Abandoned Kansai

Snow in November isn‘t really common in Japan, especially in southern Tohoku. But sometimes you gotta roll with the punches…

A few years ago I was on an autumn road trip to Tohoku, when I finally saw an opportunity to check out an abandoned country club that I had my eyes on for more than half a decade. Unfortunately it was so remote that I couldn’t explore it by myself due to the lack of transport, so I was really excited when I had the chance to go there. Several club houses, a hotel, a really big golf course, several other buildings – even a ski slope or two, as I found out afterwards. That thing was gigantic, potentially a whole day exploration! We stayed in a hotel about 20 kilometers away, maybe half an hour on countryside roads. It was overcast, maybe 15°C – typical autumn weather. When we left the plain to get into the mountains it suddenly become significantly colder, but who cares? That’s why we wore jackets. We took a final turn up a narrow road to the resort when all of a sudden the weather changed drastically – heavy snowfall, thick flakes. We went from zero snow on the ground to several centimeters in maybe half a minute. Nevertheless we pushed forwards, because you gotta seize opportunities when you have the chance! Unfortunately the resort was really big with lots of roads going all over the place, so we quickly lost track of where we wanted to go. You can look at maps all you want, when you go / drive up to an abandoned place, it usually looks different – it’s like Mike Tyson once said: Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth. And the snow hit us hard. As it turned out we made it to the northwestern end of the premises with a large hotel, where half a dozen cars with license plates were parked. I got out of the car while my co-explorer turned around and slowly drove towards the entrance/exit as we both were worried that we might get stuck in the blizzard, given that the roads weren’t in great shape and we didn’t have winter tyres or 4WD. The hotel was properly locked up and the whole area wasn’t really explorable given the weather conditions, so I snapped a few quick shots before we got the hell out of Dodge and went on to greener pastures…

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