Abandoned hotels are a dime a dozen in Japan. Literally. I’m sure if you look thoroughly enough, you could actually get a dozen abandoned hotels for a dime. Of course they most likely would be a terrible financial burden as they probably would be rundown pieces of crap like this “grand” hotel.
Most crown jewels of Japanese urbex are still rather hard to find, I get annoying requests from lazy strangers on a regular basis, sometimes several per week, but abandoned hotels have become so common in some places that you can hardly throw a stone without hitting one; which you shouldn’t do, because that would be vandalism – or worse, you might hit a person or a car… Anyway, in certain areas I don’t have to find abandoned places, I just go there and the abandoned places find me. Like on that one trip to Yamaguchi prefecture, when I just wanted enjoy a relaxing day and eat some strawberry daifuku. Instead the weather was nasty and I stumbled across some abandoned buildings. Now, average people would just mind their own business and continue to the daifuku shop, but I’m one of those idiots who stand in front of most of those abandoned buildings for like five minutes and then finally decide to have a closer look, even though completely unprepared; meaning: no clue what to expect and no tripod to take even decent pictures.
Which finally brings us to said grand hotel, which definitely was more hotel than grand even in its heyday. But it looked kind of interesting from the outside and it was drizzling, so I thought a few minutes protection from the rain wouldn’t be the worst thing in this situation, so I had a closer look… and while it indeed wasn’t the worst thing, it actually came pretty close. The hotel was cluttered, vandalized and mostly stripped of valuable metals. The floor was rather soft (which is never good when you don’t know what’s underneath the carpet!) and the whole place felt damp and moldy. Even the shared baths, usually the highlight of most Japanese accommodations, abandoned or not, were rather underwhelming and anything but grand. The facts that the lighting was bad, that I had no tripod, and that I was exploring solo didn’t help either, so I was out of there again after something like 15 minutes. Not the greatest exploration, but I guess better than no article in February… 🙂
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I really like the picture of the overgrown annex (picture 4).
It feels positive at the same time as it looks like nature takes over everything.
Thanks! It also was a first sign of spring in the mountains, brightening the miserable weather that day a little.
Hey Florian. Good to hear from you again.
I always found it funny how much you dislike the hotels compared to me. I generally find your hotel urbex explorations to be pretty interesting but you always remark on how boring they are to you. At any rate, glad to see another cool hotel and hope to hear from you again soon.
p.s. it must have been pretty nerve-wracking trying to record that next to what appears to be a busy street.
p.s.s. I think it’s also pretty interesting that you’ve become like an urbex celebrity–turning down people asking you for urbex locations like a movie star turns down a photo with the press! I think that’s hilarious.
Yeah, I try to make it at least once a month. So far the articles have been close calls, squeezing in on the last day or second to last day.
I’m happy to hear that you (and other people) like abandoned hotels! It actually motivates me to keep exploring them, otherwise I would have probably skipped some. Though I have to admit that in most cases I get at least one or two good photos from those explorations, the process is just not very pleasurable in comparison to most outdoor locations like theme parks or ski resorts.
It’s not like I only turn down location requests – I’ve also declined dozens of podcast, interview and documentary requests over the years. In the end I am just a shy person who thinks that locations should be in the center of urban exploration, not explorers or friggin influencers – and that access should be earned. “Hi, I’m a nature photographer from X who is doing a series about Y – can you tell me where this location is?” No, because obviously you are just another shmock with a camera. If you were a professional nature photographer, you would have found the place. Or you would have sent me a link to your portfolio. Or you would have introduced yourself properly. Even worse are the “Yo dawg, I’m on vacation in Japan and want to try urbex!” messages. I’ve spent thousands of hours on researching locations, I don’t see a reason why I should waste time on replying to messages like that. Communication is completely different though when people act professional and friendly. Probably my favorite result of a collaboration is this video here – all urbex videos should be like it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hApr9gY3t4
Even if you don’t think these are “special” locations, and this one is definitely not “exciting”, I still find them all fascinating! I still wonder what made someone build there, name it that (if it’s a former business like this one), and what kind of people stayed/visited there and when. Some of your explorations may be far more memorable, which is fair, I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed about any of your posts. I appreciate you taking 15 minutes to explore and whatever time it takes for you to upload, write up, and post your discoveries. Thank you for continuing to post when you can and what you can (and not giving into the lazy people wanting to know where things are located).
Thank you very much, Emily! I’m glad that you even like my hotel explorations and I’m happy to say that you’ll be in for some treats in the future as I still have some pretty decent hotel explorations on hold, including one with a large indoor pool and a couple of quite nice onsen hotels. I’ll try to give more background information again in the future, but especially the original finds are often hard to research. Sometimes StreetView helps with the closing date (open in one series, closed in the next), but especially places that have been out of business for more than 10 or 15 years would probably require some on location / neighborhood research.
Nice work!
Thanks a lot!
Funny that there are so many “Grand Hotels” in Japan that you don’t even have to hide the name.
Looks very “Showa” and was probably a 2-star hotel even when it was in operation, which must have been decades ago.
cool :). and yes, nothing screams “grand” more than a plain looking concrete box haha