In Japan you can barely throw a stone without hitting an abandoned hotel. Most of them are miserable, moldy and completely uninteresting places, but some are worth visiting for special elements – like rooms full of rotting arcade machines!
The Arcade Machine Hotel was actually the second abandoned hotel I explored on *Hachijojima*, an island some 300 kilometers south of Tokyo. It looked huge on Google Maps and it actually took me two visits to fully explore it – during the first one I kind of ran out of time as I wanted to climb Hachijo-Fuji that day, too, so I returned two days later and approached from a different direction to see the missing parts; but first things first.
Upon arrival at the Arcade Machine Hotel I explored the immediate surroundings, only to find out that there was a still inhabited house rather close-by… and that a party was going on at an adjacent field, with cars parked almost up to the hotel. Even from the lobby I was able to hear people laugh and talk, so I had to choose my steps very carefully – luckily everybody was gone by the time that I started taking some video material (of which I published more than 23 minutes with this article). The ground floor of the hotel was pretty interesting, though quite vandalized given that it was abandoned just 10 year ago. The bar still had a soft ice-cream machine and a coffee grinder, the lobby a table video game and old tourism posters, the dining hall some chairs… and the office a lot of chaos. Quite spooky was a room connecting the dining hall with the lobby and the waterfront area. The room itself had some rather interesting soda machines rusting away, but you could also hear water dripping… probably in the dark restrooms – I wasn’t eager to find out.
Instead I was eager to get out and have a look at a really strange concrete annex building, just a short walk away from the main hotel, separated by the complex’s tennis courts. Maybe the living quarters of some employees, for sure home of the hotel’s diving school – there were quite a few posters left behind as well as equipment (like waterproof cases for cameras) and medicine (like the pseudoephedrine hydrochloride a.k.a. Sudafed – “Relieves nasal and sinus congestions due to colds or hay fever”).
Back at the main building I headed towards the waterfront through a greenhouse hallway with mostly dead plants. To the right I saw a small room with a Space Invaders cabinet, followed by a large hall, partly collapsed, with a hotchpotch of arcade machines, freezers and vending machines – I grew up with some of those machines, so it was a really sad sight to see them like that…
Shortly after the hallway split and I went left as I was too lazy to crawl under a roller door, open only one quarter. The floor all of a sudden became quite soft, so I had to watch my steps, and then I reached the waterfront area, a series of vandalized and partly collapsed tatami party rooms as well as the gender separated public baths with a view – you know, the stuff pretty much every abandoned Japanese hotel has. So I hurried back to the main hotel building for a video walkthrough, which turned out to be quite creepy for such a sunny day.
At that point it was a lot later than I hoped it would be, so I left the Arcade Machine Hotel for Mount Hachijo-Fuji… and came back two days later, when I was hiking along the coast. It turned out that the hotel was approachable from there without climbing under nasty, rusty, rotten gates on soft, brittle floors and I finally found what should give this article its name – the hotel’s arcade! The previously mentioned storage hall actually held only maybe half of the machines left behind, most likely less. Corroding away and already beyond repair were a Star Wars pinball machine (!), several Astro City cabinets, Flash Beats by Sega, Namco’s Wani Wani Panic, a Sega air hockey, Dance Dance Revolution Bass Mix (for two players!) and many more… a fully stocked arcade literally vanishing into thin air thanks to the salty humid breeze coming in from the sea, just a stone’s throw away!
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I’m surprised at the stuff that gets left behind. Those things would have still been worth something back then! Maybe transporting them back to the main land would have eaten up what they’re worth?
Transportation costs might have been a factor – and maybe they were hoping to open up again a season later or something like that. It is a waste of resources, but on the other hand: when do you get the opportunity to take photos of abandoned arcade machines? 🙂
Looks like you had a good explore here!
I had a blast! Accessible enough to go there alone, yet a little bit creepy to give me the chills once in a while… 🙂
great!poor arcade machines…also these vans,now i know what you mean by salt air from the sea,hahaha,but there is alot of abandoned cars in japan so far i know,but rarely even with a licence plates too,they srsly left everything behind…
Yeah, looks like they all said “See you tomorrow!” and nobody ever came back.
The howling wind sure contributes to the spookiness in the third video.
The wind was super creepy! And it was only in rooms connected to that one staircase if I remember correctly. I’ve never experienced anything like that before… or after.
That is a ghostly graveyard of an arcade. Great pictures, as always, Florian!
Thanks a lot, Claire – the arcade exploration during my second visit really elevated the experience to a whole new level!
Florian, you’ve outdone yourself again! So good. 🙂
Thanks a lot, Ruth! Those solo explorations are always a bit iffy, but the feeling of accomplishment when leaving a location with a couple of good photos is beyond description.
love them all.
I wonder if the owners had ever recouped their losses. The stuff i see in your videos can still be used, especially those chairs and decorative ceiling lamps. Such a waste.
Most abandoned Japanese hotels are fully stocked – hardly any of them seem to sell stuff to minimize losses…
Nice work Florian, very jealous that you have access to these great sites. Video 3 at about 45 seconds you can see all the buildings in the grounds and adjacent – what’s there? Looks interesting!
Thanks a lot! But I only have access to those sites because I spend a lot of time finding them and a lot of money visiting them – it might not always look like it, but this blog requires an insane amount of dedication… Luckily it’s such a rewarding thing to do that I will continue for as long as I can! 🙂
As for you question: At 45 seconds you can see the pool, followed by the arcade, the storage hall (in the foreground) and the party / shared bath area.
Having spent way too much time (and too many quarters) in arcades as a kid, and having played many of these games back then, this makes me a little bit nostalgic and melancholy …
I couldn’t agree more! But what happened to the izzle / shizzle / wizzle talk, dawg?