Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Haikyo’ Category

Nightmare Pachinko Parlor

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Pachinko, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2020/05/19| 1 Comment »

A rundown abandoned „Japanese pinball“ venue with a shocking surprise on the upper floor – welcome to the Nightmare Pachinko Parlor!

In recent weeks pachinko parlors quite often made national news during the coronavirus crisis in Japan, especially in Tokyo and Osaka, when several prefectures ordered them to close temporarily as they were / are considered hotspots for spreading the disease. In addition, legally opened parlors attracted attention, when gamblers from prefectures with successful shutdowns crossed borders specifically to play pachinko, The 1985 opened Nightmare Pachinko Parlor fell into neither category as it was closed down for good (or should I say „bad“?) more than a decade prior to my exploration in 2017; a decade that didn’t treat the establishment kindly…
It was a cold, rainy autumn day and the trash scattered all across the slightly overgrown parking lot lowered my hope of having found another good abandoned pachinko parlor significantly – the busted doors and windows didn’t help either… The good news: It was still there and easily accessible. The bad news: Pretty much everything else. Because of course the inside was severly vandalized and dark instead of pristine and well-lit. But that’s not all! Since it took me a while to take pictures due to the difficult lighting, my buddy R. kept exploring the rest of the building – which included a soba and udon restaurant as well as the non-public rooms upstairs, usually a mix of offices and living spaces for owners and employees. And when I was finally documenting one of the rooms that was either part of the restaurant or the prize exchange (you can’t win money with pachinko, only „gifts“ of limited value), which included the boxes of several sex toys, R. came back and told me a little disturbing story. While he was upstairs he saw a young guy hiding in the cabinets! Since there was no longer exchange of words we don’t know if it was somebody hanging out there for the afternoon, if he was some kind of squatter (very unusual in Japan!) or maybe a murderer on the run, but R. suggested that I could have a look myself in case I didn’t believe him. But there is one thing you can believe me – I believed him! And I had not the slightest urge to turn this really bad exploration into a nightmare…

Exploring the Nightmare Pachinko Parlor felt more like a duty than fun (it was there, so I had a look…) – but I’m generally not a big fan of rundown, vandalized, trashed places on rainy days. Add unexpected people to the mix and it’s even worse. If you want to see some abandoned pachinko parlors in much better condition and find out more about the economics of pachinko, please have a look *here* and *here*.

(*Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* or *follow us on Twitter* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

Read Full Post »

Seto Inland Sea Rest Stop

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Restaurant, Travel, Urbex on 2020/04/28| 10 Comments »

A nice little original find along of one of Japan’s most beautiful coastlines – the Seto Inland Sea Rest Stop!

The Seto Inland Sea separates three Japanese main islands (Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku) from each other and is part of eleven prefectures. While some areas are highly industrialized (especially the part from Kansai Airport to Himeji and near cities like Hiroshima, Takamatsu, and Tokushima) others are popular tourist spots famous for their beauty – like Miyajima, the Seto Naikai National Park, and Shodoshima). And where you have tourists, you almost automatically have abandoned tourist infrastructure, like hotels and restaurants.
The Seto Inland Sea Rest Stop was a large restaurant and omiyage shop in one of those touristy areas – closed and boarded up about 15 years ago according to the last calendar. I found this place by chance on GoogleMaps and it turned out to be a nice, quick exploration I’ve never seen anywhere else before… or after. Not a spectacular place, but with lots of parking space and rather easy access – and relaxed original finds I’ll take over photographed to death spots any day, especially since this one hasn’t been vandalized (yet). A fun little spot that offered some nice photo opportunities with an abandoned, but not rundown / destroyed look. If it was for me, I’d do one of those every other weekend…

(*Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* or *follow us on Twitter* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

Read Full Post »

Flooded Bungalow Village

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2020/04/07| 2 Comments »

About five years ago this would have probably been one of the most stupid stories you’ve ever heard, but in the day and age of social media insanity you’ll probably like: “Yeah, really dumb – but not as bad as…”

Japan being a mountainous country, land reclamation has a long and important history – from trying to drain the swamp that is Osaka City to the construction of Kansai International Airport on its own artificial island just off the coast of Osaka Prefecture; flat land is very much appreciated in Japan for everything from housing to agriculture to solar farms.
In this very specific case somebody had the idea to dam off some rather flat land along the coast and use the area to create salt evaporation ponds, regulating the constantly rising water with pumps. Sounds like a pretty good idea as long as the saltern makes money. Which apparently was the case until the late 1970s. Then somebody decided to turn the flat piece of land into a bungalow resort with four tennis courts, a swimming pool and a driving range – which seemed to be successful while it was new and during the bubble economy, but in the 90s the whole thing was doomed and the drains pumps were turned off… and the bungalow village was slowly flooded, with only one building “surviving”. (It’s a death trap now, too…) Interestingly enough nobody cared to clean up first – when you look closely you can see traffic signs, cars, and of course several bungalows sticking out of the water. Along the dam that separates the flooded area from the sea are a couple of dry patches of land next to the last dry building, but I guess it’s safe to say that nobody should build something there as it is most likely going to flood or is flooded temporarily during periods of heavy rain. The day I had a closer look I found a dead fish there, a feast for one or some of the countless seabirds occupying the area now.

I don’t know why exactly, but considering the current situation in Japan, I felt like it was about time to write about the Flooded Bungalow Village – a touristy place deliberately drowned by it’s owner. Most of the people reading this live in countries that are under lockdown currently while Japan is still more or less pretending that the water isn’t rising… or that a deadly virus isn’t spreading at a potentially devastating rate. Anyway, enjoy the gallery – and let’s hope that this train is not going to run off a cliff. You know what happened if the articles stop…

(*Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* or *follow us on Twitter* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

Read Full Post »

Overgrown Ground Golf

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Golf, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Sports, Travel, Urbex on 2020/03/24| 2 Comments »

Abandoned golf courses in Japan are turned into solar parks more and more often – time to explore one of their tiny offshoots, an abandoned ground golf course!

Ground golf (グラウンドゴルフ), a Japanese invention is a minimalistic version of regular golf. The courses are smaller (usually 8 holes) and so is each hole of a course (between 30m and 100m) – every player only needs one ball (similar to bocce balls) and one club, which can be made of plastic, metal, or wood. In “match play” each hole nets the person with the least amount of strokes a point – winner is the person who has the most points at the end of the course. In “stroke play” the strokes of all holes are added up and the person with the least amount of strokes at the end of the course is the winner. Ground golf is especially popular amongst senior citizens in the countryside as it is easy to learn, communicative, cheap, slow paced, but still offers some form of exercise…

The Overgrown Ground Golf course was actually the main attraction of a now also abandoned hotel, but of course it was also accessible to day guest players, much like a lot of onsen hotels open their facilities to non-guests. Unfortunately there is not much to say about this location as the course was overgrown and there was little to see. Even the small club house / equipment storage at the entrance was mostly empty and pretty severely damaged at one side, with some walls missing. A quick exploration for a short article during busy weeks, when the Abandoned Kansai motto is: “A small abandoned location is better than none!” And now please enjoy the small photo gallery… and if you are into golf and / or haven’t seen it yet, check out the *Japanese Driving Range*!

(*Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* or *follow us on Twitter* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

Read Full Post »

Tom Nook’s Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2020/03/17| 5 Comments »

Wooden sculptures, old TVs and weird Japanese raccoon dog statues – if any abandoned hotel ever deserved the (obviously made-up) name “Tom Nook’s Hotel” it’s this one!

Tom Nook is without a doubt the most famous tanuki in the world. The shop owner and real estate mogul kind of stars in Nintendo’s amazing Animal Crossing game series, though some players consider the greedy turbo-capitalist, named tanukichi in the original Japanese version, a genuine antagonist. What Nintendo leaves out for good reasons: tanuki are also part of many of Japan’s stories and legends as the bake-danuki is a type of yokai (supernatural being), dating back to the nihon shoki (“The Chronicles of Japan”, finished in 720. They are usually described as upright walking and shape-changing (8 disguises!) with a foolish character. What makes them stand out visually to most people though are their massively oversized scrotums, most likely added to the character around 1200 AD when goldsmiths started to use tanuki pelts when hammering gold nuggets into leaves. The scrotums can be used to glide through the air, to trawl, and to use them as a drum. None of which Toom Nook would ever do, because he is not a bake-danuki! (Super Mario’s tanuki costumes from various games also missed the giant balls for obvious reasons – it’s impossible to jump and run if you need a wheelbarrow for your testicles to get around.)

The second I saw Tom Nook’s Hotel I knew two things: It was abandoned for sure and most likely not much fun to explore. One of those hotels you look at and know that it would be vandalized and damp. Fortunately the whole tanuki / bake-danuki thing came as a (positive) surprise, because the lobby confirmed all the concerns I had outside – it was mostly empty and pretty much vandalized. (In the rest of the article I only use the term tanuki for simplicity as the Japanese term in English commonly refers to the yokai version anyway; and if not you should realize from context.) A calendar behind a small bar from August 2010 implied that the hotel was closed almost 10 years ago and an omiyage sample box kind of confirmed that there must have been a little shop, probably in the lobby or nearby. Right after the lobby the guest rooms started… and the problems with the floors. Some were cluttered with furniture (maybe courtesy of some airsoft players?) others caved in when stepped on – and some were flat-out broken, so I had to step down half a meter on the dirt floor below to continue. So what do you do when you are exploring an underwhelming abandoned hotel like that? Right, you look for the shared baths, which tend to be the highlights of deserted accommodations in Japan. Unfortunately it was a rainy day, so everything was damp and dark, the kind of place you’ll expect to find a dead body at.
It didn’t get that bad, but fortunately the bizarre-o-meter exploded when I already had given up on the location. The rotenburo (outdoor bath) of the shared bath for men featured a strangely smiling tanuki statue. So far, so good. At least one somewhat interesting photo. Then I heard my friends laughing! “Florian, you have to see this! The tanuki in the rotenburo for women has a boner!” And indeed, there it was – as usual, the rotenburo for women was much smaller, but the tanuki’s penis was very happy to see guests! This was such a sexist dick move! (Pun intended…) Bad enough that the baths for women in Japanese hotels almost always are smaller / less elaborate, here they not only put tanuki statues in the rotenburo (which is not common at all!), but they chose the flaccid for the men’s bath and the erect one for the women’s bath. (To be honest, this is the first time I ever had to pay attention to the yokai dick as tanuki tend to have tiny penises, because the attention is on the balls, not the whole junk!)
Unfortunately the rest of the exploration turned back into the desperate hunt for at least somewhat interesting photos as nobody really wants to see rundown places – but in the end they can’t be all like the *Kanemochi Mansions*, so I took some of the quite nice view and of abandoned TVs; there’s something about those black mirrors…

In the end Tom Nook’s Hotel was a much better exploration than I expected thanks to the two tanuki statues and the three abandoned TVs, but overall it was average at best. When you hoped for a 9 in the morning, expect a 2 upon arrival and got a 5 when leaving it was just one of those days…

(*Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* or *follow us on Twitter* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

Read Full Post »

Animal Scat Mine

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Mine, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2020/03/04| 6 Comments »

Whenever I explore a new location I try to expect the worst and hope for the best, especially when it’s an original find – but the Animal Scat Mine blew me away!

A rusty roof in a forest halfway up a mountain, just a few kilometers away from known mine remains caught my attention a while ago on GoogleMaps’ Satellite View – and I didn’t do much about it since it was probably nothing. Maybe a larger hut or the last visible remains of some boring stuff like a private house or a farm. Also, halfway up a mountain meant a long ascending hike through more or less overgrown terrain, which is something I am getting to fat, old and lazy for – especially since I had to walk back again after the exploration, too, of course. But over time my curiosity grew and one day early last year I decided to add the rusty roof to an exploration schedule.
Parking was easy to find in the remote area, so was the not usable dirt road leading up the mountain – even next to the gravel “main” road it was already slightly overgrown, about 50 meters later the first trees followed. Over time the road became narrower and much more overgrown, at one point is was barely visible anymore before miraculously opening up again, though not much. And there it was… The rusty roof turned out to be a large mining building I had never seen or heard of before! (And I think I have a pretty close eye on what’s going on in the Japanese urbex scene, where only a handful of people post about truly new locations – the rest are just following the worn-out paths others walked on before them.) Fortunately the overgrown and partly landslide ridden “road” (it really was more like a trail at that point…) kept going up the hill in serpentines, so I kept following it until I reached the lower end of the building made of a solid concrete base and a superstructure made from corrugated iron and wood. No signs of vandalism whatsoever, but nature left its marks in more than one way. First of all there were piles of animal scat everywhere! Different kinds, different sizes – similar colors though. I probably should have taken pictures to look it up and learn some shit (literally!), but I didn’t, because I was too busy photographing more interesting stuff. Another of nature’s marks was a certain amount of natural decay, which enabled me to climb inside the building through a window. I took some pictures inside and then headed out again for two reasons: The path continued uphill, so I assumed (correctly) that it would lead to the top of the building – and it was already late in the day, so I was running out of time quickly. Another 10 minutes later (for a total of about an hour) I was finally at the top end of the mining building, which was complemented by several huts featuring a metal workshop, an office, a kitchen / rest room and a large control room for the electronic system. In front of the narrow building: All kinds of scrap metal and a chain conveyor system to move mine wagons. Unfortunately I was running out of time at that point and had to return downhill, but I hope I’ll be able to come back one day… despite the strenuous hike with tons of photo equipment.

The Animal Scat Mine is easily one of my favorite explorations ever, despite the hikes through somewhat difficult terrain, the worries about a bear or a boar showing up, and the lack of time at the end. But stumbling across an unknown mine when expecting a barely standing stable in the middle of nowhere is nothing short of an explorer’s dream! It was a great reward for a great effort, exploration at its purest – all of that in nature, without vandalism, but some great views. Usually I don’t do revisits, but I’m really looking forward to going back to the Animal Scat Mine… then hopefully with more than 80 minutes to explore!

(*Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* or *follow us on Twitter* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

Read Full Post »

Kanemochi Mansions

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, House, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2020/02/26| 19 Comments »

One Japanese billionaire and his three abandoned mansions – the perfect urbex location?

Gosh, there is so much to say about this guy and his three luxury mansions, but currently I have neither the time nor the motivation to write everything up properly. So please consider this a first look and a (high class) picture dump. I’m already gathering information for a proper bullshit-free article with even more spectacular photos and some videos, but there is a lot of background story to talk about, so stay tuned. Until then please enjoy the following picture set, containing photos from several visits since 2016!

(*Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* or *follow us on Twitter* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »