Abandoned Kansai

The perfect abandoned place, I finally found it – at least when it comes to deserted driving ranges in Japan… Partly overgrown, the right amount of natural decay, no signs of vandalism (or any other visitor) at all; an original find, as good as it gets!

Every once in while I spend a couple of minutes with the satellite view of GoogleMaps and look for abandoned places. I know, it sounds a bit crazy and like a huge waste of time, but if you know what to look for it’s actually more fun than most mobile games – and only the beginning of something potentially great. About half of the places I think I found and checked out turned out to be duds. They were either still in use, perfectly locked, in horrible condition or even already demolished, since the satellite view of of GoogleMaps isn’t exactly updated on a daily basis.
Sometimes I follow hints – for example, when I was looking for the *Japanese Luxury Spa Hotel*, all I had were some spectacular indoor photos, a single shot of the coastline (taken from one of the rooms), and the name of the prefecture the spa was in. So I went up and down that darn coastline until I found the hotel… It’s a good way to find rare locations people are secretive about. Collect every piece of information you can get… and start looking. Sometimes you might find other places in the process. Almost five years ago I found and explored an *abandoned poultry farm* while I was looking for *The Red Factory*; I found and explored one and a half years later. That poultry farm wasn’t the most spectacular location in the world, but to the best of my knowledge it still hasn’t been found and published by any other urban explorer…
The Japanese Driving Range on the other hand was spectacular in ways I never expected. As most of the time, I wasn’t even 100% sure if it was really abandoned or not, as I only saw it on the satellite view of GoogleMaps, not via StreetView. Since I’ve been to a partly demolished driving range and an abandoned two-storey driving range (as part of *Kejonuma Leisure Land*) before, I actually wasn’t too eager to head out there, but of course I went when the opportunity arose as part of a weekend trip. In my itinerary I scheduled an hour for the Japanese Driving Range – in reality I left more than 2.5 hours after my arrival, spending most of it in an area of about 3 by 20 meters…

When I first arrived at the Japanese Driving Range, alone and on foot, I slowly realized that the premises hadn’t seen many visitors since it closed down. The office / entrance building in the front was locked and in really good condition – everything inside still in its place, no signs of trespassing whatsoever as I found out looking through the front and the back doors. Usually even in “there is no vandalism in Japan” Japan the window panes of those doors are smashed when a location is rather remote, but not in this case. Locked and left behind, as if mankind just disappeared from one second to another. The surroundings though were overgrown with all kinds of twiners and thorny plants, luckily most of them were already rather dormant for seasonal reasons; I guess in summer it would be much tougher to get access to the back, where the actual driving range was. I mostly ignored the wooden shack next to it as it only contained random stuff and started to take pictures at the driving range, literally inch by inch realizing that I actually found one of those extremely rare places that have been spared bored youth, vandals, graffiti “artists”, airsoft players (not a single plastic pellet on the ground!), and even eager explorers. Aside from a handful of moved around items the place really looked like it hadn’t been visited by anybody since it closed business – except for that darn cat that almost gave me a heart attack when it looked around the corner while I was focused on taking a photo of something. It didn’t even make a noise, but it surprised me so much that I flinched, which in return made the cat cringe and disappear. Never saw it again for the remaining hour of my stay…
I’m not a golfer myself, but the accessible area of the Japanese Driving Range (part of it was wind protected and still very much alive…) was full of all kinds of interesting views and items (in case you wonder: the Taiji Hotcabi was a device to keep small wet towels, oshibori, hot). While I was setting up for a photo, I already had ideas for two more, probably forgetting some in the process. Abandoned electronic tee devices (the northern half overgrown, the southern half just rusty), seats, some machinery, switches, peeling paint, shoes, waste baskets, a large mirror, the range itself with the large nets to catch ball, the holes in those nets… I know, even now “abandoned driving range” probably doesn’t sound too exciting, but I barely ever had that much fun shooting a location – at that point actually knowing that I found the Holy Grail. Or at least one Holy Grail. Even if you see a location first at Abandoned Kansai, most of the time other people had been there before me – or they were with me. In this case I felt like I was the first person there in years. A lot of other abandoned places look like from a post-apocalyptic movie or novel, this place actually felt like it – and as much as I hate exploring alone, in this case it was the cherry on top, the one factor that elevated the experience from world class exploration to unique. If you imagine the perfect abandoned driving range… This was it. Sure, access to the main building would have been nice, but the locked doors were part of the authentic experience, so I didn’t mind missing out some abandoned office photos. Sure, I’ve been to visually more exotic and stunning places, but when it comes to urban exploration as an experience… the Japanese Driving Range was as good as it gets!

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