Abandoned Kansai

“Don’t go up to the right! It’s dangerous. There has been a bear sighting. If you want to continue here, stay low and to the left!” Wise advise from a senior citizen foraging spring herbs – the favorite food of bears after hibernation. I’m sure he knew what he was talking about, unfortunately left would have taken me away from what I suspected was an abandoned driving range halfway up a hill, so I mumbled an out of breath Arigato while huffing and puffing in my track like a tank from WWI.
Tohoku is the perfect place for some late season hanami urbex, and just a few days before I left for the big, bad, cold north I did a last quick check on GoogleMaps, when I accidentally turned left too early and desk explored a valley that I had deemed boring before. This time I stumbled across what looked like an abandoned driving range behind a large onsen just outside of a formerly famous hot spring town. Of course I changed my plans last minute to include this new original find to my itinerary, because only a few things in life are better than exploring previously unknown abandoned places. (Namely: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!)
Finally halfway up the hill I found myself in the “range” end of the driving range, took a few photos and made myself on my way to the “driving” part. The main end of the facility featured a rather large parking lot and a concrete structure reminiscent of a small sports stadium. This was a 2-storey driving range on steroids!
The exploration went rather smoothly overall, though the beginning was a bit unnerving, because the caretaker had their maintenance area decorated in a rather cozy way, so it kind of looked like somebody was living there, though hardly anybody had been there regularly for quite a while – and so it took my brain a while to figure out what was going on. I might be an experienced urban explorer, but sometimes my head goes into noob mode and is urging me to run home and play video games instead, like in the good old couch potatoe days. The driving range part was super cool and way less unnerving, so there’s not much to tell. Enjoy the photos to see what I saw…
Back at the parking lot I had the choice between backtracking (the safe choice, considering bears and the scarcity of buses in that part of Japan) and trying to find a way down the mountain along whatever path once lead up there. Since my noob brain part acted up earlier, my urbexer brain part went into punishment mode and looked for an entrance to the parking lot, which appeared to be surrounded by a forest. After a while though I found a road back down, completely covered by leaves from at least a decade or two. Steep, rather slippery, the occasional fallen blocking the way. By the time I reached the foot of the hill I was running out of time, so I took a few quick shots of the sports facilities there (including several tennis courts) before approaching the large onsen that I mentioned earlier, which was now between me and the main road with the bus stop. What if there was no way around? What if some onsen employees would spot me? What… was I doing worrying so much? So I packed my gear and tackled the situation, which could indeed have been a problem (THAT is why I was worrying so much!), but fortunately the gated road lead just past the onsen – and the gate was open with no onsen employees in sight. So off I went to enjoy the last fading cherry blossoms in a much more relaxing environment…

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