Abandoned Kansai

What do you do with your little angels when you are a loving father and tired of your small apartment in the big city? Right, you spend a weekend in the countryside and let your children roam! Until that piece of paradise gets closed down and abandoned…

The first thing I thought when Dan, Kyoko and I drove up to the Cherub Land almost a years ago? “Well, there went another theme park in Tohoku thanks to that darn earthquake…” Well, it turned out that I was wrong. Cherub Land wasn’t really a theme park… and it wasn’t abandoned in the aftermath of the Tohoku incident, it was long gone at the time already.
Cherub Land was basically a campsite with bungalows, an onsen across the street (still guarded by a dog…), a free playground, fruit picking and a small pay as you go amusement park with attractions like bike rentals and go-cart – all of that in the middle of nowhere and in somewhat close proximity of the whole Fukushima thing that went wrong. Opened in the late 90s the campsite side was closed only 10 years later, three or four years before Tohoku 2011. The onsen part apparently survived a bit longer, but was also closed in 2016 when I explored the area. Fortunately there were no fences or other barriers, so we could park easily and out of sight of the main road on the former premises. Center of Cherub Land was a pond of about 20 by 30 meters, surrounded by wooden huts for couples and small families to stay at. There also were several different greenhouses, where tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and melons were grown – and an especially beautiful one full of kiwi vines… unfortunately they weren’t ripe at the time of the exploration. While some of the structures were partly demolished and / or decaying, the rental area was still in decent condition. Rusty and with a few signs of vandalism, but since Cherub Land is rather little known and off the beaten tracks, it was in a surprisingly good state overall. My personal highlight of the overall rather dangerously looking playground: the fading boxing ring, which did probably more damaged to kids than all the children hitting each other.

Overall exploring Cherub Land was heaven, especially on that beautiful autumn day – outdoors, quiet, virtually unknown, the right amount of decay, at first sight underwhelming, but offering tons of details to look at and explore… exactly my kind of abandoned place!

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