Abandoned Kansai

Last week I published one of the dirtiest articles ever, this week we’ll scrub ourselves clean at the Aloha Water Park!

Abandoned water parks are amongst my favorite places to explore. Usually they are either outdoor fun parks with pools, wave pools, and more or less large water slides – or they are indoor facilities with hot springs and spa elements. The Aloha Water Park was one of the few places that offered outdoor fun for the kids and indoor relaxation for mom and dad – the latter gender-separated, of course, as always.
I knew about the Aloha Water Park for a while before I finally found it on GoogleMaps… and it took me several more month before the opportunity rose to explore it, but one thing I know for sure: It was definitely worth the wait!
The outdoor part consisted of a few bars and food stands, a relaxation area, several pools (some still with water in it) and a couple of slides – interestingly no grassy area, just stone and concrete everywhere. The indoor section was quite unusual as the main bath was basically a gigantic room consisting of two floors with lots of boulders and greenery on a slope and super large ceilings. The upper floor (with separate changing rooms, rest rooms, lockers, …) was for women, the lower floor for men – that way you could actually look down if you looked over the handrail and some brave or exhibitionist guy walked onto a couple of square meters that were not 100% out of sight, while men had close to 0% chance of becoming peeping Toms. Both areas were connected by an indoor escalator and alternatively a walkway across the outdoor part, accessible by flights of stairs and an elevator – the latter not working anymore and some closed shutters making the whole construction a dead end.

When I first found out about the Aloha Water Park I knew about the indoor section and the outdoor section, but I thought they were two different locations. So entering the large indoor onsen after exploring the beautifully decayed outdoor fun part was absolutely mind-blowing, because it was so unexpected. And figuring out that the onsen was one room for both men and women was… interesting. Nowadays it’s absolutely luxury for me to spend 2.5 hours at a single location, but I enjoyed every second of it, despite the fact that sometimes neighbours could be heard or even seen. Not a low risk location, but one of my favorites in recent years.

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