Abandoned Kansai

I still remember very well when I first heard about this spa/gym being closed about 12 years ago. My first thought was: This will be a great abandoned place one day! My second thought was: Konami will never allow that to happen! I guess I was wrong… and right… within seconds. It’s actually a pretty spectacular abandoned place now – and one of the worst at the same time!

I’m sure most of my audience knows Konami as a great developer of video and arcade games in the 1980s and 90s, to some extent in the 2000s and past that, too. Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, Silent Hill, Contra, Dance Dance Revolution, classics like Gradius and Frogger. When Konami developed the Diet Mode for Dance Dance Revolution, they partnered with a company called People, which itself was a subsidiary of Nichii, later renamed to Mycal, before finally bought and absorbed by Aeon. People ran gyms and other fitness facilities, some as designated operator for a few municipalities all over the country. In 2001 Mycal sold People to Konami (or rather the subsidiary Konami Sports) and their fitness clubs were rebranded to Konami Sports Club. When Aeon took over Mycal in 2009, the Konami Sports Clubs in Aeon malls became Aeon Sports Clubs – for reasons I still don’t fully understand, but as you can see, the whole situation is rather complicated, both regarding the facilities and the corporate structures.
I actually was a member of Konami Sports Club for about 5 or 6 years from 2007 on – and mine was basically a gym with two studios for classes and a large indoor pool for laps. So when I first heard about this soon to be closed gigantic fitness club with more than half a dozen studios and a spa area, I couldn’t believe that it actually was a Konami Sports Club; now that I’ve done all this research, I assume it’s one of those rather fancy People locations Konami took over in 2001.
Anyway, the Konami Sports Club Kansai was closed in August 2014 and at first I was eager to have look, but given that the chain was still active and that Konami was involved, I was convinced that the building would either be used in a different way or torn down. Initially I thought about it once in a while, but then I simply forgot about it…
Until 6 weeks ago or so. In March a bunch of urbex tourists from overseas with a huuuge following across all kinds of social media accounts (several with +500k followers each on Facebook alone!) published a dozen or so photo sets and videos of their tour through Japan. Now, I never hid my disgust for those locusts ever since the *Nara Dreamland* days and it only got worse since one of them dragged the *Billionaire’s Mansions* from their cozy shadowy place into the spotlight right before the pandemic hit – I wrote an article *about them being vandalized* in 2023, but the situation has gotten so much worse since then. They are basically a pile of trash now. I’m not saying that those urbex tourists vandalized these places, but the Japanese urbex scene is rather small and secretive, so when some money driven, management organized, international self-promoters with millions of followers draw that many eyes on a location, including locals of course, it’s only natural that it gets a lot more visitors all of a sudden. Despite the rumors, some Japanese people actually understand English – and even worse: While those urbex tourists are all high and mighty about not revealing places while in their home countries, they apparently couldn’t care less when in Japan. “Sorry, we don’t reveal location names!” Dude, you have the logo with the name of the place on two or three of your photos! There are stores visible in the background! Yes, YOU can’t read Japanese and YOU are too lazy to run your photos through basic Google functions, but there are about 127 million people who can speak Japanese and potentially billions who are familiar with the internet, especially now in the days of smartphones and AI… FFS!
Anyway, one of the locations the urbex tourists presented was a really cool gym/spa facility. They didn’t reveal the name on pictures in this case, but the building looked strangely familiar and there were big company logos visible in the background. I started to google one and their locations, when it hit me suddenly: That Konami Sports Club! This could be the Konami Sports Club from back in 2014! 30 seconds later I had the location confirmed and an urgent exploration scheduled. Why did those morons not reveal the name of this place? Because it closed in August 2014 and by March 2015 Konami had the branding removed from the building! I’m not sure who owns the building now, but of course a company like Konami didn’t risk to be associated with a large abandoned fitness club. The tourists probably didn’t even know that it was a Konami Sports Club, because as it turned out, the facility was basically empty. All the training machines were gone, all the equipment was gone. The star was the building, which I am totally fine with. The location should always be the star of urbex… and if only the building is left, so be it. Unfortunately the building wasn’t just empty, it already had been vandalized, most likely by metal thieves and bored local youth. Japan is in steady decline, vandalism and graffiti become more common by the month. With the vandalism came the water and with the water came the mold. As cool as some of the photos of this set look, it was a really nasty, uncomfortable exploration, especially since I went in the afternoon on an overcast and slightly rainy day – and I’m glad that I didn’t wait till August… Not much else to say about this solo exploration though. Empty, spectacular building, nasty conditions. I wish I would have not forgotten about the place and gone there right after the metal thieves swept in, probably sometime during the pandemic or just after Japan opened the floodgates.
Oh, and in case you wonder why I’m rather open with pictures and information about this place now: Last weekend, about 4 weeks after my initial exploration of the Konami Sports Club Kansai, I went back with an old urbex buddy for a quick look to show him around. Turns out that the place had gotten a lot worse in the month that had passed. We could smell the mould and decay from the street as there were more windows broken. There was more graffiti everywhere, there was a lot more vandalism – and as a result whole areas were flooded. Only a few centimeters, but it’s not the kind of water that you want to be exposed to or even touch. I guess I wasn’t the only person after all who recognized the place based on a bunch of shitty flash photos taken with mobile phones. (I don’t know a single even somewhat serious explorer in Japan who doesn’t use a proper camera…) So why wait with an article? I don’t reveal much of the surrounding area, the full real name or even a pin on a map… If you are good enough to find the place based on my article and you really want to go: Be my guest! Enjoy your lung full of black mould air and shoe full of still water…

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