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Archive for the ‘Haikyo’ Category

Wakayama Beach Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012, Wakayama on 2014/02/25| 32 Comments »

Finding abandoned places is 95% hard work in the form of long hours doing research – and 5% luck; unless you count the limitless amount of dilapidated and rather uninteresting shacks you pass by driving around the Japanese countryside. Then the ratio is probably more like 50/50…
The Wakayama Beach Hotel was one of those 5% lucky finds. An amazing find actually, and it became my favorite abandoned hotel instantly. In spring of 2012 I was on a day trip with a friend of mine from Germany, Dom, when we saw this rather big hotel somewhere along the nearly endless coast of Wakayama prefecture. Abandoned or not? That’s always the exciting question after discoveries like that. The front of the hotel looked like it was just closed for lunch break, but something was strange about the building; for example the fact that hotels usually don’t close for lunch. They are either open or not. So I decided to have a closer look at the back of the hotel, where we ran into a woman walking her dog – since all of us were still on public ground, more or less, we exchanged greetings and went separate ways. From the back Dom and I were able to have a look at the heating room through an open window and at a small greenhouse-like garden over a wall – both looked like they had been abandoned years ago. A pristine, but shut down hotel building on the one hand, an unkempt garden on the other. This was a strange case. At the back of the hotel was also a scary spiral staircase, not really up to modern security standards. Luckily it was Dom’s first urbex experience, as noobs tend to be braver – or they are scared to pieces, but it turned out that Dom belonged to the first group. Before I could even think about it, he went to the closest emergency exit door, grabbed the handle, turned it and… opened the door! I wasn’t surprised that emergency doors were unlocked, I just didn’t expect that they could be opened from the outside…

Seconds later Dom and I were inside the Wakayama Beach Hotel, bright light shining through windows to the left, a rather dark hallway with guest rooms to the right. Since I didn’t have a flashlight with me, the choice was easy: we headed left first. Another turn to the left and I knew we hit the jackpot as we entered an entertainment room with dried out plants – as well as two billiard tables, a table tennis plate, some toy vending machines and half a dozen video game arcade machines. This was so awesome and I was 99% sure that the place was abandoned, until… I heard a strange BANG! A friggin cat outside was hitting her damn tail against the window, almost giving me a heart attack.
From the entertainment room I headed over to the public baths. Both the male as well as the female versions were in almost spotless condition – sweep through and replace the dried out plants with fresh ones and you would be good to go. Same with the rooms along the dark hallway. A couple of minutes of dusting and voila, you’d be able to welcome guests again. Since I didn’t bring a flashlight I was unable to take photos in most of the rooms as it was too dark for my camera to focus – and the videos turned out to be dark and grainy and a bit blurry, too; sorry for that, but it might help you understand how I felt wandering through this spooky, unknown territory. As exciting as it is to make an original find, it’s also nerve-wrecking as you don’t know anything about the place – the layout, the security status, the biohazard lab in the basement… And the next shock followed soon, when I realized that the red emergency light near the fire hydrant in the hallway was still burning! One element of a building being abandoned is that nobody feels responsible for paying the electricity bill – and when nobody pays the electricity bill, usually the power gets cut. But according to several calendars in the kitchen and other places, the hotel wasn’t used anymore for at least three years… yet there was still power, at least for the HAL-like lights.
That in mind Dom and I went downstairs to the ground floor, with its lobby, a bar stuck in the 70s and a gift shop – and an irregular sound in the background, as if two pieces of wood were hit against each other. It was spooky, especially when I saw a cat running across the room and down the small staircase to the basement. I totally fell in love with the bar area, so I took a couple of photos there, but that clicking wooden sound started to drive me nuts!

When Dom and I finally left the Wakayama Beach Hotel we had spent more than two hours there, constantly changing our minds whether this place was really abandoned or just closed – which didn’t really matter in the end, as urban exploration is one big grey area in that regard anyway; the hotel was definitely out of use for several years. (*Nara Dreamland* and tons of famous “abandoned” places all over the world still have security, which makes them “not abandoned” by definition; if they were, nobody would pay for security…)
Over the past four and a half years I’ve been to several abandoned hotels in really good condition, but what made the Wakayama Beach Hotel so special was its amazing 70s style lobby, the beautiful shared baths and of course the entertainment room with the arcade machines – the whole hotel had this exciting vibe of several past decades, but in almost new condition, as if it was time-warped to 2012; with its own power source for the HAL lights…

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Wakayama Beach Hotel
Wakayama Beach Hotel
Wakayama Beach Hotel

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Japanese Apartment Building

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, House, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Shiga, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2014/01/07| 16 Comments »

Usually I stay away from exploring regular Japanese houses. It happened way too often that I thought “Oh, this house / apartment building looks abandoned!” and upon closer look it actually was not. Japan has an unbelievable amount of rundown yet inhabited buildings, especially in the countryside and the outskirts of bigger cities – and I don’t want to get in trouble!

When *Rory* and I drove through the countryside on one of our exploration trips, my fellow explorer tried to point my attention to a slightly dilapidated concrete building to the left – and even without looking at it I dismissed the idea, because “there are cars parked”. Well, last time I saw the building half a year prior there were cars parked, but this time I jumped the gun. Rory was indeed right: the cars were gone, leaving behind a building that looked abandoned… and so we stopped.
Still not 100% convinced that the building was really abandoned I left the lead to Rory and had a look at the surroundings – a couple of storage shacks inhabited by half a dozen cats, some garden plots with Napa cabbage (the key ingredient of kimchi…), a few open windows; no real proof that this simple, ugly building was really abandoned. Access of course was easy – two staircases in the back lead to four floors with two apartments each. (The video shows one staircase, the photos I selected are from apartments on both staircases.)
While all apartments basically had the same layout, their interior was like a box of chocolates – we never knew what we were gonna get! Some apartments looked like you could move it in right away if you had low standards, others were completely moldy and a serious health hazard, while the third kind was covered by spider webs. Some were packed with brand-new boxed items, the strangest being the ones labelled “Glycerin Enema Mune 60”, others were filled with all kinds of trashed. Some showed signs of families with children, others most likely were bachelor pads. In one apartment was a calendar – showing last month’s date; which would explain why there were cars parks at the building half a year prior to our visit.
Since the apartment building was just outside of a small town, Rory and I went for a walk after we were done exploring. It was getting dark anyway, so we thought it would be nice to enjoy a countryside sunset. Countryside people in Japan tend to be much friendlier than city folks according to my experience, so it didn’t surprise me at all when a local woman started a conversation with Rory when he took a picture of a cat with an improvised Elizabethan collar – and she confirmed that the apartment building was abandoned just two months prior to our visit after it fell into disrepair.

When approaching and exploring the apartment building I didn’t think it was a good idea being there, but in retrospect it was quite an interesting experience. I still wouldn’t drive hours to get there, but it wasn’t a bad location as far as original finds go!

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Love Hotel tinna

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chugoku, Closed, Haikyo, Japan, Love Hotel, Photography, Sex, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012, Yamaguchi on 2013/12/24| 12 Comments »

Merry XXX-Mas everyone!

The Love Hotel tinna is one of those locations that are giving me a headache. On the one hand I am happy about every exploration, on the other hand… this was barely an exploration and I have hardly enough material for an article. About 20 months ago I was walking along a countryside road on the way to an abandoned place I was looking forward to explore, when I came across the tinna Love Hotel by chance. Not sure how the rest of the day would turn out I passed without a closer look, but considered having one on the way back. If it wouldn’t have been for the ropes blocking off the car entrance I probably wouldn’t have even realized that the place was abandoned or at least closed.

Two hours later I was on my way back to the train station – and since I wasn’t in a hurry I indeed had a closer look. Entering the premises and getting out of sight was quick and easy, the ropes were more or less symbolic. Luckily the sensors at the entrance must have been for triggering lights back in the days, because they surely didn’t cause an alarm to go off.
The back of the love hotel looked a little more abandoned, but just barely. Each room came with a separate garage – you drove in and shut the plastic curtain to get your car some privacy. The room rates (rest / stay) were written at signs next to the doors – which were all locked. That fact makes this article even duller, especially since I don’t know anything about the history of the Love Hotel tinna. I guess it was abandoned just weeks or a few months prior to my visit, but it’s hard to tell for sure. On the other hand: a lot of westerners don’t know much about love hotel, so here you can finally see some exterior shots. For interior shots you might want to have a look at the two articles about love hotels I published in 2011 and 2012. The one about the *Love Hotel Gion* is all about love hotels in general and how big the business is (a whopping 50 billion $-US!), the one about the *Furuichi Love Hotel* is more about dating in Japan and why some Japanese women were once called “Leftover Christmas Cake”…

And that’s it for this week – Merry XXX-Mas!

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Sand Dune Palace

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, House, Japan, Photography, Restaurant, Tottori, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2013/12/17| 7 Comments »

Tottori is famous for its sand dunes, vast natural parks and pear omiyage – not for urban exploration. Located in the Chugoku region at the Sea of Japan (a.k.a. Korea East Sea and Japanese Sea) and therefore at the northern coast of Japan, Tottori is a little bit off the beaten tracks – most tourists travelling south of Tokyo continue via Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe to Himeji, Hiroshima and Kyushu along the Seto Inland Sea. Only a handful of Western tourists switch to one of the express trains from Kansai to Tottori (city), the capital of Tottori (prefecture) – there is no Shinkansen service as a northern line connecting Osaka and Shimonoseki via Tottori and Matsue was proposed in 1973 and then shelved indefinitely. The least populous of Japan’s prefectures (3.5 million inhabitants, less than the city Yokohama) is generally rather rural and agriculture is the most important economical factor – pears, scallions, yams and watermelons from Tottori are famous in all of Japan.

One thing Tottori is not famous for is urban exploration. Nevertheless I had plans to go to Tottori for almost a year, but for some reason I never followed through. The places I wanted to visit there were not that spectacular, the weather wasn’t consistent for a whole weekend, the season wasn’t right or I simply had other plans. In spring of 2012 everything came together finally, so I hopped on the first of eight special direct trains to Tottori and enjoyed the 2.5 hour long ride through the stunning Chugoku Mountains. After finding and checking into a hotel I did some haikyo hiking to another location and finally arrived at the gorgeous Tottori Sand Dunes in the late afternoon – running out of time, as so often.
The Sand Dune Palace turned out to be quite a rundown building secured by rusty barbed wire, only worth taking pictures of thanks to its relative fame and the round viewing platform which gave this old rest house (built in 1965) a little bit of an edge by making it more round… The salty sea air was gnawing through anything metal, especially lamp posts and handrails. All the bells and whistles, like door handles and lamps looked so 60s that it almost hurt the eyes. Really nothing special, so I headed over to the dunes to find my way to the beach in order to take some sunset photos. On the way back, late into dusk, I made another quick stop to take a couple of night shots, but then I had to leave to catch the last bus back to the city – it was an exhausting day and sadly not everything lived up to my expectations; for example the Sand Dune Palace – the pear sweets on the other hand were divine and if you ever go to Tottori, make sure to try the “nashi usagi” (literally “pear rabbits”, mochi filled with pear jam).

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Japanese Ghost Town

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, House, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Shiga, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/12/03| 9 Comments »

Abandoned Japanese towns must be the most common type of *haikyo*. For decades people have been moving from the countryside to the cities… and the trend continues: Almost 70% of Japan’s population live on 3.3% of the land – it’s a mountainous country, and the further you drive into the valleys, the more half-abandoned villages you’ll see; some are deserted completely, especially those so remote that they are almost completely cut off from the outside world in winter. (And that’s the main reason why ghost towns don’t show up at urbex blogs so much – only a few, like *Mukainokura*, are easily accessible; for most of them you need to have a car or a motorcycle…)

Across one of those hamlets my buddy Rory and I stumbled on our way to an off the beaten tracks location somewhere in the mountains of the Shiga / Mie / Gifu triangle. We thought it would be a good idea taking a direct way along a narrow one lane road stretching up and down several mountains instead of using the ridiculously expensive highways in Japan. It was a sunny day in March not only in Osaka (where there is no winter…), but also in Shiga. So we drove up one mountain in beautiful weather and started to descent on the other side… when all of a sudden we saw snow on the side of the road. We descended further and further, snow slowly creeping closer until we started driving on it. When we saw said hamlet, we made a quick stop to take a picture or two and continued driving… until we hit a dead end. The snow was getting too high and there was no way we were able to continue. So we turned around – and got stuck in the snow right in the middle of the hamlet (GoggleMaps doesn’t have a name for it, so I just simply call it Japanese Ghost Town). So I got out of the car and started pushing, successfully. Until we got stuck again a couple of hundred meters down the road, up the mountain. This time I needed the help of some boards that were conveniently placed right next to the road (coincidence?), but to both of our great relief we got grip right away and returned to the weather divide, this time without further incidents. Down the mountain on the Shiga side we found out that the only regular road nearby was still closed for winter, so we made our way back to Osaka as we were running out of time anyway.
Half a year later, November 2013, on our way to the remote haikyo Rory and I wanted to explore in spring – this time the first location of the day, not the third. Beaten by that darn valley six months prior and dangerously close to winter we decided to give the narrow mountain road another try. When we reached the hamlet this time there was no snow in sight, so we got out of the car and considered the place an original find. What started as “a quick look” turned into an hour long full exploration of about a dozen houses, most of them partly collapsed. All the buildings were Japanese style, which means mostly wood, so even the rather undamaged buildings were quite brittle once we found a way inside (without using force, of course) – half a dozen more winters with heavy snow and they will be flattened, too. To make the houses more stable and more durable, some outside walls were clad with thin metal plates. One of the houses still had an active digital (!) wattmeter above the entrance door and where we parked the car we found a laminated sheet of paper with information about an on demand taxi as a replacement for a regular bus service. My favorite item though was an abandoned bike, clearly an older model, maybe from the 50s or 60s. A really lovely piece of rust!

After we left the hamlet, we continued beyond the point where were forced to turn around half a year prior – and then we got lost in the mountains and reached dead ends… several times… losing massive amounts of time. The car’s navi more or less useless, we finally found a real road that lead us back to civilization, so we headed for the main road that was closed in March because of snow. This time we passed this point, too, only to get stopped in front of a tunnel – mudslides had severely damaged the road on the other side more than a year prior, so the tunnel was closed indefinitely, yet the road was open for hikers to reach a popular trailhead in spring, summer and autumn.
Running out of time again, Rory and I made our way back to Osaka, hoping to reach Location X on a third attempt. Or by finally trying a different route…

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Japanese Countryside University (Part 2)

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, University, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/11/26| 13 Comments »

After I finished exploring the modern parts of the *Japanese Countryside University* I remembered some roped-off areas that I didn’t dare to step in out of respect for an elderly artist who was nothing but kind to me when I first entered the premises – but when he left, my urbex instincts kicked in and I just had to have a look. All those buildings I had already seen, they looked way too new for a university founded in 1964, so there must have been more… and there were!
The Japanese Countryside University definitely consisted of two parts; an older one from the 1960s and a newer one from the 1980s. The older part originally was a six floor main building across the street from the train station. On the third floor was a back exit / entrance leading to a book store and the old dormitory via a strange dark tunnel contruction that had written “Rape!” all over it. (Well, not really, but I felt like I could have been assaulted at any time and I was pretty sure that I was alone…) Down from the street a road was leading up, too, to what originally probably was a parking lot and now is the 1980s building complex.
Since I was coming from that elevated area I made my way through the pretty vandalized old dormitory, quite a mindblowing contrast to the immaculate modern building right next to it. It seems like the Japanese Countryside University was a women’s college with a 10 p.m. curfew, but all that was living in those original buildings now were a couple of gigantic and pretty fast spiders. Not like the colorful ones sitting in their webs everywhere, no, more like thin tarantula looking ones, the size of saucers…
From the dormitory I went straight to the old university building at the street and I understood immediately why the new buildings were constructed on elevated ground – even on a Sunday the noise was pretty annoying. Sadly most of the building was empty, so there wasn’t that much to see, nevertheless it was an interesting exploration. On the way out I took a couple of photos of the former sports ground. The soccer / track area was gone completely, but the tennis courts were still intact; somewhat overgrown though, reminding me of the *Asahi Sports Center*.
The Japanese Countryside University is still virtually unknown to the internet and I might have been the first foreigner to ever lay eyes on it, so this was a true exploration with new sights around every corner – not necessarily a spectacular one, but a new one! When I was planning this exploration I put together two train schedules for that day. One giving me 40 minutes to explore the Japanese Countryside University, in case the place was inaccessible, demolished or just uninteresting. The alternative plan gave me 1 hour and 40 minutes to explore, which is probably about the average time I spend at an abandoned place. More than 3 hours and 250 photos after my arrival I finally left this spectacularly unspectacular location I was longing to explore for more than a year – luckily it totally lived up to the high expectations I had.

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Kuratani Onsen

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, House, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2010, Wakayama on 2013/11/12| 14 Comments »

After *a surprisingly successful recent exploration in China* it’s about time to write about a surprisingly unsuccessful exploration in Japan I did 3.5 years ago.
On a nice spring day I made my way to Wakayama prefecture to check out the Kuratani Onsen, which had a reputation for being one of the most beautiful abandoned onsen in all of Japan. The next train station was about 1.5 hours away, but I didn’t mind the walk towards one of Wakayama’s gorgeous mountain ranges. Along the way I saw a small abandoned house, emptied, windows smashed – rather uninteresting, despite me being rather inexperienced back then. Probably somebody’s weekend home in the 1990s.

A few minutes later I finally reached the Kuratani Onsen… and I was shocked by its condition. Parts of the building complex were collapsed, probably under the weight of snow in the winter – the downside of unmaintained wooden buildings, gorgeous as they usually are. The rest was trashed beyond believe. But not just vandalized, filled with trash up to my knees in parts. It’s generally amazing how much garbage you find in remote areas in Japan as waste disposal can be quite expensive in the land of the rising sun. But what kind of person would drive to an abandoned building and get rid of their trash there?
Not only was the whole place nasty because of it, the trash also attracted all kinds of animals – spiders, flies, bugs; probably some rodents, too. This was probably the most disgusting abandoned place I’ve ever visited – and since it was before my “jeans and hiking boots even in summer when doing urbex” habit, I didn’t even try to make my way across all that garbage. Instead I took a path on the right side of the building to make it to the upper floor, smashed to pieces and probably not safe either… The metal entrance part was already too rusty for me to trust it on a solo exploration. And so I left with a couple of crappy photos after about half an hour. Not my shortest exploration ever (that title still belongs to the more or less failed *Sekigahara Menard Land* snow expedition earlier the same year), but probably one of the most disappointing ones.
And that’s pretty much it… One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so I hope you were not too disappointed by this week’s article (though I wouldn’t blame you, but not all of my explorations are spectacular, so sometimes I have to write about duds, too) – but if you were, you might consider *liking Abandoned Kansai on Facebook*. Especially in weeks with an unspectacular location I upload some exclusive preview material there – the photos scheduled for later this week will show you some amazing locations that I’m sure you will like as much as I do!

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Inagawa Trap Shooting

Posted in Asia, Demolished, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Map, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2013/10/22| 8 Comments »

The Inagawa Trap Shooting in the suburbs of Osaka was one of Japan’s hottest urbex locations back when I started with urban exploration four years ago – huge overgrown buildings with lots of interior and tons of shotgun shells everywhere. It took me a while to figure out its exact location, but then I went there straight away on a sunny winter day…
Osaka is surrounded by several mountain ranges and the burbs often spread into other prefectures, especially Hyogo – the Inagawa Trap Shooting was located in one of those nice, a little bit remote neighborhoods full of single-family houses – and course I got lost, despite photos of the map on my camera. But I was inexperienced and pictures were not detailed enough… Luckily I found my way to a pond I had seen on several Japanese *haikyo* blogs and from that point on it was easy. I followed the partly overgrown path only… to find out that the Inagawa Trap Shooting was demolished!
What a downer… It took me quite long to find the place, so I was looking forward for weeks to visit it – and then it was just some small piles of rubble in the backyard of an ordinary suburb neighborhood. I clearly made another beginner’s mistake – I didn’t look hard enough for information about the location’s current state. To prevent other urban explorers from making the same mistake I created this *GoogleMap of demolished haikyo in Japan*. There you can have a look where you don’t need to go anymore… (Some of the locations of that map I was able to visit before they were demolished, so it’s worth a look even if you don’t plan on doing urbex in Japan yourself.)
With the Inagawa Trap Shooting almost completely gone there was not much I could do – but since the area was rather vast and I was pretty much an urbex noob (one of the first 20 explorations), it took me 1.5 hours to have a look at everything and to take some rather average photos. The most interesting part was a bit in the back – a couple of shacks, one of them filled with countless empty shotgun shells, another one being some kind of rest room and / or command hut; all of them in really bad condition. As I found out later, the shooting range was closed in 1989 and demolished in November 2007 – two years before I even began with urban exploration. Japanese blogs though kept reporting about the Inagawa Trap Shooting with photos of the intact buildings till at least 2012! But well, it took me almost four years to write about it, too…

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Festivalgate

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Demolished, Haikyo, Japan, Map, Osaka, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Visited in 2011, Visited in 2012, Visited in 2013 on 2013/10/15| 17 Comments »

Festivalgate was a post real estate bubble amusement park in the city center of Osaka, just down the street of the famous Tennoji Zoo and right next to a transportation hub combining two railway lines at Shin-Imamiya Station with the tramway stop Minamikasumicho and the subway station Dobutsuen-mae (literally “in front of the animal park”) on the city’s main line Midosuji – although “amusement park” doesn’t really nail it, since the park part was missing. Festival Gate was more like an amusement building with all kinds of arcades, shops, a cinema, restaurants and a rollercoaster on eight floors with a total floor space of more than 5700 m². Though located in a densely populated area with perfect connection to public transportation Festivalgate offered parking space for 380 cars and 120 bikes. Nevertheless it failed twice within 10 years…

I guess the planning of Festivalgate started during the bubble (1986-1991), when the Osaka Municipal Transportation Bureau got rid of the Tennoji Streetcar Garage (大阪市電天王寺車庫). The then leveled lot was split into two parts, A and B – A was the location of the now demolished Festivalgate, on lot B the still operative Spa World was built (a spa wonderland with saunas, waterslides, a gym and themed areas from all around the world). For that the city founded a joint venture with the Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation and the Chuo Mitsui Trust and Banking Co. (two of Japan’s biggest companies) to raise 50 billion Yen, back then about 290 million Euro / 350 million US$, nowadays 400 million Euro / 532 million US$ (not adjusted for inflation).

Festivalgate opened together with Spa World on July 18th 1997 with an underwater / Atlantis theme – little did they know that they would drown in debt soon…

The opening hours were rather long – 10:00 to 20:00 for stores, 10:00 to 22:00 for amusement facilities, 10:00 to 23:00 for eateries. To give Festivalgate a financial identity you were able to buy discount tickets at vending machines; for 1000 Yen you received a 1100 Yen card, for 3000 Yen you got a 3400 Yen card and for 5000 Yen you were able to enjoy 5800 Yen worth of fun. This was what the floor plan looked liked:
B1 – Underground walkway to Shin-Imamiya Station and Dobutsuen-mae Station.
1F – Miracle Gate: Entrance and main floor.
2F – Plaza Festa: Eateries and shopping.
3F – Festival Pier: Eateries and shopping with a West Coast theme.
4F – Oriental Festa: Eateries and shopping with a Marco Polo theme.
5F – Festa Mosque: Eateries and shopping with a Bazaar theme.
6F – Festa Lab: Arcade game zone (Sega World) with a Jules Verne theme.
7F – Cine Festival: Cinema complex with 4 screens for up to 600 guests total.
8F – View Festa: Restaurant area with a stunning view.

Since Festival was considered an amusement park (no entrance fee though!), of course there were pay as you go attractions scattered all over the floors 2 to 6 – for example 2F had the Mermaid Carousel, 3F had the entrance the parachute tower “Tower of Teos”, 4F had a cat petting zoo and a Chinese Ghost house, 5F had a kid’s land, an airgun museum and the entrance for the iconic rollercoaster and 6F was full of arcade machines run by Sega.

At the beginning Festivalgate was a huge success – in the first year (1997/98) 8.31 million visitors had a look, but in the following year the Asian Financial Crisis hit Japan and numbers dropped significantly. Four years later, which is one year after Universal Studios Japan opened in the south of Osaka, Festivalgate had only 3 million visitors – none of which paid an entrance fee… Shops and restaurants started to drop out and the downwards spiral could not be stopped – in January of 2004 the banks withdrew from the project, driving the Festival Gate Corporation into bankruptcy and leaving the city of Osaka with 20 billion Yen of debt. Orix, a financial service provider most famous for owning and sponsoring the baseball team Orix Buffaloes, stepped up in 2005, but dropped out when it became clear that Festivalgate was a bottomless pit. In January of 2007 the city of Osaka concluded that Festivalgate would cost 200 million Yen per year for maintenance and decided to get over with this unfortunate and highly unprofitable project – the remaining businesses were given notice and Festivalgate closed officially July 31st of the same year. After some back and forth with potential Korean investors the Japanese entertainment giant Maruhan (bets, pachinko parlors) bought Festivalgate in a third auction on January 30th 2009 with a winning bid of 1.4 billion Yen, announcing reconstruction plans soon after. The demolition of Festivalgate began in 2010 and it turned out to be a surprisingly time-consuming process given that Japanese wrecking crews usually are faster than a bunch of piranhas dealing with a chicken…
When I first went to Festivalgate on November 3rd 2010 there was little to nothing to explore, although it seems like the building was still accessible from 2007 till 2009, despite all shops and restaurants being closed. Demolition had already begun, but at least the underground passage and the entrance area on 1F was still accessible with signs announcing that this would change December 17th. Active Japanese construction sites usually are fortified – solid high fences all around, guards in front of every exit, sometimes with small lightsabers to stop pedestrians when vehicles are getting in or out. The Festivalgate deconstruction site was no exception. All potential entrances (including windows) were locked solidly, security was patrolling (probably to keep homeless people away since Festivalgate was in an area that has a rather bad reputation… by Japanese standards), fences were even higher than usual – 3.5 to 4 meters, not the normal 2.5 meters high ones. But not high enough to block the view from the elevated Osaka Loop Line! So I took a couple of photos… and again when I was visiting a friend for a Christmas party later that year. And again whenever I passed by – which wasn’t that often, but still enough to give you a general idea how things progressed. To my surprise it took more than two years to get rid of the ill-fortuned Festivalgate. Good for me (and you) as this article was only possible thanks to that… BTW: Sorry for the quality of the photos – they are not artistic at all, shot from crowded, moving trains, but I think they nevertheless are interesting.

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Japanese Countryside University (Part 1)

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, University, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/10/08| 18 Comments »

“How do you find all those abandoned places?”

Hardly any other question I hear more often than the above one, maybe with the exception of “Which is your favorite abandoned place?”. Finding abandoned places… it’s easier than you might think – and harder at the same time. Of all the 300 explorations I did (more or less), about half a dozen locations were shown to me; voluntarily, I don’t recall ever asking anybody any specifics. Which also means that I found 98% of the places I explored either by chance (driving around in a car or spotting them from a train) or by doing research – reading other people’s blogs, looking for hints like location names, parts of location names, city names, prefecture names… or paying close attention to photos. Yes, I actually identified abandoned places by looking at mountains, coastal lines or other buildings in the background. Once I thought I found the location of an abandoned cable car, but I was wrong… instead I found an abandoned ropeway virtually unknown to the internet – the cable car I identified half a year later, about 300 kilometers away from where I first thought it would be. If you are lucky you can find urbex maps by less caring explorers, but they tend to be unreliable… and most of the locations revealed on those maps are rather well-known anyway. The real gems are hidden – and it’s even more satisfying finding them than just choosing one from a catalogue!
The Japanese Countryside University is one of those places, a mesmerizing complex of rather new yet partly overgrown buildings; at least according to my internet source. I saw it once on a Japanese blog and never again since. The J-blog dropped a couple of hints, like an abbreviated version of the university’s name, a road number and the fact that there was a train station next to the road – nevertheless it took me several hours to find the exact location, because it turned out that the university still exists and that the abandoned campus was a couple of dozen kilometers out of town… but with a train station along the same road as the main campus. No word about that fact in the article, of course! In the end it took me half a day of research in Japanese and the help of a friend (thanks again, Mayu!) to finally pin down the exact location. I felt like Sherlock Holmes himself when I confirmed the overgrown campus on GoogleMaps… and even better when I finally went there more than a year later. I found that place – and I was about to explore it…

Over the course of the past four years I learned two important things about urbex:
1.) Never enter right away, you might find an easier back entrance!
2.) Don’t sneak around like a thief in the night – approach people unless they wear a uniform!

Arriving at the Japanese Countryside University my heart sank a little bit. The entrance gate had nasty spikes and the road was surprisingly busy, even on a weekend day. So I followed guideline #1 and started to circle the place, only to find an entrance to a big parking lot in the back, where I could not have been seen or heard; or so I thought. Some of the buildings were in amazing condition, despite the fact that the university was closed in 2006. While I was still wondering about that fact I saw two cars parked near the entrance of what appeared to be the main building. Darn! So I got closer and while I was walking between two buildings I saw an older dude kneeling on the ground of floor 1.5 – instincts kicked in and I made my way back to where I entered, without being seen. Then I remembered guideline #2, so I went back, waved (this time the guy saw me…) and entered the building. Living in an English speaking bubble my Japanese is rather basic, so I scraped together a couple of long forgotten phrases and approached the guy – who’s English was about as good as my Japanese. I asked him what this building was and he told me what I already knew. Then I told him that I like old buildings and asked him if it was okay to take some photos. At first I thought he was strictly against it, but then he took me up to the sixth floor of this brand-new looking building from the year 1986 where I was presented with a gorgeous view over the whole campus – sadly I wasn’t able to take some good photos through the windows, but my new friend left me alone and walked down the stairs, so I could take some photos and videos of the building, a former library, at my own speed.
Back at the 1.5th floor we had another quick chat. It turned out that my new friend was a 75-year-old former art teacher and some of the university buildings were in the process of being converted into… some kind of art project; the exact details were lost in translation.
I went on to take some photos outside – and having been been treated with such generosity and kindness I didn’t even consider entering the areas that were roped-off. So I took some more photos and shot a walkthrough from now almost completely overgrown dormitory to the main area.
That’s when I realized that my artist friend was gone… and my urbex instincts kicked in. The ropes. *What was behind those ropes? Well, that’s a story for another time…*

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