Abandoned Kansai

The main cherry blossom season is about to begin soon, two weeks earlier than last year, so I guess the timing is right to present the Sakura Car Shop, a small car repair shop and store somewhere in the Japanese countryside.

I’m not really a fan of beaten paths and prefer to create my own, in all aspects of life, including urban exploration. So instead of exploring the same locations over and over again with the same people, I rather go on day or weekend trips with friends who are technically not urbexers… and to locations that haven’t been photographed to death. Of course I don’t miss the famous ones if they are on the way, but I take an original find over places trampled to death by management guided tourist explorers at any time. That also means that I spend a ton of times on GoogleMaps and on the road, but well… it is what it is… You have to put in some time to hone your craft. The Sakura Car Shop was a lucky find when I zoomed into StreetView again after finding what I thought was an abandoned hotel near the coast. (It turned out to be a kokumin shukusha, affordable accommodations usually run by local government near scenic spots – which means that it was completely boarded up and probably still had electricity / alarms.) Since both places were in a gorgeous area of Japan, I didn’t mind a long walk on a sunny spring day and so I headed from said hotel to the car shop in the picture book perfect countryside.
The sales room, the office, and the private living area were inaccessible, so I took a few quick shots from the outside and the accessible repair area… and that’s pretty much it. In and out in less than 20 minutes. According to StreetView the shop was still in business in 2013, but already in bad condition in 2021. 8 years between StreetView updates – welcome to the Japanese countryside…

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