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Archive for the ‘Haikyo’ Category

Sand Dune Palace In Winter

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Snow, Tottori, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2018 on 2018/02/13| Leave a Comment »

The Sand Dune Palace is one of the few well-known urbex locations in Tottori – although it shouldn’t be…

I first visited the Tottori Sand Dune Palace during Golden Week of 2012 and *wrote about it half a year later*. Built in 1965 right across the street from the famous sand dunes, Tottori’s #1 tourist attraction, the Sand Dune Palace was used as a restaurant and souvenir shop for a few decades before falling into disrepair and out of business – giving it the abandoned look both urban explorers and readers of urbex blogs like so much. But looks are deceiving… and the dune palace has actually never been really abandoned.
When I first explored the palace solo in spring of 2012 it was quite a famous urbex location, yet nobody had ever posted inside photos – which is usually a bad sign. But the building looked somewhat interesting with its round lookout on the top floor, so I gave it a chance. There were plenty of potential entry points – large windows, several doors on different floors, but they were all locked… and the outdoor staircases were blocked by rusting barbed wire. Yesterday I went back to the Sand Dune Palace with two great explorer friends on the way back to Osaka. The whole area, including the sand dunes, was covered by a thick layer of snow, so my second visit was a completely different experience, though not much less disappointing. People had cut through the barbed wire and made the higher floors accessible, but only on the outside. All the upper doors were locked, too, and nobody dares to smash a window; which is quite unusual for a building that sees some traffic passing by, but is not really in busy area. On the ground floor one of the doors apparently had been fixed… and the formerly empty main room was now filled with boxes, so clearly somebody is / was using the Sand Dune Palace as a storage facility. The question is… for how much longer? On the parking lot I saw tons of ready to use scaffolding, which gave me a serious flashback to May 2016, when I first saw scaffolding in front of *Nara Dreamland* – a few months later the greatest abandoned theme park of all time was gone…
As on my first visit, the photos of the Sand Dune Palace look much more interesting than the place actually was, so if you like the picture set below, *please click here to get to the previous exploration* for more photos!

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Japanese Chicken Farm

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Farm, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2018/02/07| 4 Comments »

Japanese men have a thing for chicks! They love young firm breasts and meaty thighs, preferably while getting drunk. And while some of those school girl fantasies could be considered borderline child pornography outside of Japan, restaurants serving chicken dishes are also quite popular…

Yakitori restaurants are amongst the most popular eateries in Japan, especially for groups and couples. As the name yakitori implies (焼き – grilled / 鳥 – chicken), those places focus on grilled chicken dishes, usually on skewers. Chicken meatballs, pieces of chicken breast, chicken hearts, chicken livers, chicken skin, chicken cartilage – the latter gives you an impression of what it is like to bite somebody’s nose or ear off, but some people seem to like it. In addition to meat there are usually some side dishes available. French fries, salads, kimchi, pickles, … Prices vary dramatically from affordable to “I didn’t want to buy the whole friggin’ farm!” and depend on several factors, like most restaurants. Since Japanese people tend to prefer fatty thigh meat over the perceived dry breast meat, rather cheap chicken chain places often serve breast meat – much to the joy of most foreigners, who tend to prefer breast meat. In any case, yakitori restaurants are awesome places to hang out with colleagues or friends for a quick dinner or to have food and alcohol all night long… and unlike at *yakiniku restaurants* you get your food properly cooked and don’t have to do it yourself. (BTW: While not considered a yakitori restaurant, KFC is widely popular in Japan. So popular that they managed to establish buckets of KFC chicken as a common Christmas dinner!)

Growing up in a rather small town in German I was always aware that meat comes from animals and doesn’t grow pre-packed on trees, but I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of Japanese people have never seen a chicken farm – mainly because they are much better hidden than in Germany, where you can often see them from highways or in the outskirts of small towns. In Japan they tend to be in small side-valleys or halfway up a mountain; out of sight, out of mind, out of smelling distance.
As urbex locations chicken farms are not super interesting, but ‘better than nothing’. Being unusual places only a few people have regular contact with they have the potential to feature some unusual items – like the debeaker I found at the *Poultry Farm* six years ago. The Japanese Chicken Farm was the last location of spring exploration day and got more and more interesting the further I got, which means that I ran out of light and therefore out of time after 45 minutes. At first the farm looked quite unimpressive, an agglomeration of long and narrow metal sheds, most of them more or less empty – but then there was this extremely rusted, yet still almost complete one that featured a ton of machinery and other interesting items. No word on when and why it was abandoned though…

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Hiroshima Countryside Clinic

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiroshima, Hospital, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2018/01/09| 7 Comments »

Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but puddles of sweat – urbex in July and August comes with its own set of challenges in Japan…

I think I’ve mentioned before that I usually take a break from exploring in Japan during the summer months, especially in July in August. In June the humidity in Kansai and the surrounding areas skyrockets due to the rainy season, in July the heat kicks in, and in August temperatures tend to be between 34°C (day time) and 30°C (at night) in the Kobe-Osaka-Kyoto megalopolis. You probably don’t mind if you are used to that kind of weather, but I’m from west-central Germany, where temperatures are 5°C lower in average – and humid days are rather rare… and never for up to four months in a row. In addition to that bugs are much smaller and other animals are less poisonous than in Central Japan, because… well, you know… nature likes Central Europe. But exploring is like celebrating – you have to when you have the opportunity… even if the circumstances are borderline crazy!
2017, late July, Friday evening – after a long week of work two friends of mine picked me up at home at half past 10. The goal? A 24/7 super sento (large public bath with places to sleep – on the floor in special rooms, on benches, or special chairs, …) in a suburb or Hiroshima, a “nice and easy” 4+ hour drive away from Osaka. We arrived at around 2 a.m., took a bath, and crashed on some benches at around 3 a.m. for two and a half cool hours of sleep. The sun rises early in Japan in July, we had places to go to, and time was of the essence! After a kombini breakfast, the *Horseshoe Hospital*, and a quick snack for lunch in the car we arrived at the Hiroshima Countryside Clinic pretty much exactly at high noon – and walking the 100 meters from a nearby parking lot to the hospital mansion felt like being an ant under a magnifying glass. While the partly overgrown (and partly collapsed!) mansion, roped-off by city officials to prohibit people from entering, offered protection from the sun, it did little to nothing regarding heat, humidity and gnats.
While it is hard to say how much of the damage to the Hiroshima Countryside Clinic was natural decay and how much was vandalism (some rooms were nearly untouched, others looked like some people vented their frustrations), it’s easy to say that this was a fascinating exploration. I just love those old countryside clinics, mansions with doctors’ offices. There was so much to see, so many unusual items to take pictures of – like the creepy dolls in the living room, the German medical books, or the labels for medicine bottles.

When we left after just 1.5 hours it was a bittersweet departure. On the one hand I would have loved to stay at least another 1.5 hours to finish taking pictures, on the other hand I was happy to get back to an air-conditioned area. At that point I was literally dripping of sweat, my T-shirt wasn’t able to hold an additional drop. To accelerate the drying process in the car I actually took it off and wrung it out – much to the entertainment of my fellow explorers. Apparently one of my many useless ‘skills’ in life is ‘sweating’… Sadly I’ll never get a chance to return to the Hiroshima Countryside Clinic, one of the little known abandoned hospitals in Japan – last week I found out that it has been demolished shortly after my visit; again bittersweet… On the one hand I would have loved to have another look, on the other hand I am forever grateful to my friends who took me there… and for my decision to join them, because when you have the opportunity to explore, you better take it – there might not be a next time!

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Shimane Temple

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Temple, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2018/01/02| 5 Comments »

About two years ago I first wrote about hatsumode, the first shrine / temple visit of the new year, on the *Facebook page of Abandoned Kansai* after exploring the *Shiga Shrine*. Let’s make abandoned temples and shrines a new New Year’s tradition by following up with the Shimane Temple…

As I mentioned before, I take much pride in the fact that I do the vast majority of my location research myself, which often is a slow and tedious process, but extremely rewarding when successful. Since the spring of 2016 I’ve been extremely lucky to explore on occasion (i.e. two or three times a year) with an amazing Japanese couple and their friends. Explorations that include the weirdest hours (getting up at 3:30!), but also locations I haven’t even heard of before – and strangely enough after, it’s almost as if they create their own places that mysteriously vanish after we leave. And all I have left as proof are some quick photos and shaky videos… (I guess that’s the advantage of being well-connected – and being native speakers!)
One of those mysterious trips / locations included the Shimane Temple. At least I think it was in Shimane, Japan’s second least populous prefecture – but who knows for sure? We started in the middle of the night (not at midnight!) and explored two other places before we all of a sudden stopped on a tiny mountain road on that rainy and slightly foggy autumn day. Silence for a couple of seconds, then somebody said in Japanese: “We are here – it’s to the right, over there!” And indeed there it was, mysterious, almost surreal through the low hanging clouds: A large temple building, about three storeys tall… and it looked as if a giant creature, a demon probably, ripped off its whole front. If large wooden constructions could be injured like a living being, this one had a gigantic gashing wound revealing the innards of the temple. (And aren’t there people out there considering their bodies a temple?) I had never seen or heard of this location before, so it was an extremely stunning sight as it literally and figuratively came out of nowhere. Sadly, as always, time was of the essence with my Japanese friends, so I had less than 90 minutes to explore the temple and the nearby abandoned monk’s house… enough to enjoy the amazing atmosphere up there, but barely enough to do due diligence to this unique location. (And no, I don’t know anything about this temple. Not its name, not when it was built, not when it was abandoned, not when or why it collapsed. Strangely enough I actually don’t care in this case, the lack of information just adds to the mystery of the location.)
As much as I dislike exploring on rainy days, I strongly believe that the unfortunate weather elevated the experience that day – it felt a little bit like being in a different world, being in a different time. Everything came together perfectly… like on that sunny summer day when I explored the *Kyoto Dam*.

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2017 Urbex In Review

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2017 on 2017/12/26| 9 Comments »

2017 has been a year full of ups and downs. I checked out more locations than ever before (120) with more people than ever before (20 in total!), and I actually explored more places than ever before (about 70) – and nobody is more surprised about that than I, given how the year started.

My first trip of the year was a non-urbex weekend vacation to Okinawa. I didn’t even bring my tripod, but somehow ended up near the *Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin*, which has become quite a famous abandoned place since my first visit almost five years prior. New signs had been put up, people were working in the area, so I had still no intentions to go inside again, when I saw a Japanese dude heading in… so I followed him. 2 minutes turned into more than an hour of improvised snapshots as it was an overcast day and, like I said, I had no tripod. Most memorable event of the day? Getting a blister the size of a silver dollar from wearing new shoes. Should have stuck with my beach plans, I guess…
Two weeks later a two day trip to the Izu Peninsula turned into a nightmare after one location. I jumped over a wall and didn’t land properly, and as a result twisted my knee so badly that it just slipped when I tried to walk. After some rest I was able to carefully walk again, with my tripod as a crutch and the moral support of my co-explorers who were eager to continue exploring. 4 hours later my knee was pretty much swollen stiff and I slept like a baby that night – waking up screaming in pain every hour or so. The next morning I cut the weekend short and returned to Osaka (the 45 minute drive to the Shinkansen station got me dripping with cold sweat just from sitting in the rear of the car), the following day I saw several doctors. Long story short: Stuff in my knee was sprained / stretched, but nothing was torn or broken – no surgery necessary if I take it easy, and I do till this very day. Mainly to avoid surgery…
For the following weekend I had a very important urbex day trip scheduled and I followed through with it after reassuring my friends (different ones from the weekend before!) that I’d be able to do it, despite the fact that I had no say in planning that trip and therefore had no knowledge what places we would visit. Of course the first location required climbing through a window, which would have been a challenge on a regular day, but was impossible with the busted knee. Instead of leaving me wait outside my friends got a side table and a chair and built me improvised steps, so I could follow inside – one of the nicest things anybody has ever done for me! Especially since that first location was an old wooden clinic with some amazing items left behind.
In early February my photo exhibition at *AIDA Gallery* in Osaka opened and kept me busy for pretty much the rest of the month.

In spring I did quite a few day trips that allowed me to explore pleasant surprises like the *Japanese Countryside Rest Stop* and the *Abandoned Japanese Karaoke Box*. Without a doubt the highlight of that season were the five days I spent in Hokkaido with my friend *Hamish* – that trip included the *Glückskönigreich* and the *Hokkaido Ski-Jumping Hill* as well as several other AAA locations I haven’t even mentioned yet.
Usually I take a break from exploring in summer, due to the heat, the unbearable humidity, and of course the nasty wildlife – long snakes, giant hornets, and big spiders; just to name a few. This year some unique opportunities arose and I embraced them happily, resulting for example in the exploration of the *Horseshoe Hospital*.
In autumn I was lucky enough to explore on seven weekends in a row; often just day trips, but also three days in Hokuriku, four days in Tohoku, and five days Kyushu. Theme parks, hotels, hospitals, water parks, golf courses, pachinko parlors – you name it, I explored it. Some of those trips were very focused, with strict schedules from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. – others I’d rather describe as regular vacations with recreational explorations; and all of them were fun, exciting, entertaining, painful, relaxing, … in their own ways. Sadly not nearly all of the previously mentioned 20 people will explore with me in 2018 – because they live in different countries, because they were just friends of friends, because they lost interest and rather spend their time in other ways, or because of new family members (without a doubt the best reason!). As you can see, I am always open to explore with new people – especially if they are not living in Kansai, but in other parts of Japan. Most plans fall through anyway, but I am more than happy to travel and try. (Before you consider getting in touch via e-mail: urbex can be quite expensive (rental car, gas, highway fees, …), hours are usually long (10 to 16 per day, I’d say), the weather is not always nice, and there are no guarantees that places are accessible or even still existing – there are many reasons why urbex days can be miserable…) That being said, please let me express my deepest gratitude to everyone I’ve explored with this year! I know it’s not always been easy, but at least every single day of exploration has been memorable one way or the other; especially those multiple day trips to the remote areas of Japan when even stunning locations came in second or third to great conversations and / or amazing local food. As much as I love urbex, over the years it has become more about the people I’m exploring with, some of which have become great friends – thanks for a fantastic year and cheers to new adventures in 2018!

From Okinawa to Hokkaido I’ve explored pretty much all over Japan in 2017, from some of the most famous abandoned places to original finds with the potential of becoming future classics. More than 20 of this year’s explorations I’ve already written about on this blog, some of them I’ve linked to in this very article. The gallery at the end consists of (mostly) unpublished photos taken at previously unmentioned locations in random order – please enjoy! And finally a big THANK YOU to everybody out there reading Abandoned Kansai, especially to those who write kind e-mails, leave comments here on the blog and on *Facebook*, Like and Share on Facebook and *Twitter*, or are in other ways actively supportive of this little blog; I’d probably be exploring anyway, but you are the fuel that keeps this blog running, so thanks a lot for your support and may 2018 be as great of an experience as 2017 was!

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Fukushima Theme Park

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2017/12/12| 4 Comments »

Even though the Fukushima Theme Park was never affected by radioactivity or the huge tsunami of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, it was nevertheless a victim of the circumstances caused by the costliest natural disaster in history…

The Fukushima Theme Park (not its real name…) dates back to the Japanese asset price bubble in the late 80s, when pretty much every part of the country saw itself as the next top tourist destination and money was spent with both hands. Two of the most popular investments? Theme parks and botanical gardens. So why not combine both and make it real big, as in something like 200 by 400 meters?
And so it was done… A large flower park with plenty of eateries (admission fee: 500 Yen) and about a dozen pay as you go attractions spread across the whole area – including a gigantic ball pit, with 2.5 kilometers the longest kart track in all of Tohoku, some murder mystery adventure in a converted trailer, a mini zoo, a 9 hole golf course, a 3D mini cinema called “Inner Space Vehicle”, a fishing pond, AND a… drumroll… big Ferris Wheel! Things apparently went well (more or less…) for a solid 20 years, when the Fukushima Theme Park closed in December of 2009.
In early 2011 a professional golf player invested 100 million Yen (1.2 million USD at the time) into the park to reactivate it – unfortunate timing, to say the least. Though not directly damaged by the earthquake or the tsunami, the Fukushima Theme Park of course must have been facing the same challenges as the rest of the region – blackouts, supply shortages, damaged access routes, locals with other things on mind, and the almost complete absence of tourist, both foreign and domestic. The now pretty much useless large parking lots for up to 1000 cars and 50 busses were used to build temporary housing for displaced people… Japanese people only, of course – no Syrians allowed, anywhere in Japan, at least not for humanitarian reasons. (Interestingly enough both crises started within only four days of each other…) The refugee camp existed till late summer / early fall of 2012, two years later the whole park reportedly was closed for good.
When I explored the Fukushima Theme Park with my friends Dan and Kyoko three years later, the parking lot had already been turned into a solar park. The entrance area with the gift shops and a dozen karts parked inside was in surprisingly good condition, but most of the site’s attractions were at the other end of the park. Unfortunately the area in-between was almost completely overgrown by thick vegetation… except for that piece of forest with what looked like a footpath. Well, usually I’m not the kind of person heading directly for the undergrowth, but it was getting dark quickly, I eagerly wanted to see the Ferris wheel, and I really thought I was onto something. Well, long story short: the path disappeared and the undergrowth got thicker. Giving up wasn’t an option though, and so I kinda talked my fellow explorers into following me (sorry again, guys!). About 10 minutes and several bruises and scratches later I found a way out, only to realize that the rest of the park was located on a steep slope. Darn! While Dan was scouting an easier way out I was pushing forward by myself, borderline desperate to take pictures of that darn Ferris wheel before it was getting too dark. On the way uphill I found some of the already mentioned rides and attractions, yet no sign of the Ferris wheel. Hmm… Maybe behind those big trees, following the kart track? While I was seriously considering heading out into the darkness after my friends had just caught up with me, Dan annihilated all hope of taking pictures of a Ferris wheel that day – he found the overgrown concrete foundations… though it didn’t make sense. And it still doesn’t! On Streetview from 2015 the solar park was just being built, on satellite view the park is complete and the Ferris wheel is still there, so… two years between visual confirmation and a location that looked like it had been abandoned for at least five years. Darn, darn, darn!

Well, you win some and you lose some – and overall the Fukushima Theme Park was an interesting exploration, even though the Ferris wheel was gone. And before you ask, because people ask me since March 12th 2011: No, I didn’t go nowhere near the nuclear power plant and I didn’t explore any abandoned places in the disaster zone. I’m generally not a big fan of exploring ((temporarily) abandoned) private homes, and it would feel especially ghoulish to me in this case, considering that there are still many people unable to return. This was my second trip to Tohoku since the big earthquake and again we focused on classic abandoned places, though this one here was indirectly a victim of the disaster. And don’t worry, we found some great spots – this time and last time (*Matsuo Mine*, *Taro Mine*, *Kejonuma Leisure Land*).

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Smile P&A Pachinko Parlor

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Pachinko, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2017 on 2017/12/05| 5 Comments »

“Another Pachinko parlor? Really? With no videos and just a few pictures? Are you serious?”
Well, welcome to exploration reality…

Reading the comments here and on Facebook I realize that there are quite a few misperceptions about Abandoned Kansai. While this blog and all connected social media channels (including every bit of content) are run by only one person as a hobby (although it takes as much time as a part time job…), this is far from being a one man show. I have group of about ten people I go exploring with irregularly, i.e. whenever the opportunity arises – back home in Germany usually family members and old friends, here in Japan most of the time new friends I met thanks to the blog. But we don’t go exploring every Tuesday or even every weekend – sometimes I go several weekends in a row, sometimes not for weeks. Tuesday is just the publishing day of the weekly blog article. And the articles are not in chronological order. Some locations I explored months or even years ago, some indeed just a few days prior to writing an article. More often than not I choose on Monday or Tuesday which abandoned place I’ll write about that week – not in random order, but based on how much time I have, how much material I have, what I feel like… and most importantly, what I have written about recently; just to avoid presenting three deserted hotels in a row – even though I often explore three abandoned hotels in a row; sometimes on the same day. The length of a video and the amount of pictures usually depend on how big and how interesting a location is – of course I get much more material when I stay seven hours at a place like the *Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin* than when I spend 20 minutes at the Smile P&A Pachinko Parlor… How much time I spend on a location depends of course on factors like size, how interesting it is, security, what the plans for the rest of the days are – and sometimes my fellow explorers lose their patience and want to move on.

As for the Smile P&A Pachinko Parlor – small location, not really interesting, a guy next door eyeing us, other places to check out, bored fellow explorers; 13 photos in 20 minutes, no video. One of the most rushed explorations, definitely snapshots as I didn’t have time to properly frame a single photo. As Japan becomes super busy (with all kinds of duties and parties) before shutting down for a week just after Christmas, this location is actually a blessing in disguise for the blog as I don’t have to go through a lot of photos and research, because this was just another random abandoned countryside pachinko parlor – I hope you enjoyed it anyway. And if not, you can look forward to an article about an abandoned theme park I worked on for a while… and of course to a look back at 2017, including some gorgeous photos of mind-blowing locations not yet published or even mentioned on Abandoned Kansai! Add the yearly Merry XXX-Mas article and you know what to expect for the rest of December… 🙂

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Asahi Elementary School

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, School, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2017/11/28| 4 Comments »

Snow and a giant taxidermy seal… two things I definitely didn’t expect when I was planning my trip to explore the Asahi Elementary school!

The weather forecast in Japan tends to be quite unreliable – and so the 10 to 15 centimeters of snow took me completely by surprise when I arrived by train in that small countryside town the Asahi Elementary School was in; and judging by the empty roads / the way the few people were driving, I wasn’t the only one…
After walking uphill for almost half an hour I finally reached the outskirts of town and with it the deserted school. From the outside the complex looked bigger than expected – an elevated concrete behemoth with a huge gymnasium in the background.
Entering through a side entrance I was confused – with the kitchen, dining hall, and front desk this looked more like a rundown hotel than a school. The cold didn’t add to my urge to be there either, so I felt very luckily when soon after I found a taxidermy fox. It wasn’t in good condition anymore, but neither am I, so who am I to judge? 😉
The second floor was as moldy and rundown as the first one, but it looked a little bit more like a school – confirmed by large letters on the building, “family school”; maybe some kind of boarding school? A family hotel? As I found out afterwards, the Asahi Elementary School existed only from 1975 till 1983 – then it was renamend, most likely repurposed, and used until 2006.

The biggest surprise, both literally and figuratively, I found in one of the rather dark hallways – a gigantic stuffed seal in overall decent condition! Exploring an abandoned building like that on a gloomy day alone isn’t exactly a cheerful endeavor, and believe me, taxidermy animals don’t help to relax. More space and light offered the final “room” in the building, the large gymnasium – probably #3 after a yet unpublished location and the round gymnasium of the *Taiyo Elementary School* in Haboro, also converted after being retired as a public school.

After a slightly disappointing start the Asahi Elementary School turned out to be a decent location – nothing I would travel far for, but if one is in the neighborhood for other reasons it’s well worth to have a closer look… to see if the seal has (been) moved!

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Japanese Conference Center

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2017/11/21| 7 Comments »

A small, but quintessential Japanese conference center in the Japanese countryside – but most of all: a deathtrap!

Yes, I admit it: I like abandoned places in good condition! And while I appreciate the artisan work of Japanese carpenters, I prefer the solid ground most concreters provide – especially when a house is built on a slope…
Quickly after I arrived at the Japanese Conference Center with my urbex buddy Rory and his friend Toby, it became apparent that getting into the building would be a lot easier than getting out. Located on the slope of a small hill, the cultural institute consisted of a three storey main building (guest rooms, kitchen, dining room, ofuro, meeting rooms) and several small single storey constructions featuring guest rooms. The additional buildings were of no interest (too rundown, too locked-up, too generic), but the main building was actually quite intriguing due to its typical Japanese design. The main entrance featured a slab of concrete as well as a concrete wall on the slope side and a concrete staircase leading up one floor to the once with the back entrance. Pretty much the rest of the building, including some overhanging parts, was made from wood and other traditional material – and as a result the abandoned building was not only not structurally sound anymore, it had turned into a deathtrap since the last time somebody took care of it. There were collapsed walls, collapsed floors, collapsed ceilings… and the roof was partly collapsed, too. Most of the floor was so brittle that you could hear cracking noises with every step – I am admittedly a big guy, but the problem went literally and figuratively deeper as indicated by several folding tables scattered across the worst not yet collapsed parts of the floor, a way to distribute weight of previous, presumedly much lighter explorers. Unfortunately it was often unpredictable whether one would crash down two millimeters or two meters, which is why I had to refrain from seeing the whole building (I saw most of it though…), because what’s the point of equal weight distribution when you crash through the floor while standing on a folding table?

Thanks to the almost constant danger of crashing through a floor or having a ceiling falling down on me, exploring the Japanese Conference Center was quite a nerve-wrecking experience – on the other hand it had been a while since I explored a building in that bad condition, so it was nice to see one again… I just could have done without actually going through in person, so this is one of the explorations where I enjoy the photos taken quite a bit more than actually taking them. 🙂

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Countryside Golf Course

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Sports, Urbex, Visited in 2017 on 2017/11/14| 1 Comment »

About a year ago I wrote about an abandoned driving range – now I finally explored an abandoned golf course!

The transition from summer to autumn was rather abrupt in Japan this year. In September Kansai felt like a steam sauna and nobody wanted to do anything outdoorsy – three typhoon weekends with heavy rain later people cancelled BBQs and other events because it was “too cold” outside. And of course those friggin typhoons hit the area I lived in exclusively on weekends, which meant that I had to postpone several exploration plans as exploring during strong rain and severe winds is not fun at all. Even if you plan to explore indoors the five to ten minutes you need to figure out how to enter a building can become nasty and expensive – and most pictures look a lot better when taken during sunshine, which is why I tend to be a good weather explorer. Sometime though bad weather is unavoidable, for example when on long planned multi-day trips or when the weather forecast fails you – and sadly the weather forecast in Japan is rather unreliable…
The Countryside Golf Course I explored on one of those typhoon weekends with false forecast. The rain was supposed to start in the evening at around 6 p.m. according to the predictions made the evening before the day trip – sadly it began to drizzle just when we arrived at our first location at around 10 a.m., minutes later it poured and didn’t stop for two days. By the time we arrived at the Countryside Golf Course the rain was so heavy that the road leading up to the main area partly turn into a shallow rivulet – luckily the rain became a bit weaker at times, but overall it was an uncomfortable and quite wet exploration with only little to see. Located in the mountains, the Countryside Golf Club offered some gorgeous, very atmospheric early autumn views that day. Sadly the clubhouse had already been demolished and the driving range was more than underwhelming in comparison to the one I explored a year prior. All the paths and bridges were still accessible, though most of the courses were already pretty much overgrown after just two or three years of abandonment. And so the only really interesting area was at the end of a lonely downhill path that lead to a garbage dump (they removed a whole club house and nevertheless left some trash?) and a shed with two golf carts in decent condition. That’s pretty much it.

Since golf is definitely not my world it was kinda interesting to have a look around an abandoned country club, but as an urban exploration location it was definitely a bit underwhelming – and the constant rain didn’t make the experience any more joyful. Surely not a bad experience, but I’d take the *Japanese Driving Range* over the Countryside Golf Club any time…

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