Abandoned Kansai

This place must be cursed! First the spa hotel went bust, then my exploration failed…

With almost 10 years of exploration experience under my belt I’ve become pretty good at sniffing up original finds – these days I’m more and more often following even less beaten paths to places that are extremely hard to find, which usually comes at a higher risk, as unknown locations are much tougher and riskier to explore than now almost touristy places like *Western Village* or *Kejonuma Leisure Land*. This spring I had the chance to had a closer look at an abandoned health resort hotel I found during winter – unfortunately it wasn’t as close as I hoped for. 😦
The Failed Health Resort is so remote that it’s not on StreetView and only blurry on satellite view of GoogleMaps, but I was very excited to get there as the hotel had a very vast outdoor pool area. Unfortunately the exploration turned into a series of disappointments quickly. First we realized that the hotel still had power and one or two break-ins (or break-in attempts) had been boarded up again – so alarms were rather like and the building itself therefore more or less off limits. But hey, the pool area, right? Right! It was easily accessible without jumping any fences or something like that, unfortunately an old Japanese dude showed up after like five minutes. And there it was super interesting to observe my co-explorers that day – some super experiences, some relative noobs. I knew only half of them, the experienced ones, the others were friends of friends… Anyway, my Japanese is limited so I ignored the guy completely and kept taking photos. My friends at first didn’t even realize somebody came and then they acted like deer in headlights. And when the guy didn’t approach us, my friends and the noobs just left quietly – leaving me behind! I could almost see the WTF or ??? hovering above my head! Especially since my approach is always to approach new arrivals when I’m exploring with friends who speak Japanese or think they speak Japanese well-enough to have any kind of conversation. Worst case scenario: We explain our intentions and are asked to leave – hiding or preemptive obedience (= leaving quietly) is usually only an option when the situation is dire and a conversation would be pointless. So I rushed after my fellow explorers with a dozen rushed shots on my camera and that was it.

The Failed Health Resort was one of the most disappointing explorations in my “career”, for more than only one reason. But hey, you can’t win them all. Even without getting inside the building I’m sure this could have been an awesome exploration with a great photo series, but I was cut short, so we all have to live with the result…

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