Abandoned Kansai

When I wrote about *my first visit to the Kyoto Dam* two years ago, it turned out to be one of the most popular articles on *Abandoned Kansai* – let’s have a look what the place looks like in winter!

In spring of 2010 I found this cute little abandoned dam / power plant nestled in the mountains of Kyoto prefecture on a Japanese hiking blog – and in summer of 2010, just weeks after the series finale of Lost, I finally had the chance to have a look myself. Except from the heat and the insane humidity it was an awesome experience, because this location looked like a lost Lost set with its massive concrete constructions, the fragile little hut… and some instruments inside still working, getting power from who knew where. My timing was just awesome, everything came together perfectly… 🙂
About half a year later I went back to this amazing abandoned place – again with “awesome” timing: Saturday, March 12 2011. Less than 24 hours prior a devastating earthquake had hit the Japanese Tohoku region, the following tsunami seriously damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, causing only the second Level 7 incident on the International Nuclear Event Scale – thought at that time most likely nobody knew how serious the disaster really was.

To be honest, more than five and a half years later I don’t remember many details of this visit, except that I had a great time and experienced a completely different atmosphere. During my first visit nature was buzzing, water was both on the ground and in the air, the dam was half overgrown and only partly accessible – during my second visit nature was dormant, there was hardly any water on the ground and even less in the air, the atmosphere was extremely peaceful. The Lost atmosphere of the first visit was a bit unnerving, this time I enjoyed more freedom of movement, a better sight, and overall felt more comfortable; though the significantly lower humidity was probably the most important factor. I also took more time to take everything in: The first time I stay about 1.5 hours, this time I stayed 2.5 hours. I actually liked it so much that I came back a week later with a flyjin friend of mine, who had left Kanto to get some distance between himself and the unstable reactor, but only a handful photos of that set made it to this article.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than six years since my first visit to the Kyoto Dam – and that it is still a location that barely ever pops up on urbex blogs; because I really love the location. It’s a bit off the beaten tracks, which is why I don’t go there very often, but so far it has always been worth taking the trip…
Now the question is: *summer* or winter? Which one did you like better?

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