed or sold attractions. Sadly both times I went there I spotted a security guard. Once he spotted me, too – a very, very unpleasant experience. To me the chapter “Nara Dreamland” was closed. I wasn’t able to post pictures taken inside of Dreamland on this blog (since I had to delete the ones I took), but I’ve seen quite a bit of it and that is what is important to me. But when Michael John Grist wrote me a message that he would be in Kansai soon and asked me if I was interested in tackling Nara Dreamland again of course I couldn’t resist. Learning from previous explorations I suggested to meet in Nara late to do a shooting at night and get out of Dreamland before the guard(s) even show up. Mike agreed and so that’s what we did…
We met at JR Nara Station at around 0.30am and made our way to the park. Since I’ve been there twice before I knew exactly where to go and how to get in, but there were some changes since I last came to Dreamland. For example all the “If you see somebody entering Nara Dreamland: Call the police!” signs were replaced by new “If you get caught we’ll fine you 100,000 Yen” signs. Which I thought was interesting in two ways:
1.) It kind of seems like the police in Nara isn’t really interested in trespassers.
2.) Why 100,000 Yen (currently about 900 Euro / 1150 Dollars) and not 50,000 / 200,000 / 1,000,000 Yen? The number seems so random…
Anyways, it would really surprise me if the new signs keep anybody from entering. (“I don’t care about being sued for trespassing, but 1000 bucks scare me back to where I came from!”)
After entering Nara Dreamland the next difference was obvious: If you lift your car over the fence you won’t be able to drive into the park anymore as the road is now blocked by a fence of maybe 50cm height! If you are on foot you just step over it or use the non-blocked pedestrian walkway – which is perfect for all you urban explorers on bikes, motorcycles and unicycles, too! Seriously, WTF? I can understand why you want to keep people from entering Nara Dreamland, but if your effort ends with knee high fences you deserve to be ridiculed! I would have laughed out loud, but I guess my mean spirit was punished right away when a car passed the road under the bridge while we were walking across – in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. Small sins get punished right away…
It was a strange feeling to enter Nara Dreamland that way since last time I was there I was running from a security guard. Shortly after the bridge we came across the merry-go-rounds and finally reached the mirror maze called “Mirror-Puzzle” where the yellfest happened in February. I would like to say that I felt more comfortable the longer we stayed at the park, but I didn’t. Not after one hour, not after two, not till we left. But at least this time I was able to see the whole park. We took at few pictures near the Mirror-Puzzle, passed through the castle and then went on to pay a visit to the park’s main attraction: the gigantic wooden roller-coaster named Aska. From there we went back to the castle and down the main road to the main entrance / train station. After that we returned to the area filled by merry-go-rounds to have a little rest and wait for the sun to come up.
The safety of exploring Nara Dreamland at night came with the price of a way more demanding shooting: Neither Mike nor I had shot any haikyo at night before, so we spent quite a while at each attraction. Basically learning by doing. It wasn’t pitch black dark and the sky was slightly lit in some parts due to light pollution, so most of the pictures turned out to be blurry or terribly lit, but could there be a better place to figure out stuff like that than an abandoned amusement park? The answer is “YES!”, but hey, some things just don’t work out as planned…
Exploring an abandoned amusement park on a warm night in late summer is nothing but an amazing adventure – and I guess it is even more so if you can suppress the uneasy feeling of not being wanted there. I can’t say that I really enjoyed shooting Nara Dreamland at night, but I nevertheless cherish it as an exciting and educational experience.
“Wait a minute!”, you might say at this point. “If you felt uneasy all the time, why did you even wait for the sun to come up?” Well, the answer is simple: Since the sun rises at about 5.30am in Japan even in late September we though we could kill two birds with one stone and do a second round through the park, shooting it under way easier lighting conditions – and that’s what we did. So come back soon and don’t miss the second part of Nara Dreamland Revisited!
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For all your Nara Dreamland needs please have a look at the Nara Dreamland Special. For a look at the area around Nara Dreamland on GoogleMaps, including some fancy icons linking to articles on Abandoned Kansai and videos on YouTube, please *click here*.)
For all your Nara Dreamland needs please have a look at the Nara Dreamland Special. For a look at the area around Nara Dreamland on GoogleMaps, including some fancy icons linking to articles on Abandoned Kansai and videos on YouTube, please *click here*.)
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- Nara Dreamland
Abandoned Kansai 
Awesome shots Florian. With that kind of light, everything gets some kind of mystic atmosphera.
Thanks, Enric. Nara Dreamland is actually way more fascinating at night than it is during daytime – because at night you don’t see how cheap and rundown the place really looks…
Wow, Aska looks amazing (and massive!) I can see why it was considered the park’s main attraction for most people.
And you stayed up all night too, now that’s Haikyo dedication 🙂
Aska is by far the most interesting part of Nara Dreamland and if I ever go back there I’ll have to spend more time around the wooden rollercoaster!
Dreamland is actually one of the few places worth going to at night. Most other locations live from detail shots while Dreamland is all about the exterior.
I like the last two shots best, mostly the one over the train station railing. I tried to get that shot myself by focusing manually- it was way too distant to focus using my flashlight method- but they came out very blurry. Well done for getting it!
Also nice thoughts on the secondary barrier from the car park to the bridge- I wondered at the time why you were so interested in it! Now I get it- it is ridiculous. Lift your car over the gate! Nicely spotted. I also remember you ducking out when the car went by underneath as if your life depended on it!
Great story, great details, looking forward to your day shots- since you definitely spent more time shooting in the dawn than I did.
Thanks, man! I focussed the railing with the flashlight method and hoped that the background won’t get too blurry.
The car passing under the bridge while we were getting in really freaked me out and kind of set the tone for the night. It brought back all the bad memories of the February events… but now the beast is slain!
My daylight pictures will follow soon, maybe I’ll squeeze in another posting first. Almost too much Dreamland on the blog lately…
Nice writeup! I’m a little concerned that you wrote so much about the entry though. It wouldn’t bode well if somebody who had ties to the place read it and making it so public means it’s likely other explorers will use it more and end up getting caught – leading to the entrance being completed sealed off. Just my opinion, but I’d cut some of that part out :).
Looking forward to the dawn shots!
Hey Michael, I totally understand your concerns, especially since I’m all for being secretive about places, too – you know that I even came up with fake names myself for some of the places I visited; like Doggy Land and Kyoto Waterland.
Nara Dreamland is a bit different though, mainly because it’s already so well documented on the internet. Having a look at GoogleMaps you can spot two possible ways in – and if you go there you will see that the “We’ll fine you, evil intruder!” signs are only at those two places, nowhere else around the park; so even the owners of Dreamland know their weak spots exactly and mark them for urban explorers… Furthermore I don’t get tired telling people not to go to Nara Dreamland. I made bad experiences there and if you get caught you might be in deep trouble. The challenge with Nara Dreamland is neither finding it nor getting in – the challenge is getting out without being fined or sued; publishing night shots is actually the best hint you can give people about Nara Dreamland, and even with that I wasn’t the first person to do so (I saw night shots on a Japanese blog a couple of weeks ago).
But what I did was editing my original posting about Nara Dreamland as it contained two way more explicit details than this article… I hope this eases your mind a little bit.
Oh man just read your blog about this place. I will be in Japan in a couple weeks for 10 days and after reading your blog and seeing your photos put this on the top of what I have to see and take photos of.
If your down for another adventure though this place its always better to go to places with people who know the place instead of blindly going in.
Thanks, but right now my urge to visit Dreamland is lower than ever before – nevertheless good luck to everybody going there, you’ll need it!
great work! can’t wait until the ‘green’ starts climbing up the Aska rollercoster …. keep it up.
Thanks! And it won’t take too long before nature will claim the coaster – seems like the vine is growing pretty fast…
I absolutely love your blog and I’m glad you shared this with us.
Great blog post! I love Nara Dreamland for it’s wonderful horrible-ness. I visited in 2003. Do you know if the actual Monorail train is just sitting in the station?
Thanks,
Kevin
Hey Kevin, I have actually no idea why happened to the monorail train. For some reason we all (Mike, Enric and I) shot outside most of the time… I guess nobody even looked for the monorail train. If (and that more like an “*IF!*”) I should go back there I’ll have a look and will post pictures!
The monorail train is actually still at the station. I saw it, but I’m not sure I took a picture of it (I had to get out of the park around that time).
It would be wonderful to mount a monorail rescue expedition. I’ll see if my friends at MonorailSociety.Org have any ideas. Thanks again for the info and great photos!
What’s the purpose of the Monorail Society? (website is down)
Ooops! Should be Monorails.org
Sorry about that. It’s a society for the promotion of monorails, which are cheaper for cities to build and install than subways, and offer better views than tunnels!
Okay 🙂 But what’s he aim of the “rescue expedition”?
Ahh, the rescue expedition! It’s my hope that a rich, monorail fanatic would want to acquire the train for their estate’s backyard monorail. I have the fanatic part covered, working on the rich part. Walt Disney had a backyard railroad (see http://www.carolwood.com/ ).
In all seriousness, it would be good to preserve the monorail train as it is one of the only removable elements of Nara Dreamland.