The Restaurant Kent, on Japanese haikyo blogs mostly known as the Good Omen Garden, is one of the staples of urban exploration in Japan. Located on quite a long country road connecting Osaka with Miyazu (home of the famous sandbar Amanohashidate, one of Japan’s three scenic views) the Restaurant Kent was one of the most popular local haikyo when I started doing urban exploration three years ago. Nowadays it lost quite a bit of its popularity, probably because it was photographed to death over the years – or maybe because there are a couple of signs announcing camera surveillance… which I totally respect if it’s true.
In this case the claim was complete bullshit, which annoys the heck out of me as it just cost me time and nerves. The signs looked rather new, so maybe they were put up before the local city administration set up the cameras (government involvement, even on the lowest level, is always a bad thing since it usually means serious business – private companies might hire some slackers, but you don’t want to mess with bureaucrats, especially in a country like Japan…), but when I visited the Restaurant Kent in March of 2011 there were no cameras or other forms of security; a topic I usually leave out, but if somebody lies to me blatantly I have to set the record straight!
Sadly there is not much else to report about the Restaurant Kent, since nobody seems to know a lot of facts about the place. I don’t even know if it was named after the county of Kent in South East England – or after the hugely popular cigarette brand “Kent”, which famously used carcinogenic blue asbestos in their filters from 1952 till 1956 (I guess at least British American Tobacco made cigarettes healthier after all…). The restaurant area itself seemed to be quite small, but neat. Previous explorers set up some tableware in front of a chair with armrests, but other than that there was not much to see.
The Good Omen Garden seemed to be much bigger – one of those festivity locations Japan so desperately needs when you want to be loud and / or with some friends. My buddy Dan and I found several party rooms of various sizes (Western Style and Japanese style, i.e. either carpet floor and tables or tatami floor and furniture that is long gone now…) equipped with all kinds of electronics including laser disc karaoke machines, beamers, microphones (not for karaoke as they were installed to the ceiling…) and mountings for camera and / or additional lighting. One room even featured a disco ball, although it was quite severely damaged – and so was the fake wedding cake one floor down outside. At the first look the Good Omen Garden didn’t seem that big, but then it turned out that there was a second building behind the first one, connected by a kitchen on the upper floor. There were more rooms, including some guest rooms for overnight stays and the usual array of baths for men and women.
My favorite item though wasn’t in the building, it was outside in the backyard – a wooden electronic organ, beyond repair thanks to years of abuse from vandals and weather; nevertheless an unusual and strangely beautiful sight.
Since the Kent Restaurant / Good Omen Garden was along a busy road, but not within a city, town or even village, there were almost always cars parked outside. But nobody had the intention to bother us, I guess the camera warning signs outside worked. When Dan and I were about to leave though, a pickup-truck with a small crane parked next to the building. We “escaped” through the front entrance while two or three men entered the building through the restaurant. On official order or to loot? We’ll never find out. Dan and I were kind of in a hurry anyway, since on the way to the Kent Restaurant we spotted a location I’ve never seen anywhere else before. But that’s a story for another time. Probably Christmas time…
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Abandoned Kansai 
Hi Florian, thanks for liking my post The Japanese Art of Writing Lists, which has brought me to your blog. Haikyo blogs! I’d never heard of that before. What an amazing idea. Do you know if there is one about Paris? I live in the suburbs.
Hi Henrietta,
Thanks a lot for stopping by and spreading the word – much appreciated!
I am not sure if there is an urbex blog about Paris specifically, but there are dozens of urbex blog about European locations and I know about half a dozen locations in or near Paris – European urban explorers have the advantage of not being stuck on an island, so usually they cover half a dozen countries – France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg + Italy and / or Spain.
I’d love to read some other urbex blogs. Can you recommend two or three pls.
I actually don’t read many European urbex blogs since I only spend about three weeks a year in Germany and it breaks my heart to see what I am missing living in Japan…
One blog I can really recommend is Telefunker – great photos, tons of locations: http://telefunker.wordpress.com/
Thanks for the link. I’ve looked at some French urbex blogs, so far they’re not very interesting as they’ve visited places which are more or less open to the public anyway. Happy hunting 🙂
Research is a big part of urban exploration – I guess finding good urbex blogs can require some research, too. Sorry I couldn’t be a better help, but I don’t speak French at all and I only have an eye on a couple of European blogs.
The great thing about this blog, Abandoned Kansai, is the fact that I visit a lot of deserted places no English speaking person has written about before – some places haven’t even appeared on Japanese blogs…
You’ve got a real niche in urbex and that’s exactly why I’ve enjoyed reading your blog. I look forward to your next post.
Thanks! There will be plenty of postings to come – I already shot material for about 1.5 years, including some locations I’ve never seen on any urbex blogs.
Hi Florian,
The camera warning board says “garbage dumping forbidden”. Could it be that some kind of residents or whoever take advantage of the abandoned premises and use it as handy garbage dumping place ?
Your pictures are for me really “STRONG”. I call it photographic art.
Looking forward to the next blog.
Dario
Hi Dario,
It’s kind of amazing, but about half of the signs at abandoned places in Japan are not about trespassing. They are about garbage dumping – which is a serious problem in Japan! I’ve been to abandoned places in the middle of nowhere… filled knee-high with garbage. Passing garbage disposals right next to “Don’t dump garbage!” signs on forest roads that see about 3 cars a year. As clean as Japanese cities are as dirty are certain areas of the Japanese forest…
The place is so vandalized, all the potentially interesting rooms always get their windows smashed, papers thrown, graffiti sprayed on, you name it these soulless vandals will do it. It’s like something straight out of the Bay Area (except obviously they would never have such a nice building in San Francisco). Plus all that mold, the dead animal carcass, almost every window smashed, so sad that haikyo has to be a game of “who can get here first” when the interesting places are the ones that nobody has been to for decades, and those are all ruined by punk vandals!
You are preaching to the choir, my friend. Vandalism is a serious problem in Japan, too – but considering how long this place is well-known it actually is in decent condition. Probably because it’s along a popular road and people hesitate to go inside and make much noise.
Those kinds of places are creepy, but that one is a goldmine of interesting artifacts. Why does it remain like that? It’s not condemned? I didn’t live in Japan very long to know how they do things but it’s surprising to me. My neighborhood in Kamakura, Japan was so orderly and there were so many rules about garbage and what you could have at your house and cleanliness.
I guess the place went bankrupt and nobody feels responsible anymore – and Kamakura is very popular with tourists. A building like that would be an eye sore for many more people there, so somebody take care of it. The Kent Restaurant just sits there along a countryside road. It isn’t that dangerous (yet) to explore it, so I assume it isn’t considered an urgent problem.
it’s cool! Wow, I hadn’t really planned to explore places like that, but I would if I ran across one. It also reminded me of that movie “Spirited Away” Have you seen that?? I lived in Japan. I remember how superstitious my friends were there!
Just be careful when you actually enter an abandoned place, because they is a myriad of dangers…
Yeah, I’ve seen Spirited Away, but it was quite a while ago. I’m not that much into anime, to be honest – more into Japanese history.
And yeah, Japanese people are terribly superstitious! I just re-visited a place with Michael Gakuran and we met a group of three guys in the early 20s there, not sure if they should enter or not. They were totally surprised when we walked right into the place and then they cautiously followed us, admiring us for our courage… 🙂
😀 Sooo funny! I can see that! I did a similar thing at a party in Japan. I was 19 at the time. I had a group of Japanese college student friends we were drinking and someone got the idea to go to a temple up on the hill nearby and ring the bell! I said I would go. Only a few volunteers went, we climbed up to the temple and then a couple of guys freaked out and wouldn’t do it!! So funny! We are more frightened of our own cultural things…what you don’t know won’t hurt you! 😀
Hey Florian, somehow I just really like the name of this place…I’ll just asume the owner really liked smoking Kent cigarettes…
Maybe they even got a sponsorship deal? Who knows…? Sadly hardly anybody seems to know much about the place…
Such an interesting hobby! I see lots of abandoned sites here in rural Tochigi but never felt bold enough to enter!
Tochigi prefecture has some of the best abandoned places in all of Japan! I would really like to have a look myself, but it costs me half a day (in addition to an arm and a leg) to go there…