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Archive for the ‘Haikyo’ Category

Japanese Isolation Hospital

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hospital, Japan, Photography, Shizuoka, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2015/06/09| 6 Comments »

The Higashi-Izu Isolation Hospital (official name) a.k.a. Smallpox Isolation Ward (made up name) is a real urbex classic in Japan. It has been featured in many books and countless articles, but its days might be numbered – after more than 30 years of decay the mostly wooden complex is on the verge of complete collapse…

There is a lot of wrong information out there about this Japanese Isolation Hospital. First of all – it was neither a ward, nor was it exclusively for smallpox patients. Like the official name implies, it was a standalone hospital for several diseases that needed patients to be isolated. And though the hospital looks really, really old, it began operation in 1958 / 1959, reportedly first as a regular clinic and from 1959 on as an isolation hospital.
Why somebody came up with the name Smallpox Isolation Ward is beyond me, because in the 1950s smallpox was already more or less under control. During World War II the infamous Japanese biological warfare *Unit 731*, feared for their experiments on living humans (including vivisections), researched production of biological weapons based on the smallpox virus, but discarded the idea due to the wide-scale ability of a vaccine – and if a vaccine was available during war times, it surely was 20 years later. While I am sure a few smallpox cases were hospitalized at the Higashi-Izu Isolation Hospital, most of the inpatients actually suffered from tuberculosis, which was a much bigger problem, especially in Japan. (If you missed it, check out my exploration of the *Tuberculosis Hospital For Children*, closed in 1992.)
The isolation hospital basically is the brainchild of two towns on the Izu Peninsula just south of Mount Fuji, Higashi-Izu and Inatori. In the late 1950s they were about to merge and both interested in an isolation hospital (which seems a bit odd to me, but that’s how the story goes), so they decided to put together the money they’ll save from the merger and just go for it. It opened for public in 1958 and turned into an experimental isolation hospital the following year.
The hospital complex consisted of several buildings, separating just infected patients from those showing symptoms or worse… Yes, people died there, a fact that didn’t add to the fun of exploring the really desolate buildings. To enter the hospital, you had to pass through a disinfection area and change all the clothes you were wearing, though nothing of that was apparent during my exploration – the decay of the complex had already been progressed too far and I only saw the lower two of three levels. (Not floors, levels – single storey buildings on a slope.) The town-run hospital was treating patients with operations and medication until 1978, when an earthquake hit the nearby Izu Oshima Island and caused massive damages on the Izu peninsula, too – most likely including the *Red Bridge*. It seems like the hospital technically received some funds till 1982, but effectively stopped operation in 1979 as the earthquake destroyed the road along the coast and caused a nearby tunnel to collapse. With that, access to the hospital was rather difficult as the powers that be decided to dig a new tunnel and build a new road instead of repairing the old existing ones. Additional damage was cause reportedly in 1984, when a typhoon cause a mudslide, but after more than 30 years there weren’t any signs of that visible anymore.

Upon arrival in the area, my buddy Julien and I checked out the now overgrown earthquake damaged road and tunnel. Not much to see, an abandoned tunnel with a “skylight” and tons of dirt. We found a parking spot along the super busy new main road and walked a few hundred meters back towards the new tunnel. Quite a risky endeavor, because in Japan pedestrians and cars are not meant to co-exist outside of towns. Even in the countryside most roads connecting settlements with each other are wide enough for a car, but don’t have much green or even a separate lane for pedestrians and / or bikes. Walking along those roads can be incredibly dangerous! But after a few minutes we reached our destination and walked down a few manmade steps on the slope in surprisingly good condition. I actually didn’t realize upon arrival that the first building was completely clad in bamboo strips, originally not much more than a big office room, probably for non-medical personnel to avoid sending them through the disinfection area.
Exploring the abandoned Higashi-Izu Isolation Hospital was actually quite underwhelming. I’ve seen rundown buildings like that plenty of time and usually ignore them – what made this one different was its history. And some amazing scenes, like rusty metal bedframes covered with straw. Gosh, I really hope that this was staged and that the real patients didn’t have to spend their last days like that. Most of the complex was fading away – the wooden floor was gone, walls were missing, staircases collapsed. It was late in the afternoon on a sunny day, but the fact that the hospital was in a tiny valley opening to the east while the sun was setting in the west didn’t help. It was getting darker quickly and the combination of fading light and known background story made this one quite an eerie exploration.

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The Ruins Of Mount Atago – A Very Special Kyoto Hike

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Ski, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2010 on 2015/06/02| 9 Comments »

“Japan has four seasons, you must know, which is unique!”
Without warning you just got hit over the head with an example of nihonjinron, “theories about the Japanese” – a conglomerate of BS rooted so deeply in Japanese society that most people in the land of the rising sun don’t even realize how stupid the majority of those theories are… and yet they are a popular conversation topic; especially when somebody tries to impress you with how unique Japan is. Not only are there plenty of other countries with four seasons, Japan stretches across several climate zones from the Kuril Islands to close to Taiwan, and therefore the weather differs drastically depending on where in Japan you reside. In my personal experience, living for more than eight years in Kansai, Japan has only two seasons – “nightmarish hot and humid” and “kind of bearable”. The beginning and the end of “kind of bearable” are marked by two periods of about 15 days each, which are really lovely… other countries would call them spring and autumn, but in my book those phases are way too short to be called seasons! (Hey, the Japanese have nihonjinron and I have my own set of theories about this country!)
Anyway, for about one month per year it’s actually really nice outside – then the sun feels like a warm hug instead of a laser beam trying to kill you, and people are having lots of BBQs. Those four to five weeks are also the best time to hike… and one of my favorite hikes is up Mount Atago in the outskirts of Kyoto.

Mount Atago Cable Car Revisited
Before I picked up urban exploration as a hobby, I enjoyed hiking a lot – and so it was no surprise that my first exploration ever in November of 2009 was the *Mount Atago Cable Car*, basically combining *haikyo* and hiking. Almost a year later, in October 2010, I went back as I really wanted to see the cable car station in full green, also taking advantage of the beautiful weather during that time. Walking along the abandoned track was still tiring, but the steep climb around the collapsed tunnel #5 was a lot easier then, because somebody strained new ropes. On my third visit in total I took some time to have a closer look at some of the bridges leading up the mountain, and I have to say that they were in pretty bad shape after almost 70 years of abandonment. I got that feeling walking along the uneven and sometimes dangerously eroded track, but having a look from below didn’t exactly make me feel more comfortable. One of the bridges had already collapsed in parts and I guess more damage by natural decay follow since then – especially at those parts not protected by trees and therefore at the mercy of wind, rain and snow.
The still existing cable car station at the top didn’t change a lot in those 11 months, although the weather (and maybe some people who couldn’t leave their hands off the concrete pillars) contributed to the progressing decay there. This time I shot most of the station with my ultra-wide angle lens I didn’t have last time, which allowed me to explore the place with a different set of eyes.
Going to the Mount Atago Cable Car again wasn’t spectacular, but I didn’t expect it to be any other way – it was a nice autumn hike with some wonderful views and a trip down memory lane, a perfect way to start a day at Mount Atago.

Mount Atago Hotel Revisited
What a surprise: The ruins of the *Mount Atago Hotel* were still just a stone’s throw away from the Mount Atago Cable Car – and again nothing had changed, except for the lens on my camera. The mosaic at the entrance seemed to be a bit more loose than during my first visit… and the pile of broken dishes in the back was more spread out, partly covered by freshly cut trees. Woodworkers in action, I guess…

Ryokan Mizuguchi
At first I wondered if I should write about the Ryokan Mizuguchi at all, as there was little to nothing of it left – but then I came up with this 4 in 1 idea, and now I am really happy that I took some photos back in 2010. While the Mount Atago Hotel and the Mount Atago Cable Car are all over the internet, barely anybody bothers with this couple of concrete walls a few hundred meters away from the hotel, towards the famous Mount Atago Shrine. I saw the remains last time I went up the mountain, but since I was tired and running out of time then, I didn’t have a closer look. During this visit I was more relaxed and took a few rather vacuous pictures… until I found a bottle that caught my eyes. What really intrigued me about it was the fact that it had a metal cap that looked like it was never off. An old unopened bottle at the top of a mountain isn’t something you find every day! If it ever had a label, of course it was long gone, but on the lower end of the bottle the glass had some kanji – later I found out that the company (日本麦酒鉱泉株式会社 – something like “Japanese Beer Mineral Spring Company”) only existed from 1922 till 1933, before becoming part of Mitsuya Foods – nowadays famous in Japan under the name Asahi and for brands like Mitsuya Cider, Bireley and Wonda (coffee). Since the hotel and the cable car both opened in 1929, it’s rather likely that this water hole went into business around the same time, which means that the bottle I had in my hands was up there for about 80 years, manufactured at a time when my grandmother went to elementary school or middle school.
The few Japanese pages on the internet covering the Mizuguchi Ryokan speculate that the place must have been made of wood with only the cellar being cast of cement. There are no pictures, no blueprints and hardly any information in general, and therefore I can only assume that the place closed down together with the hotel and the cable car in 1944. So while the pictures still might not be that spectacular, it was just an awesome feeling to hold that bottle in my hand – and I hope somebody will have a similar experience when the bottle is 90 or 100 years old…

Mount Atago Ski Resort
The fourth and final stop of my haikyo hiking at Mount Atago was the Mount Atago Ski Resort; one of the reasons the hotel and the cable car were built in the first place. Located about 45 minutes away from the hotel, the Mount Atago Ski Resort would be almost impossible to find nowadays, if it wasn’t for a few signs that were put up in 2006 and that direct hikers to the middle of nowhere – although I doubt many people will walk 190 meters up an earth wall and along an overgrown plain. While the area with its gentle slopes looked perfectly suited for a ski area targeting beginners, there were barely any hints left that the place once was populated by hundreds of sport freaks. You really have to explore thoroughly to find signs like red plastic posts, concrete sockets, scattered china and even some solid ramune glass bottles (ramune is a Japanese lemonade – the opening gets blocked by a marble when you drink, making it extremely popular amongst kids). Construction of the ski resort began in 1928 and like the hotel and the cable car, it opened in 1929 and closed in 1944, when the latter was demolished for scrap in a last futile attempt to support Japan’s war efforts.
On my way back to the Mount Atago Shrine I found some collapsed shacks and a Komatsu D205 bulldozer, though I can’t say for sure if they were in any way related to the ski resort.

The Ruins Of Mount Atago might not be the most spectacular ones in Japan, but if you enjoy hiking and are interested in (pre-)WW2 history, this is the place to visit in Kansai on a sunny spring or autumn day. You probably won’t get an adrenalin kick (unless you get lost bypassing the two collapsed tunnels of the cable car track), but you’ll return from the mountain with a deep comforting feeling of accomplishment. (Oh, and don’t be as stupid as I was – bring at least one friend, because the cable car part of the hike really is quite dangerous!)

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Nara Dreamland – Hotel and Administrative Building (video from 2009!)

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Nara, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2009 on 2015/06/02| Leave a Comment »

3000 Facebook fans! Wow… For many years I totally underestimated social media, so the *Abandoned Kansai FB page* went up 1.5 years after I started writing about deserted places in Japan and the rest of the world – and also long after I started writing about Abandoned Kansai’s most important location: Nara Dreamland. I went there as early as 2009 – not the first person after it was closed, but probably the first regular urban explorer to go there. In the past 5.5 years I wrote more than half a dozen articles about this amazing abandoned theme park and dug up all kinds of information, usually for the first time in English. In October of 2010 I wrote an article about the *Hotel and Administrative Building*… but I didn’t publish the video I shot there. It was taken in December of 2009, during my first visit, and I never intended to publish it – but what the heck, 3000 Facebook fans are a reason to dig deep and celebrate… Enjoy!

(For all your Nara Dreamland needs please have a look at the Nara Dreamland Special. *Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* 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…)

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Bungo-Mori Railyard

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Japan, Kyushu, Non-Urbex, Oita, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2015/05/16| 9 Comments »

When I first researched abandoned places in Japan back in 2009 the Bungo-Mori Railyard in Kyushu was one of THE locations. Everybody knew it, everybody went there, everybody got in and out with some interesting shots. I on the other hand never was much interested. Kyushu? That was way too far away! I was about to call my blog Abandoned Kansai anyway, because that was the area I planned to explore: Kansai. Well, half a year later I went to Kyushu to see locations like *Gunkanjima* and the *Katashima Training School* – and the term Abandoned Kansai became more of a name of origin. Some people actually address me in e-mails with “Dear Kansai”, which is kinda cute. But I still didn’t go to the Bungo-Mori Railyard, deep in the mountains of Oita prefecture. Even when I stayed a night in Oita city I had other places to explore. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I finally had the opportunity to have a look at the Bungo-Mori Railyard… only to find it halfway transformed into a tourist attraction!
Most of the surprisingly small railyard building (opened in 1934 and closed in 1971) close to the Bungo-Mori Station (opened in 1929) was cleaned out, new fences were put up, so were lights to illuminate the building at night. A dozen workers were swarming the area to remove remaining tracks and to build a new road leading up to the railyard that once serviced 21 steam trains. And to make things worse, the sun was standing high in the sky and behind the building. It turned out that in 2009, when I did my research, the railyard finally received some money to be preserved, and in 2012 it was added to some national register for cultural properties – the result of a campaign started by a single train enthusiast in 2001! The now developing memorial park already features photo spots indicated by signs and expects to receive some old steam trains soon.

On the one hand, a legendary location like that deserves its own article… though… there was not much left to see. Especially in comparison to the large Railyard Pankow-Heinersdorf I visited past summer in Berlin. I wanted to write about that last location I explored in the capital anyway, so here’s a short article about the tiny tourist railyard in Japan, followed by a longer article about the gigantic railyard in Germany on Tuesday; kind of an appetizer, a snack… another example that everything is smaller in Japan. (Except for the crowds on trains! Gosh, I am getting so tired of the big cities in Japan…)

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Nakagawa Brick Factory

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Factory, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Shiga, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2015/05/12| 11 Comments »

The remains of the Nakagawa Brick Factory are a conglomerate of old bakestone buildings dating back to the Meji era (1868-1912), Japan’s questionable return to the global community. As mentioned in several articles before, back then the Imperial government hired hundreds of foreign experts to turn the agricultural society into a modern industrialized country (much like North Korea currently does in Kaesong and Rason). Back then one construction material barely known and used in Japan was bricks – because brick buildings are heavy and vulnerable to earthquakes; which are not a problem in central Europe, where bricks were quite popular. Nevertheless bricks were introduced to Japan, mainly to build previously unknown, modern western buildings like train stations (like the famous one in Tokyo), ballroom buildings, beer breweries, and all kinds of industrial installations, like transformer stations (the one in *Horonai, Hokkaido* comes to mind).

The Nakagawa Brick Factory dates back to the year 1883 when Nakagawa Hisao of the Koto Group founded the factory in Omihachiman, back then famous for trading and pottery. The heart of the factory was a so-called Hoffmann kiln, a huge oven for the perpetual baking of bricks and other pottery, invented by German master builder Friedrich Hoffmann. 14 meters wide, 55 meters long and with a chimney 30 meters tall the kiln at the Nakagawa Brick Factory is the largest of four remaining Hoffmann kilns in Japan – at one point in time there were more than 50… From 1886 on, the factory produced bricks for the Lake Biwa Canal (under construction from 1885 till 1890), which connects Lake Biwa with Kyoto and was essential for the modernization of the former capital – the first public hydroelectric power generator provided electricity for Kyoto’s tram, the canal itself provided tap water, and until the 1940 the canal was important to transport goods; interestingly enough about 10 years ago I wrote a paper at university about “The Modernization of Kyoto in the Meiji Era”, little did I know that one day a kiln providing bricks for the Lake Biwa Canal would be part of my urban explorations…
After the canal was finished, the Koto factory was officially named Nakagawa Brick Factory and continued to produce and sell bricks until 1967, although the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 once again proved that bricks weren’t good construction material for Japan; that and the rising cement industry were the downfall for brick producers.

Today most ways to enter the kiln are blocked by sandbags or wooden planks, but of course you can imagine that there is always somebody to get rid of blockades like that – which doesn’t mean that you are allowed to enter. When *Rory* and I did for the second or third time, a woman called a guy who politely asked us to leave as it was way too dangerous to be in there. So of course we left, especially since we had more than enough time to take photos and a quick video. (Technically the factory isn’t abandoned and belongs to the Township of Red Bricks nursing home close to the kiln.)

Right next to the Hoffmann kiln we found another brick building in terrible condition. With the roof and one of the walls gone, the machine inside was exposed to the elements 24/7 – only people were barred from entering by a solid fence. The huge metal machine, made by Ishikawa Iron Works of Aichi prefecture and rusted beyond repair, once must have been used to form bricks to be burnt in the kiln.
There are other buildings associated with the Nakagawa Brick Factory in Omihachiman, but none of them is in good condition, although the factory was selected to represent the industrial heritage of Japan by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry – much like the *Shime Coal Mine* in Fukuoka, a.k.a. the Anti-Zombie Fortress.

It was a rather short exploration and doing research for this article actually took much longer than exploring the Hoffmann kiln in Omihachiman, nevertheless it was an interesting place to see. Like I mentioned earlier, I studied Japanese history when I was young, but in this case I even wrote about a canal built with bricks that were made at this very kiln almost 130 years prior – and that’s why I love urban exploration so much. Because even not so spectacular places can provide you with a unique experience, that connects you with history in a way books or movies never can…

BTW: These days the city of Omihachiman is famous all over Japan thanks to a local bakery named “Club Harie”, which, by common opinion, makes the best Baumkuchen in the whole country – and therefore in all of the world. As you may or may not know, Baumkuchen (tree cake) is of German origin… and so the beautiful old city of Omihachiman is fuelled by German engineering and inventions for more than 130 years now.

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Wakayama Hospital

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hospital, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2015/05/05| 19 Comments »

Japan never fails to surprise me. Five and a half years into urban exploration I have been to some amazing abandoned hospitals, pretty much all of them either rather empty (like the *Sankei Hospital* in Hokkaido, damaged by a volcano eruption) or rather old; like the then mind-blowing and now vandalized *Tokushima Countryside Clinic*. One thing though I never expected was to explore an abandoned modern hospital with all furnishings and fittings, fully stocked with medicine and everything you need to diagnose and treat patients – somebody would at least sell the valuable machines and dispose leftover medicine, right?
Well… Have you ever seen an abandoned MRI scanner? 🙂

When you live in a Japanese conurbation life tends to be comfortable and you have access to whatever you need in walking distance – public transportation is barely ever more than 10 minutes away, convenience stores where you can do banking, send parcels, and buy food 24/7 are usually located within five minutes. And of course there are all kinds of doctors that treat everything from minor ailments to deadly diseases (within the limits of their abilities…). When you live in the countryside on the other hand, Japan can become very rural with only a few buses per day and the next supermarket being many kilometers away. With regular hospitals usually being located only in bigger towns, medical care in the countryside can become dire – of all things in areas where it is needed most, as younger people tend to move to large cities, leaving the elderly behind. On the other hand, senior citizens, especially in Japan, tend to have a lot of money… and that’s why medical cooperatives were started. The Wakayama Hospital actually was the result of one of those cooperatives in 1987. Of the estimated 45.000 people in the area, about 6.000 joined the cooperative, each contributing at least 5.000 Yen. That quarter of a million USD was only the beginning, of course, as building, equipping and running a hospital costs much more than that. Luckily some of the cooperative’s members were really into the idea of having a cooperative hospital, and by 2007 the average investment per active member (about 400) was an impressive 3 million Yen – or 25.000 USD. And so the cooperative constructed a 4-storey building with several elevators and all kinds of medical devices you can imagine. The Wakayama Hospital was not only equipped with the latest SPECT, MRI and CT machines – they basically had everything from room filling scanners over ultrasound machines and a dentist chair to plastic syringes and rubber bands. It operated departments such as cardiology, surgery, respiratory diseases, and internal medicine.
For 15 years life was good for the 14 doctors and the dozens of nurses and other staff. In 2000 the hospital billed 2 billion Yen (about 16.5 Million USD) to patients and insurance companies, everything was peachy. From 2002 on though the medical service fees, paid to hospitals and other medical institutions under the medical insurance system, was lowered three times and the hospital’s income fell to 1.3 billion Yen – and with that the number of doctors went down to six. The hospital was in danger of falling into serious debt, so the board of directors decided in June 2007 to close the Wakayama Hospital by the end of the month. A screeching halt and a total disaster for those elderly investors, who not only lost their hard earned money from one moment to the next, but also their neighborhood medical facility. Inpatients were either discharged or transferred to other hospitals in the area, outpatients were confronted with waiting times of up to three hours at nearby hospitals. One of the remaining six doctors at the time of the Wakayama Hospital’s closing stayed behind and opened a small clinic on the premises, together with three nurses – a fraction of the former capacity and a fraction of what was actually needed in the area. The sponsors of the now closed hospital accused the former board of directors of negligence, that they had been out of touch with the community and didn’t know what was really needed – so they went to trial, but apparently nothing came out of it. In the end the hospital was just shut down, fully equipped and squeaky clean.

That’s how I found it a few weeks ago in April of 2015. Most calendars on the walls still showed June 2007, but one or two of them were from 2009 – I guess that’s when the remaining doctor and his three nurses finally gave up. About six years after its complete abandonment nobody seemed to care about the Wakayama Hospital anymore – access points were plenty, not only on the ground floor, but on upper levels, too; accessible via outdoor staircases. Since the Wakayama Hospital wasn’t just a cube shaped building with four outer walls, it started to accumulate pools of water on its several flat roofs. One of them was actually used by birds for a swim. Which was lovely to see, but there was a huge downside to it: Despite being a solid concrete building, the roofs started to leak… and the ground floor (1F in Japan) started to become really nasty in some areas – not just water on the ground inside, but the wallpapers were rotting off, so was the damaged ceiling cladding. After a thorough look on every floor to make sure that the building was structurally still sound, I decided to explore it from top to bottom. That turned out to be an excellent decision as even the upper floors were super interesting and showed only few signs of vandalism. The heavy machinery though was on the ground floor, so I saved the best for last – and the worst.
The best, because it was just mind-blowing to see what kind of items were left behind. Why would anybody abandon an MRI machine? And how could it sit there for six years without being harmed by anybody? It basically looked brand-new, probably as good as it did when last used in 2007. Unbelievable!
The worst, because for the most part the ground floor was either nasty or dark… or both. Mold everywhere, water standing in some rooms, rotting cladding, vandals blocked certain areas, and at least half a dozen emptied fire-extinguishers. Despite me taking pictures as quickly as possible and breathing through a folded towel I had on me, I could feel how my breathing started to clog up, a chemical taste in my mouth. I would have loved to take more photos of the ground floor, but considering the health risks I was exposed to, I stayed as long as I could justify it to myself, and probably longer than most people would have.

“What’s your favorite abandoned place in Japan?” is a question I get asked quite often. Well, I guess the answer depends a bit on my mood, but I can assure you that this is my favorite abandoned place I have written about. Like I said at the beginning of this article, I would have never expected to ever explore a fully equipped modern hospital that is truly abandoned. Sure, sometimes you see half empty closed hospitals that are in a transition phase, explored by infiltrators – but a truly abandoned hospital with that many machines, that much equipment? What an amazing find… with such a sad story!
I really hope you enjoyed reading about the Wakayama Hospital as much as I enjoyed exploring it. And while the photos give a good impression about what the upper floors looked like, you really might want to watch the video I took on the ground floor (1F)… and then head over to the *Tokushima Countryside Clinic* to see what old Japanese hospitals looked like, the kind that were housed in wooden mansions.

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Wakayama Hospital

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Dolphin Lair

Posted in Abandoned, Animals, Aquarium, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2015/04/28| 1 Comment »

“Don’t play with your food!”
I wonder if any Japanese mom ever said that to their child before they went swimming at the Dolphin Lair, a now abandoned dolphinarium that apparently allowed its guests to take a dip with the world’s most popular aquatic mammals.

Japan is constantly under fire for how some members of its society treat dolphins and whales – whether it’s hunting the cetaceans or keeping them captive. I actually doubt that the majority of Japanese support the practices of those few, most people are just indifferent and don’t care enough to demand change. Hardly anybody eats whale or dolphin on a regular basis, but when the international community demands changes, a lot of people feel threatened by possible foreign influence, leaving them stranded in some area that can be summed up like this: “I don’t care, but I’ll be damned if somebody else tells me to give up what some of my fellow countrymen consider tradition!” You know, like having an assault rifle at home to protect your 32 inch TV…
As for the “keeping dolphins captive” part, Japan doesn’t differ much from the rest of the world – except that theirs are probably smaller. Not the dolphins, the dolphinariums; which in general have a bad reputation everywhere, even the big ones, the ones everyone knows… and they survive financially, because people still go there – which means that enough people think that keeping dolphins (or other animals) captive is a good idea. If people would stop going to zoos and dolphinariums, the problem would solve itself, except for maybe some few private or state zoos.

The Dolphin Lair was a small dolphinarium along the coast of the Seto Inland Sea in central Japan. The regular entrance fee was 500 Yen for age 3 till elementary school (usually around age 12), 800 Yen for everyone older than that (currently 100 Yen are about 0.80 EUR or 0.85 USD). A 20 minute long “Petting Course” was 2.500 / 3.000 Yen, the 40 minute long “Swimming Course” cost 6.000 Yen for kids who were at least in third grade of elementary school and 8.000 Yen for everyone past elementary school. Dolphin Lair also offered a “Diving Course” for 11.000 Yen, though I am not sure if that involved the dolphins, too.
7 years after being closed in 2008, Dolphin Lair was a surreal sight. Located next to a small marina, the area was more roped-off than fenced-off, the pools mostly below ground, reaching a height of maybe 1.5 meters, to the right a café towering over everything. While the metal parts looked like abandoned decades ago, the wall paintjob was still in amazing condition – most buildings locked, the café probably in use during the summers. At first I had a really hard time connecting with the place, it just looked so… random. Thanks to the setting sun the light was gorgeous, but hardly anything caught my eyes. Exploring a tiny storage at least provided me with some items to take pictures of – swim fins, rubber boots, a stuffed dolphin; not to be confused with a taxidermy dolphin! Outside again I switched to my ultra-wide angle lens and all of a sudden the Dolphin Lair looked much more interesting to me – still not a place I would want to spend a whole afternoon, but enough to take a whole set of decent photos.
Sadly there is not much known about the history of the Dolphin Lair. According to a headstone on the premises a dolphin called Sakura died there on January 25th 2003 – and according to the Phinventory there were four more living there: Hikaru, Kuru, Mahina, and Sola. What happened to them after the dolphinarium closed? Nobody seems to know. But if you know Japan, then you know that the next restaurant is always just a short walk away…

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Atoyama Elementary School

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, School, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2014 on 2015/04/21| 11 Comments »

2014 was the year of the abandoned schools in the Japanese urbex world – probably because endless lists of closed schools appeared on the Japanese version of Wikipedia, and countless bloggers (not necessarily urban explorers!) all over the country headed to the rural areas to check them out. As a result of that, more “abandoned” schools than ever before popped up on Japanese blogs and even mainstream media – the main problem with that: most of these explorers didn’t make a difference between closed and abandoned schools. Sometimes because it is hard to tell whether a place is closed or abandoned, but most of the time out of pure laziness or to get a name and some photos out there. Personally I am still not sure about the *Blizzard School*, while I am convinced that the *Shizuoka Countryside School* was abandoned and the *Kyoto Countryside School* was still maintained by locals – closed, but accessible through open or at least unlocked doors. All schools I will dedicate full articles on Abandoned Kansai were either really abandoned or at least closed and unlocked. The ones that were actively used as community centers, completely boarded up or maintained and locked I might mention in entries as disappointing examples, but they won’t get their own articles.

When Dan, Kyoko and I walked up to the Atoyama Elementary School about a year ago, we expected it to be completely abandoned – instead we found the lawn freshly mowed and some doors covered with weathered and falling off “Do not enter!” signs in Japanese. While I was silently praying that I hadn’t fallen for another one of those useless “four outdoor shots make an article” bloggers, we circled the school and found several unlocked ways inside. Bingo!
It turned out that the Atoyama Elementary School had a long history. Founded in 1875 as a temple school, it became a state school just two years later. In 1948 a new school building was constructed – 1 floor, 3 class rooms, teacher housing. Seven years later a second floor was added, and with it a new hallway, an auditorium and several more classrooms. In 1968, 20 years after its construction and almost a century after its founding, the Atoyama Elementary School was closed; and clearly maintained by the locals, probably partly used, for example the auditorium for sports and other events.
We found the Atoyama Elementary School in overall amazing condition. The weathered wooden outside with the two construction phases gave it an interesting piecemeal look, the maintained inside beamed us back 40 years. I felt a bit uneasy as the wooden floors made squeaking sounds at almost every step, but luckily I didn’t cause any damage to the brittle boards. The reward for our brave curiosity was yet another unique decades old Japanese school. The layout was different than anything I had seen before, the interior was different, the equipment was different – surprises behind every corner. A piano, a scale, concrete urinals, old tools, the kitchen on the lowest floor and the crooked wooden staircase leading there… awesome, just awesome!
What a way to start a weekend of explorations! Sadly the rest of the day turned out to be kind of a disaster, but all of that was forgotten when we found the *Shizuoka Countryside School* the next morning…

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Jingoro Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2011 on 2015/04/14| 6 Comments »

Abandoned accommodations are the biggest group of deserted places in Japan. Hotels, love hotels, ryokan, youth hostels. There must be hundreds of them all over the country – some of them are absolutely amazing, others are the worst moldy, vandalized dumps you can imagine. My first indoor abandoned place I ever explored was a hotel, the *One Dragon Hotel* in the south of Osaka – one of those vandalized dumps, but I didn’t care, because when you start urban exploration, EVERY place is super exciting. After a while though all of them start to look the same, and it takes exceptional examples like the *Hachijo Royal Hotel* or the *Wakayama Beach Hotel* (still only on Abandoned Kansai!) to remind you that some of them are actually pretty amazing. Back in 2011 though I couldn’t even imagine that world-class places like that existed in Japan!
At that point in time, less than two years after I picked up urban exploration as a hobby, I was tired of deserted accommodations… and standing in the backyard parking lot of the Jingoro Hotel, contemplating whether or not I should enter the rather big hotel all by myself after I already crossed two other places off my list that day. On the one hand I was tired, it was afternoon already, and I had to go inside without company – on the other hand: it was right in front of me… and there were some arcade machines in the lobby. Back then I had barely ever seen abandoned arcade machines, so I was really curious. I walked down the staircase to the semi-basement ground floor, the door to the kitchen open wide enough for me to get inside. And I instantly regretted that move as the typical “abandoned Japanese hotel smell” hit me. It’s hard to describe, but if you ever smelled it, you won’t forget it. This very special mix of rotting tatami and moldy wallpaper… Nothing that makes you wanna puke, but it smells nasty and you know that you don’t want to be exposed to it for hours… or even minutes. Since I was already inside the hotel, I had a look around and hoped that the smell wouldn’t be that bad throughout the whole exploration.
As three and a half years have passed since I last saw the Jingoro Hotel, my memories of that exploration are rather fragmented. I remember that it was a nightmare to take photos of the arcade machines in the lobby (Namco’s Final Lap and Jaleco’s Gran Prix Star) as everybody passing by outside was able to look inside through the huge windows, basically ground to ceiling. I also remember that parts of that floor suffered severely from arson (adding a whole new layer to the smell, lucky me!) while other parts looked like on the day the hotel was closed. On the upper floors the hallways and rooms were littered with airgun pellets, but the biggest surprise to me were the amazing shared baths, of course gender separated – back then I hadn’t seen anything like that, especially since both bathing areas featured outdoor bathtubs offering stunning views at the mountain and sea surrounding.
Back down on the main floor though I almost suffered a heart attack. I was hiding from a group of Japanese who were taking a photo outside of the hotel with the beautiful landscape as the background, all facing the hotel except for the photographer. The process took a while and when I was about to relax again, I looked to the left, where all of a sudden this huge western dude wearing a black trench coat appeared out of nowhere. My pulse went from “resting” to “leaving a high speed corkscrew rollercoaster” in the fraction of a second, and for a crippling moment I felt paralyzed – that’s when I realized that I was standing next to a huge mirror covering the whole wall! (And of course then I also remembered seeing the mirror before, reminding myself that it was there so I would not get the shock of my life… obviously I failed.)

Overall the Jingoro Hotel was an average exploration. Some vandalism, some decay, some nice areas, some nasty smells, some positive surprises, some negative surprises. I’ve been to worse places, but also to many that were a lot more interesting – like I said, it’s been three and a half years since I explored the Jingoro Hotel without mentioning it anywhere on Abandoned Kansai, so obviously I wasn’t in a hurry to write about it. Nevertheless I hope you enjoyed the little stories and some of the photos. In the end the package turned out to be much more interesting than I expected… just like the exploration itself.

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Yubara Onsen Ropeway, Lower Terminus

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Transportation, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2015/04/07| 7 Comments »

Japan is a mountainous nation, so it’s no surprise that there are ropeways and cable cars all over the country; except for Okinawa and most of the smaller islands. By the Japanese use of the English terms, a cable car (ケーブルカー) is a funicular / cable railway, while a ropeway (ロープウェイ) can be an aerial tramway, a gondola lift, a ropeway conveyor or even a funitel or a Funifor; ski lifts are a category of their own. I am not sure when the first ropeway opened in Japan (probably in the early or mid-1920s), but some of them were already closed and demolished in the 1930s as non-essential lines to use their metal in Japan’s war efforts at the time. (Fun fact: The oldest surviving aerial tramway in Japan is the Yoshino Ropeway here in Kansai, especially popular in early to mid-April as it is located right next to Japan’s most famous cherry blossom spot. Built in 1928 and opened in March of 1929, the Yoshino Ropeway is not just a sightseeing line, but used by locals for regular commute.)

Exactly three years ago I went on a first urbex day trip with my now regular fellow explorers Dan and Kyoko – first stop: the lower terminus of the Yubara Onsen Ropeway (YOR). Opened in 1975 to connect the spa village Yubara Onsen (known for having one of the few mixed baths in Japan, as most of public baths here are gender separated) with a prefectural park at the top of Yubara Dam, the ropeway must have been a total financial flop as it closed just six years later in 1981. The YOR was built by Anzen Sakudo, currently known as Ansaku, the leading ropeway designer and constructor in Japan with more than 60 ropeways and 250 ski lifts built in its almost 100 year long history. A ride on the Yubara Onsen Ropeway was a little more than one kilometer long and took about seven minutes, running once every 15 minutes with a capacity of 40 guests on each gondola. (Prices and opening hours can be seen at the end of the first video and the beginning of the second video.)

After more than 30 years of abandonment the YOR was in really bad condition and probably had more visitors than in the six years of being in business.
The road leading up to the lower terminus was mostly overgrown and quite slippery, the building itself somewhat of a death trap. All three floors were pretty much rotten and vandalized, the interior being exposed to the weather for three decades.
The first floor had several offices and we were able to find items like a Morinaga ice cream cooler and a Thermos bottle. The second floor was home to the ticket gate and a shop, while the platform of the ropeway was on the third floor. The gondola and rope leading up the mountain were long gone, but the pillars in the forest were still visibly standing there. Through the control room we were able to enter the machinery room, all well-lit since there were hardly any signs of a roof. This behind the scenes area was super interesting, but probably dangerous as hell – and of course nobody was foolish enough to use the spiral metal staircase leading three stories down. The concrete public staircase was somewhat dodgy, but the metal one in the back looked like certain death.
After shooting the walkthrough video on the way to the ground floor (accidentally split in half…), I found an open door at the back of the building, leading to the same lower part of the machinery room as the rusty spiral metal staircase. Not much to see there other than concrete and more rusty metal, including some ropes on the group.

On the one hand the Yubara Onsen Ropeway was a horribly run-down and dangerous piece of garbage, on the other hand it had that amazing amount of decay you barely see these days as hardly any building gets the opportunity to rot for that long. And while this is not the most beautiful set of photos I have ever taken, it still contains some really lovely shots; for example of that rusty control box or the white hardhat. This was the first intact ropeway station I ever explored, so it will always be a special one for me, but since then I’ve seen better ones – some I have yet to write about, but a good example would be the *Shidaka Ropeway, Upper Terminus*.

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