Abandoned Kansai

I can’t even remember how I found out about the Karadate Golf Center in Himeji. In late 2009 / early 2010 I did quite a bit of research about abandoned places in Japan and I guess one of the leads I had was that one. I just remember that I didn’t even found pictures, just a Japanese list of (operating) driving ranges – and that one of them had a footnote that it was closed / demolished. When I went to an abandoned shrine in Himeji in July of 2010 I went to the Karadate Golf Center, too, since it was only a few kilometers away from the shrine.
Located on top of a small mountain close to Mount Shosha (a filming location of “The Last Samurai” with Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe) the Karadate Golf Center offered a stunning view on Himeji and the Seto Inland Sea, but due to its rather remote location (a couple of hundred meters away from the next houses at the end of a now too abandoned winding road) I guess it wasn’t a financial success – and the competition for driving ranges is tough in Japan! At the time I went there GoogleMaps still showed the driving range and a small building in satellite mode, but now these remains are only visible when switching to map mode. When I went there I found the golf center gone, with only a few signs left that it has ever been there: A fence, some bricks on the ground, a water tower, a lamp post… The driving range itself was almost completely overgrown, only two baskets sitting on the ground in the northern part. Unless you have a faible for old lamps the Karadate Golf Center is a demolished and hence uninteresting haikyo. But of course I had to see it for myself… And the view there was really nice!