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Archive for the ‘Abandoned’ Category

Zone Of Alienation – Pripyat: Propaganda Room

Posted in Abandoned, Europe, Map, Theater, Ukraine, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Zone Of Alienation on 2011/01/21| Leave a Comment »

The Propaganda Room is one of the few locations I have barely anything to tell about and I was actually wondering if it’s worth to dedicate it its own posting. But on the other hand it would have been a waste to squeeze it in the general observations about Pripyat, so here we are…
This ground floor location is actually part of the Palace of Culture, though we entered through a separate entrance. Maxim always called it Propaganda Room, so I just go with the name. As you can see on the photos it was filled with large paintings of politicians and symbols as well as props like chests and a throne – so some people on the internet refer to the room as the “prop room”, claiming it was occupied by the local theater group. I guess in the end it might have been a mix of both – there was just not enough material to provide the whole town with propaganda material for May Day. Especially since some of the stuff was rather general (like the painting depicting Lenin) or simply outdated – the “CCCP 60” sign obviously celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was four years prior to the evacuation of Pripyat.
The Propaganda Room was a nice five minute stop on the way from the Amusement Park to the Supermarket, so expect the next posting here rather soon, too…
(If you would like to know more about my trip to the Zone Of Alienation please *click here* to get to the “Chernobyl & Pripyat” special. For a map of the area please *click here*.)

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Zone Of Alienation – Pripyat: Amusement Park

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Europe, Map, Pripyat, Ukraine, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2010, Zone Of Alienation on 2011/01/16| 20 Comments »

Did you ever wonder why the famous Pripyat amusement park is almost always about the ferris wheel? Well, the answer is simple: There is not a lot more to see.
The amusement park actually barely deserves that title, since it wasn’t a Disneyland or Universal Studios type of theme park, but more like a travelling, temporary kind of old-style amusement park. It was set up in celebration of May Day 1986, but the tragedy happening on April 26th was cause for a change of plans: The park was opened for one day to distract people from what was happening only a few kilometers away at the nuclear power plant. When the city of Pripyat was abandoned on April 27th so was the amusement park. (This is a fact widely unknown – most sources state that the park was never opened, but there are pictures in existence showing people standing in line in front of the rides.)
Now the (actually not so big, but nevertheless beautiful) ferris wheels rusts away next to a small and simple merry-go-round, a boat swing and a bumper car – hard to imagine that this small collection of rides was once considered an attraction for 50,000 people…
Another fact people usually don’t know about the amusement park: It’s one of the most contaminated areas in Pripyat. Parts of it are perfectly clean, but others are still highly radioactive. While the concrete parts are mostly safe nowadays, the surrounding moss can be as high as 25 µSv/h (microsievert per hour) – the radioactive particles were simply washed into the soil. Walking across such a spot like that won’t harm you instantly, but you don’t wanna build a house there as it is about 400 times the normal terrestrial radiation…
The amusement park is one of the standard locations included in pretty much every Pripyat tour – especially since it gained massive popularity after it was rebuilt in video games like “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl” and “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare”.
Before you start looking at the pictures below I hope you will enjoy an Abandoned Kansai first: I uploaded a short video of about 75 seconds to Youtube. Unedited, 720p. I hope it’s a worthy addition to this article…
(If you would like to know more about my trip to the Zone Of Alienation please *click here* to get to the “Chernobyl & Pripyat” special. For a map of the area please *click here*. If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* and *follow this blog on Twitter* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

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Zone Of Alienation – Pripyat: The Palace Of Culture “Energetik”

Posted in Abandoned, Europe, Map, Museum, Pripyat, School, Spa / Onsen, Sports, Ukraine, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Zone Of Alienation on 2011/01/12| 2 Comments »

The Palace of Culture was a typical institution of the Eastern bloc. The huge buildings were the meeting point for people to enjoy all kinds of recreational activities like sports and arts – and of course they were used for political indoctrination. The PoC usually included a cinema (some of them with several screens), a concert hall, dance studios, a swimming pool, study halls, a boxing ring, rooms with a variety of instruments, an area with tools for all kinds of do-it-yourself stuff and many, many more things – and of course Pripyat had a Palace of Culture, too, being one of more than 137,000 in the Soviet Union in 1988…
Energetik, the local Palace of Culture, was located directly at Pripyat’s center square, Lenin Square, and nowadays is one of the most visited locations in the world’s most famous abandoned city. One reason is that Energetik is on the way to everybody’s favorite Pripyat motive, the amusement park’s ferris wheel – the other is that the building offers a lot of variety on a relatively small space. Crossing Lenin Square Maxim was raving about how beautiful the place must have been 30 ago, given that the huge open space once was the home of a good part of the previously mentioned 33,000 rose plants.
I, on the other hand, was just fascinated by the unique, sad beauty that makes Pripyat what it is today. Struck by awe I entered the Palace of Culture and didn’t even know where to start taking pictures. Anywhere else in the world exploring this building would have taken at least half a day, but I somehow had the feeling that I would have that much time – in the end I had about 50 minutes…
Pripyat’s Palace of Culture is actually in pretty bad shape. Like most other buildings in the zone there isn’t a single window still intact, so the forces of nature – up to 40 degrees Celsius in summer, down to minus 20 in winter – did quite some damage in the past; and having tourists visiting the place every other day doesn’t help much either I guess. Most of the rooms were severely vandalized (a long time ago though!), the cinema barely recognizable. Bushes and little trees were growing inside of some rooms and many of the mural paintings were crumbling away…
Exploring the different kinds of rooms was an amazing experience, but one moment stuck with me in a special way. It happened when I walked through a hallway towards what I assumed was the main gymnasium in the building. As I entered the huge room I looked outside the gigantic front of window frames and saw the famous ferris wheel 100 meters away in the background. Unexpected and absolutely mind-blowing… still gives me goose-bumps when I think back now.
Sadly only a couple of minutes later Maxim made us hurry-up for the first time – the amusement park was waiting just for us…
(If you would like to know more about my trip to the Zone Of Alienation please *click here* to get to the “Chernobyl & Pripyat” special. For a map of the area please *click here*.)

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Zone Of Alienation – The Red Forest / Pripyat In General

Posted in Abandoned, Europe, Map, Pripyat, Ukraine, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Zone Of Alienation on 2011/01/09| 5 Comments »

When people talk about the ruins of the Zone Of Alienation they usually say Chernobyl, but mean in fact Pripyat. As I already described, Chernobyl appears to be a rather normal countryside town, except for the fact that it’s populated just temporarily by its inhabitants.
The real ghost town in the area is called Pripyat, named after the local river that provided the nearby nuclear power plan with water. Founded in 1970 it was planned and built with the purpose of housing the people working at the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station, now known as the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Prior to the disaster it was the home to almost 50,000 people with an average age of just 26 years in more than 13,400 apartments in 160 buildings. The city had 15 primary schools, 5 secondary schools and 1 professional school, a hospital for 410 patients, 25 stores, 27 eateries, 10 gyms, 3 indoor swimming-pools , 2 stadiums and 35 playgrounds. At that time Pripyat was famous for its 33,000 rose plants and almost 250,000 shrubs – a green paradise about 100km north of Kiev. It was a city for privileged people with high incomes; the local police station nevertheless looks scary to this very day…
While the town of Chernobyl benefited from the east wind on the time of the disaster Pripyat got hit directly. To get to Pripyat you have to pass a bridge across train tracks, now called the “Bridge of Death” – a couple of children watched the spectacular lights during the accident standing on the bridge while the wind blew the radiation in their direction; they were amongst the first people to die… It nevertheless took authorities 36 hours to start the evacuation of Pripyat. To speed it up they told the population they should bring only necessary things as they would be back after three days – Pripyat is a ghost town ever since.
Nowadays, after almost 25 years (the anniversary of the disaster will be in April) it is relatively safe to enter Pripyat. Since the isotopes released during the accident were rather short-lived (and due to the work of 800,000 so-called “liquidators”) the radition in Pripyat barely ever exceeds one microsievert per hour – one exception would be the basement of the hospital were were strongly advised not to enter. Aside from natural decay the already mentioned liquidators were the main cause of destruction / vandalism in Pripyat. When new buildings in the not so severely contaminated Chernobyl were constructed, the planners weren’t able to provide enough furniture, so the liquidators took it from Pripyat since it wasn’t needed there anymore. So while most buildings in Pripyat are still standing a lot of them are actually quite empty, some vandalised by frustrated workers – other than that you can find a couple of graffiti all over the town, done by a French guy a couple of years ago. Other than that it’s 25 years of natural decay…
On our 15 minute ride from Chernobyl to Pripyat Maxim, the guide, asked us what we wanted to see first and since we had no specific plans we asked for a “Best Of” tour with spontaneous adjustments once in a while. We made a quick stop at the Pripyat City Sign right outside of the city where we could also have a look at some trees that died from the intense radiation at the time of the disaster (the so-calld Red Forest) – right next to them an abandoned building of the forest authority.
Pripyat itself, fenced off and guarded by another post who, once more, checked our permission papers, is pretty much reclaimed by nature. The streets are free since there are almost daily tours to the city, but they are in horrible condition – no road builders in Pripyat for 25 years… Most buildings are completely surrounded by trees and bushes, some of them are not even visible anymore from the streets.
The atmosphere in Pripyat is truly unique – very quiet, very sad, you can almost hear your own thoughts. Since we had our private guide and driver we were able to visit places to our liking. Luckily Maxim was a very relaxed guy who gave us enough freedom to roam; actually I spent at least half of the time by myself, although Maxim was always in sight or at least in calling distance. From an urban exploration perspective Pripyat is the ultimate location. In every other place of the world each building would be a one day exploration on its own. But Pripyat is so much more. It’s not just abandoned buildings, it’s history. It’s not an investor running out of money, it’s not a movie set – it’s the real thing. Catastrophic events happened there 25 years ago and pretty much everybody, even unborn at the time, knows what you are talking about when you mention “Chernobyl”…
Okay, this was the last wordy posting with few pictures about the Zone Of Alienation. From now on it’ll be all about the locations I’ve visited during the two days in the zone, in the same order I’ve actually visited them – with lots of spectacular photos.
(If you would like to know more about my trip to the Zone Of Alienation please *click here* to get to the “Chernobyl & Pripyat” special. For a map of the area please *click here*.)

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The Tokushima Countryside Clinic (徳島田舎診療所)

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hospital, House, Japan, Shikoku, Tokushima, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/12/24| 12 Comments »

Doing urban exploration it’s hard not step into the trap of chasing only after the famous locations like Gunkanjima or Nara Dreamland – everybody has them (for good reasons), so you kind of gotta have them, too. But it’s important to stay open minded and not just look for the big ones when doing research. Because if you are really dedicated and incredibly lucky every once in a while you will stumble across a hidden gem that will blow your mind unexpectedly. Ladies and gentlemen: The Tokushima Countryside Clinic…
I saw the Tokushima Countryside Clinic (徳島田舎診療所) on a small Japanese travel blog about half a year ago. Although its location is quite remote I was able to pin it down. Jordy knew about the place, too, and was even more eager than myself to see the place (I was actually only moderately excited about it beforehand), so we decided to go there first thing on the second day of our road trip to Shikoku – abandoned hospitals are hard to find, but Japanese countryside clinics are almost unknown. Up till now the secret Doctor’s Shack was the benchmark for that type of haikyo, but over the last couple of years it lost quite a bit of its former attraction as it’s not that secret anymore and suffered a lot from vandalism. With the discovery of the Tokushima Countryside Clinic I’m sure its reputation will go down in no time…
I’ve been to several famous locations in Japan and I enjoyed most of them, but this really unknown find came with almost no expectations and therefore captured my heart in no time. Big but quite unremarkable from the outside I entered the TCC through the only room of the building partly collapsed, the former front desk. While Jordy instinctively went to the pharmacy part to the right (which had a sign that straight-up said “If you want medicine you have to pay cash!”) I had a look around on the first floor and finally settled in the treatment room. Abandoned about 32 years ago (as Jordy found out later talking to some locals) the TCC offered an almost endless amount of items and angles. There was so much to see it didn’t get boring for a second, from syringes and rusty needles over patient files to medical books and instruments – and since the partly boarded-up place had hardly any visitors during the last few decades the atmosphere there was just amazing.
I thought maybe 20 minutes had passed when Jordy suggested after 1.5 hours (!) that we should switch rooms. So I went over to the pharmacy, wondering if it was really a good idea to take pictures in a room filled with all kinds of odors. I was setting up my tripod in the narrow pharmacy, but it took me another 10 minutes or so to realize that there was another tiny room behind it, filled with hundreds of bottles, flasks and cardboard boxes full of more medicine and chemicals. Whenever I thought I’ve seen everything there was more. Like when Jordy asked me half an hour later if I had seen the study room behind the examination room – of course I hadn’t! I shot in that room for more than one and a half hours and didn’t even realize there was another (opened) door… So I made my way over to the study room and took some more pictures of books, test tubes and other stuff.
The rest of the TCC was a mansion-like estate with a beautiful huge living room set in complete darkness (harboring a gorgeous house shrine) and a spacious kitchen including a brick-built oven. The sleeping rooms must have been on the second floor and in another building that was also used as a storage.
Overall the Tokushima Countryside Clinic is a haikyoist’s dream and I have to admit it totally blew my mind – it’s unique, it’s in great condition, it’s virtually unknown and I had almost no expectations when going there. I spent about four hours shooting (due to the difficult but interesting lighting conditions exposure times went as high as 30 seconds) and I guess I could have spent another four if there wouldn’t have been other locations on the schedule for that day. The TCC is without a doubt my favorite location in Japan so far and I guess it’s the perfect opportunity to finally present you my favorite location worldwide – so next week I’ll finally start the long overdue series about Pripyat and Chernobyl…
I decided to publish the photo set of this location in black and white to stress its unique atmosphere; finally a simple form of post-production – *please have a look at the color version here*.

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The Ohmi Lodge (大見山荘)

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/12/17| Leave a Comment »

Right next to the Young People’s Plaza and Museum was a building named 大見山荘 according to the kanji above the entrance – the ‘Ohmi Lodge’ or ‘Big View Mountain Villa’. Sadly there is hardly any information about the place available, but it’s safe to say that it was opened and closed along with the close-by monument and museum, providing accommodationto people who wanted to stay in the area overnight while avoiding the costs of the luxury hotel a couple of hundred meters down the road. With about 20 guest rooms, a conference room and a restaurant room the Ohmi Lodge must have been perfect for school trips – nowadays the abandoned building is almost completely empty, tagged with graffiti and without a single undamaged door or window. Luckily the architecture was quite interesting, so I decided to dedicate the Ohmi Lodge its own posting on this blog…


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The Young People’s Plaza & Museum

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Monument, Museum, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/12/09| 5 Comments »

Growing up in Germany education about history is almost omnipresent, both in school and on TV. Most people know about the proud events and people of the past – Arminius defeating the Romans, Charlemagne unifying Europe, Ludwig van Beethoven becoming one of the greatest composers of all time, the German Revolution of 1848, … there are too many to name. But people also learn about the darkest time of German history – the years 1933 to 1945; those 12 and a half years out of thousands of years of German history actually make up for about a third of the school’s history classes, most of the rest being used to educate students to be good democrats: the ancient Greeks, the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution and similar events are all taught with a purpose.
After studying Japanese history and living in Japan for a couple of years it strikes me that Japanese schools handle history a bit differently. It’s all about the proud samurai past, World War II takes up only a couple of pages in history school books, downplaying events like those in Nanking 1937 by calling them incidents – while the rest of the world uses terms like “massacre” or “rape”. Popular places to remember World War II in Japan nowadays are Hiroshima and the Yasukuni Shrine… remembering losses Japan had to suffer, not so much remembering the misery Japan spread all over Asia from 1931 to 1945.
Until a couple of years ago there was another rather huge memorial accessible to the public: The Young People’s Plaza (若人の広場), dedicated to the young people who lost their lives in World War II. Designed by the famous architect Kenzo Tange in 1966 and opened in 1967 this impressive monument with an appendant museum is towering 25 meters high over the once so strategically important straight between Shikoku and Awaji Island. In 1995 the Young People’s Plaza was closed down due to dwindling visitor numbers and irreparable damage caused by the Great Hanshin Earthquake earlier that year. An important part of the centerpiece, an eternal flame placed right at the concrete sculpture once protecting it, was removed since then.
The museum, beautifully embedded into the breathtaking landscape and located on the way to the monument, was once filled with items left behind by the students who went to war, countless pictures and information boards telling their stories. It seems like the museum was boarded up in 1995, but as with all locations like that you will always have people trying to make their way in. Worried about the exhibits all 2000 items of historical value were donated to the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, which is part of the Ritsumeikan University, in 2004. Nowadays the museum is almost completely empty and a rather spooky place…


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Jumbo Club Awaji Island

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/12/03| Leave a Comment »

The information I had about the first destination of my little road trip was little – but at least I knew what it was beforehand and I’ve seen a picture. The second destination was just a grey building on a map. No picture, no information about it, not even the certainty that it was really abandoned. But it was on our way to some other locations, so we thought it couldn’t hurt to have a quick look. The quick look turned into a 2 hour long shooting of a hotel once called “Jumbo Club Awaji Island”. I tried to do some research on the place after I came back, but I couldn’t find anything (neither with the Romaji nor with the Japanese name), so I have no problems calling the hotel by its real name. If the calendar hanging in the kitchen is any indication on when the hotel was abandoned then it’s save to say that it happened in 1996 – just before the internet boom.
Once boarded up and fenced off the Jumbo Club hotel now is an easy walk in location if you don’t get spotted by neighbours and close-by companies. Nevertheless we didn’t rush into the place but approached it carefully since there was an intense stench clearly noticeable from the outside. We entered cautiously and my fellow explorer, who foolishly spearheaded the exploration with audacity, froze in shock right after he entered the lobby – never before was a harmless poster of a beautiful woman more scary. But that didn’t slow down his drive at all and just minutes later he found the reason for the stench – it seems like the Jumbo Club Awaji Island is now very popular amongst cats, one panicking in the first room he tried to enter. My fellow explorer closed the door to let the fury furry fella calm down and we explored the rest of the building. Which wasn’t nearly as exciting as those first few minutes…
The Jumbo Club Awaji Island turned out to be a normal tourist hotel with Japanese style rooms, Western style restrooms and some nice public bathrooms with a great view. Although the holes in the barricades outside made us expect a totally trashed place the hotel was in fact barely touched. An emptied fire-extinguisher here and some… no, actually no “some” – pretty much all the other damage could have been a result of 15 years of natural decay. All the rooms I’ve entered looked extremely clean, as if you could move in right away – except for the two or three that were inhabited by some birds for a while and therefore were covered with feces. The main kitchen on the first floor didn’t make a trustworthy impression, but who wants to clean up after the last dinner when nobody will ever use the kitchen again anyways? Other than that there was no vandalism: No trashed rooms, no ripped out fixtures, no signs of arson, no broken china scattered all over the place.
Overall the Jumbo Club hotel was an unspectacular but pleasant surprise. I’ve never been to an abandoned hotel in that remarkable condition and the beautiful weather outside made it a relaxed exploration. Oh, and just in case you wonder: Before we left my fellow explorer opened the door of the first room again, but the cat already found its way out…

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N# Nursery School

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Kindergarten / Nursery, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/11/26| 4 Comments »

Okay, let’s kick off the travel series with a rare, but unspectacular location: The N# Nursery School. (Sorry for bleeping the name. This haikyo isn’t well-known at all and I don’t wanna be the guy who reveals too much about this untouched place.) I saw it only once on the net so far – luckily it came with a map, so it was easy to find…
Sadly the map didn’t come with any information. So all I can tell you is that the 1983 built nursery school is located in a very remote area within a beautiful landscape that was in full bloom even in late November; and that all the doors and windows were locked, so I was only able to take some outside pictures. Which wasn’t too much of a loss since the rooms seemed to be empty anyways, judging by looking through the windows. Luckily the N# Nursery School came with a small playground and the weather was very pleasant too (sunny 20 degrees Celsius), so shooting the location was a nice relaxed warm up for the things to come…

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Haikyo Road Trip To Shikoku

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hospital, Hotel / Ryokan, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Kindergarten / Nursery, Kochi, Pachinko, School, Shikoku, Spa / Onsen, Tokushima, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/11/24| 16 Comments »

Recently I went on a three day road trip to Awaji Island and Shikoku. Fellow urban explorer Jordy came down to Kobe, we rented a car and off we went. Since Jordy likes to drive and I like to do research we combined our powers to go to some places off the beaten tracks. Pretty much all of the locations will be English speaking firsts, some of them are even barely known to the Japanese haikyo community – including two original finds: A pachinko parlor with all the machines and a hotel called shangri-la. In addition to that we went to an abandoned monument (with a museum right next to it), another hotel, a nursery school, a restaurant with a spectacular view, an abandoned and very countryside elementary school, a spa built on a cliff and, most important of all, an abandoned doctor’s house that makes the previously posted Doctor’s Shack look like… well… a shack.
Please enjoy the preview pictures below – a series of articles about the trip will start ASAP, most likely by the end of this week.

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