Abandoned Kansai

Japanese men have a thing for chicks! They love young firm breasts and meaty thighs, preferably while getting drunk. And while some of those school girl fantasies could be considered borderline child pornography outside of Japan, restaurants serving chicken dishes are also quite popular…

Yakitori restaurants are amongst the most popular eateries in Japan, especially for groups and couples. As the name yakitori implies (焼き – grilled / 鳥 – chicken), those places focus on grilled chicken dishes, usually on skewers. Chicken meatballs, pieces of chicken breast, chicken hearts, chicken livers, chicken skin, chicken cartilage – the latter gives you an impression of what it is like to bite somebody’s nose or ear off, but some people seem to like it. In addition to meat there are usually some side dishes available. French fries, salads, kimchi, pickles, … Prices vary dramatically from affordable to “I didn’t want to buy the whole friggin’ farm!” and depend on several factors, like most restaurants. Since Japanese people tend to prefer fatty thigh meat over the perceived dry breast meat, rather cheap chicken chain places often serve breast meat – much to the joy of most foreigners, who tend to prefer breast meat. In any case, yakitori restaurants are awesome places to hang out with colleagues or friends for a quick dinner or to have food and alcohol all night long… and unlike at *yakiniku restaurants* you get your food properly cooked and don’t have to do it yourself. (BTW: While not considered a yakitori restaurant, KFC is widely popular in Japan. So popular that they managed to establish buckets of KFC chicken as a common Christmas dinner!)

Growing up in a rather small town in German I was always aware that meat comes from animals and doesn’t grow pre-packed on trees, but I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of Japanese people have never seen a chicken farm – mainly because they are much better hidden than in Germany, where you can often see them from highways or in the outskirts of small towns. In Japan they tend to be in small side-valleys or halfway up a mountain; out of sight, out of mind, out of smelling distance.
As urbex locations chicken farms are not super interesting, but ‘better than nothing’. Being unusual places only a few people have regular contact with they have the potential to feature some unusual items – like the debeaker I found at the *Poultry Farm* six years ago. The Japanese Chicken Farm was the last location of spring exploration day and got more and more interesting the further I got, which means that I ran out of light and therefore out of time after 45 minutes. At first the farm looked quite unimpressive, an agglomeration of long and narrow metal sheds, most of them more or less empty – but then there was this extremely rusted, yet still almost complete one that featured a ton of machinery and other interesting items. No word on when and why it was abandoned though…

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