The Inagawa Trap Shooting in the suburbs of Osaka was one of Japan’s hottest urbex locations back when I started with urban exploration four years ago – huge overgrown buildings with lots of interior and tons of shotgun shells everywhere. It took me a while to figure out its exact location, but then I went there straight away on a sunny winter day…
Osaka is surrounded by several mountain ranges and the burbs often spread into other prefectures, especially Hyogo – the Inagawa Trap Shooting was located in one of those nice, a little bit remote neighborhoods full of single-family houses – and course I got lost, despite photos of the map on my camera. But I was inexperienced and pictures were not detailed enough… Luckily I found my way to a pond I had seen on several Japanese *haikyo* blogs and from that point on it was easy. I followed the partly overgrown path only… to find out that the Inagawa Trap Shooting was demolished!
What a downer… It took me quite long to find the place, so I was looking forward for weeks to visit it – and then it was just some small piles of rubble in the backyard of an ordinary suburb neighborhood. I clearly made another beginner’s mistake – I didn’t look hard enough for information about the location’s current state. To prevent other urban explorers from making the same mistake I created this *GoogleMap of demolished haikyo in Japan*. There you can have a look where you don’t need to go anymore… (Some of the locations of that map I was able to visit before they were demolished, so it’s worth a look even if you don’t plan on doing urbex in Japan yourself.)
With the Inagawa Trap Shooting almost completely gone there was not much I could do – but since the area was rather vast and I was pretty much an urbex noob (one of the first 20 explorations), it took me 1.5 hours to have a look at everything and to take some rather average photos. The most interesting part was a bit in the back – a couple of shacks, one of them filled with countless empty shotgun shells, another one being some kind of rest room and / or command hut; all of them in really bad condition. As I found out later, the shooting range was closed in 1989 and demolished in November 2007 – two years before I even began with urban exploration. Japanese blogs though kept reporting about the Inagawa Trap Shooting with photos of the intact buildings till at least 2012! But well, it took me almost four years to write about it, too…
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Abandoned Kansai 
Nice set!!!
Thanks, Mark!
This reminds me of my last trip to Detroit. Everything on my list of places to explore was sealed tight with the exception of one. Thankfully it is Detroit so there is always something else to explore.
Half the fun is in the getting there, glad you made the best of what you had! That shot of the mound of shells is amazing.
So they are boarding up more and more of Detroit? Internet articles always make it look like one big ghost town of amazing abandoned buildings, easily accessible for everybody with a smartphone.
Inagawa Trap was a very early exploration I did, so back then I didn’t mind… And it was rather close to where I live, so at least I didn’t get up at five in the morning and spent a hundred bucks on train tickets. Just a nice winter walk with a photo opportunity. 🙂
Despite all the troubles they are having Detroit is a little nicer every time I go there. I’m happy to see things improving for them but as an explorer it is a little frustrating to be denied so often.
If you’re in the States Gary Indiana is the near ghost town of amazing walk-in locations.
Just curious, how safe is exploring in Japan? How bad are the “bad” neighborhoods?
It’s actually good to hear that Detroit is doing better – bad for urban explorers, but good for a whole area…
Exploring in Japan is really safe! I never ran into drug users or criminals, only once I saw a homeless guy and security maybe half a dozen times. There are some high risk places, but usually they are well-known, so if you want to avoid the risky locations it’s easy to do so.
The photos are still interesting even if the place has been bulldozed! It looks like the site of someone’s last stand against zombies or alien invaders. Or possibly like a truckload of dumped candy.
Yeah, I still have fond memories of that exploration – maybe because I lost track and found the place after looking for a while. Or because it was a solo exploration, something I barely ever do these days. (Because it’s always good to have backup in case you hurt yourself…)