Abandoned Kansai

There is probably no other country in the world where access to food is easier and faster than in Japan. Not only has the land of the rising sun the highest number of vending machines per capita (one machine per 23 people!), it also has a borderline insane amount of convenience stores – the numbers are constantly changing, but in 1996 there was one store for every 2000 people living in Japan; of course in addition to all the supermarkets, shopping malls and countless restaurants. It’s amazing how many tiny eateries with just a dozen seats survive both in the huge cities as well as in the countryside. Though less and less in the countryside. On pretty much every road you drive along outside of the big cities you can find two shacks made of old containers or leftover wood and corrugated iron with fading “udon”, “soba” or “omiyage” (souvenirs) signs in front of them for each restaurant still open. The surviving ones tend to be mom and pop run cafés / restaurants with rustic interiors and surprise menus that offer anything from sandwiches to pizza to classic Japanese food to curry to… Those places obviously are hit or miss, but two of them stuck with me so much that I would like to mention them here:
Café Pickles (coordinates: 34.354730, 135.796344) is a small café outside of Yoshino in Wakayama prefecture – if you ever go to Yoshino or Mount Koya by car, stop by and try their katsu sandwich; probably the best sandwich of my life, and it came with a great salad, a cup of soup and some fresh (!) fruit on whipped cream for something like 1000 Yen. That place in the middle of Osaka would be a gold mine!
The best curry of my life I had at a small nameless restaurant along the Ozasa Highway in the mountains of Nagano prefecture (coordinates: 36.521435, 138.333017). It came with a topping and probably a salad and / or soup, but what really stuck with me was the amazing dark curry flavor, that we had to wait about 30 minutes for our order (because cooking a homemade meal takes time!), despite us being the only customers there – and the lovely owner who cut up some delicious Nagano apples for us while we were waiting.

Usually we just pass by the countless closed and abandoned food shacks as there are way too many to check them out all – and the few we checked as inexperienced explorers years ago turned out to be pointless wastes of time. The Tottori Countryside Restaurant on the other hand looked like one of those very promising eateries in the middle of nowhere. Decent size, rustic exterior and even more rustic interior. At first look the place seemed to be boarded up thoroughly, but upon closer investigation it turned out that one of the wooden doors was unlocked; tough to open thanks to years of neglect, but unlocked.
To be honest with you, I didn’t like the place very much. The former dining room was cluttered with all kinds of things, as if the owners laid out everything they had, trying to figure out what to take with them. There was not much light inside the building, which made it kinda tough to take photos without a tripod. And the kitchen? Was probably the 100th abandoned kitchen I have seen in a variety of buildings. Not the worst one by a long shot, but nothing worth taking pictures of, except for the Coke machine they slapped a huge Pepsi sticker on. The upper floor consisted of a couple of small rooms, pretty much all cluttered, too. There we found a calendar or two on the walls, indicating that the restaurant has been abandoned in 1997, more than 15 years prior to our visit. Other than that… just more junk.

Overall a nice little original find, probably more interesting from the outside than the inside – at least to me and my fellow explorers. I think for our taste, it was too close to daily life. If you’ve never been to Japan, this location is probably infinitely more interesting, but to us, there was nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times before. Well, except for that slightly Darth Vader / Mickey Mouse looking sign outside, advertising coffee and cigarettes…

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