Abandoned Kansai

The first time I saw the Pyramid Park must have been around the beginning of the pandemic on a photo a friend of mine took with a drone – I fell in love with the place instantly, because it looked like an abandoned amusement park wedged between two pyramids carved from mountain peaks somewhere in the Japanese Alps or so; with a chair lift leading up to it, like some weird Machu Picchu theme park in the sky. I avoid asking for locations, even urbex friends I’ve explored with a dozen times, so it took me a while to find it – and it turned out to be in Kansai, in day trip range, actually!

I was super excited, so I invited an acquaintance of mine to come along – they asked me before if they could join me on one of my explorations, and I thought a promising remote location like that would be perfect for a first timer. We agreed on a day and when I updated them where we would go a day or two before the planned day trip, one of the weirdest conversations I ever had developed. It went something like this:
“We’ll take a train from Osaka to X, and then a bus into the mountains.”
“Uhm, that bus… will it take us through Y?”
“Yes, how do you know?”
“Oh, then I can’t come!”
“What?! Why?!”
“Well, I was an English teacher there and quite well known, because I was on local TV. When I moved away a few years ago I said I would stay in touch, but I never did. What if somebody sees me on the bus?”
“Are you kidding me? So what if somebody sees you on the bus?”
“Well, it would probably hurt their feelings, because I didn’t stay in touch and now I came back without telling anybody!”
“So what? Apparently, those people weren’t important enough to you to stay in touch, so why care about their feelings now, after all those years?”
“No, I can’t go…”
I felt a bit taken aback, but then I remembered that this was actually the second time they did that. The first time we planned weeks ahead and the day before we were supposed to go, they canceled, because they forgot that it was their birthday weekend. Not the weekend of their birthday – their birthday weekend. The birthday was on Tuesday and this was the following Saturday! I’ll never understand the obsession a lot of Americans have with their birthdays… Some already talk about their birthday months! Just make it your birthday year and you can have a little party with a little hat and a little cake every single day of your little life! Who’s a good boy/girl? You are! Yes! You are!
So, if you ever wondered why I explore more and more by myself and became reluctant to meet up with strangers to go exploring – it’s people like them. And there’s been quite a few like them over the years. I probably could write an article just about people like them. The dumb excuses I’ve heard… after they contacted me! Some were even worse…

Anyway, the Pyramid Park! Three trains and one bus to the middle of nowhere! And, of course, a breathtaking hike up a mountain…
The Pyramid Park was opened in 1998 as an addition to a town run *leisure facility* already featuring an onsen hotel, a tennis court, a large putter golf course, a dog park, and a restaurant. The park itself was basically a sports facility featuring inline skating, skateboarding, archery, punk shot basketball, and climbing – plus a bouncy dome and several slides; and of course a restaurant plus gift shop. In 2004 a typhoon hit the area and caused severe damage. When that happens, you either read on social media that “only in Japan, which lives in 2050!” the place reopened within days of the time the damage was done (for example the sinkhole in Fukuoka or the bridge to Kansai Airport) – or you’ll never hear about those things again, for example the Hidaka Main Line (partially closed for good), the Tsuragu Line (partially closed for good) or the Meisho Line (partially closed for more than six years). Or this place. Which took an additional hit by bureaucracy in 2005, when the town was absorbed into a bigger city. The new municipality kept the undamaged main facility running, but let the Pyramid Park rot, before closing it permanently in 2011.
A little more than a decade later yours truly finally showed up, huffing and puffing up that darn mountain on a godawful hot and humid September day. You’d think that early autumn in the mountains of Kansai would already be nice, but noooooooo! Maybe in the 1950s, but not anymore!
Unfortunately the place didn’t look nearly as spectacular from the ground as it did from the sky, but overall, it was still a darn good exploration! To this day the place is virtually unknown and rather hard to access, so despite the nearby hot spring, there was basically no vandalism – all natural decay. Wedged between two pyramid sides. In the mountains. Fresh air on a cloudy, humid AF day. What more can you ask for? (Other than reliable people in your life…)

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