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Archive for the ‘Hokkaido’ Category

View of Yotei Ski-Jumping Hill

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Ski, Travel, Urbex on 2025/09/23| 2 Comments »

The long-awaited video game Ghost of Yotei will be out soon, so let’s celebrate the release with an abandoned place not on Mount Yotei, but with nice views of Hokkaido’s famous mountain! (Personally I’m more of an Onimusha guy – super excited for the new installment “Way of the Sword”, especially since you couldn’t pay me enough to go Kyoto these days…)

A few years ago I developed a strange fascination with abandoned ski-jumping hills – or rather the constructions use to jump from those hills, called Schanze in German; not to be confused with the military fortification, sconce (most famously used in Wolfsschanze, but let’s not go down that dark road). In the autumn of 2021 I did my own Vierschanzentournee (Four Hills Tournament) when visiting four abandoned ski-jumping hills during one Hokkaido trip. The most famous one probably being the View of Yotei Ski-Jumping Hill, also known as Asahigaoka Park Ski-Jumping Hill in Kutchan.
It’s absolutely beyond me why this abandoned place is not more famous in the first place as it is part of a ski area and visible from Kutchan Station, right next to Little Australia, the bogan winter wonderland called Niseko. Tens of thousands of people must see the large red metal construction every year, yet neither tourists nor urban explorers seem to pay much attention to it, despite it being a dream to explore – easy access, outdoors, no fences or Keep Out! signs (except for the welded-up main inrun tower), spectacular views of Mount Yotei – an active stratovolcano nicknamed Yezo Fuji for its shape and one of the “100 famous mountains in Japan” (a list compiled for a book by mountaineer Kyuya Fukada in 1964 and made popular by then Crown Prince and now Emperor Naruhito). To me Mount Yotei was just another mountain at the time when I took pictures of the abandoned structures, and it was pure coincidence that it ended up in some of them – I was there in October of 2021, the game was announced a year ago, on September 24th 2024…
The hill was first used for ski jumps back in 1934. In 1952 a new inrun tower was set up at the current location, a larger one followed in 1963, which was later enlarged to the red monster we see abandoned now. Between 1964 and 1996 the most famous competition on the Schanze was the Major’s Cup of Kutchan Town, which attracted famous ski jumpers like Hiroya Saito, who won the cup in 1992 – and a gold medal with the Japanese team at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano (fun fact – Saito was born in nearby Yoichi, mostly known for the Nikka whisky distillery). The exploration itself was relaxed and uneventful for the most part. Nice autumn day, which means a lot of elements of the ski-jumping hill (inrun towers, observation tower for the judges, landing slope, out-run…) were mostly overgrown. Vegetation grows fast in Japan, even in Hokkaido, but autumn leaves were just past their peak, so the whole area was beautiful. In winter you can see much more of the facility, and you can use the lift to get up the darn hill, but overall it was a very pleasant exploration, a bit reminiscent of *Sapporo Dreamland*. If you are now curious about other abandoned ski-jumping hills, I recommend checking out my articles about the *Hokkaido Ski-Jumping Hill* and the *Sprungschanze Katzenbuckel*.
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Sapporo Dreamland (Teine Olympic Amusement Park)

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Sapporo, Travel, Urbex on 2025/01/13| 7 Comments »

The demolition of Nara Dreamland in late 2016 / early 2017 was devastating, especially for explorers living in Kansai. Since then I explored several other abandoned theme parks, usually to leave disappointed. But now it’s time to introduce you to the Teine Olympic Amusement Park – or as I like to call it: Sapporo Dreamland!

To make one thing clear: Sapporo Dreamland has nothing to do with Nara Dreamland or its actual sister park, the 2002 closed and 2003 demolished Yokohama Dreamland. The term is just snappier and more memorable than the rather clunky official name Teine Olympic Amusement Park. And as much as I hate revealing too much about locations, this one is so big and so unique, you could probably find it via GoogleLens or some smartass on Reddit anyway. Needless to say that I also wouldn’t be able to write anything about the park’s history, little as is known anyway. So… let’s get to it.

I first went to Mount Teine in 2012, when I arrived in Sapporo a day earlier than my co-explorer for a *Haikyo in Hokkaido* road trip – to kill time I went to check out the *Mt. Teine Ski Lift* and *The Olympic Ruins Of Sapporo 1972* solo. On my way to the latter I actually must have seen the iconic blue Ferris wheel of the already abandoned Mount Teine Olympic Amusement Park, but I guess I was so focused on the task at hand that I didn’t pay attention to it. Or maybe I thought it was still active. Who knows? In any case, more than a decade ago I wrote freely about the previously mentioned locations and apparently neither me nor anybody else was like: But what else is nearby? Some time in the second half of the 2010s I heard that the bobsleigh goal of the Olympic Ruins was demolished in early 2017, so I had a look at Mount Teine again and made a note of that strange blurry blob of unmarked something nearby – and forgot about it again… until I saw some amazing photos of an abandoned theme park posted by a friend on Twitter. Now, I could have gone down the easy path and asked for the location, but I seriously HATE IT when strangers do that to me, so I hardly ever do it to my friends; maybe a handful of times in 15 years. Finding locations is part of the urbex experience, and exploring a location earned is so much more fulfilling than just going there like it was a tourist attraction on GoogleMaps. So I had a closer look at my map of unexplored potential abandoned places… and to my surprise the photos fit exactly to the former blurry blob of unmarked something, which was now displayed in much higher resolution! The goddamn thing had been right in front of my eyes for more than half a decade!

Now, Hokkaido isn’t really in day trip range from Kansai (though technically it is…), so it took me a while to get back up there, just in time before Covid hit. Not that it really mattered, because unlike most countries, there were hardly any travel restriction within Japan – getting in or out was a nightmare, but early 2020 till late 2022 was the golden age of domestic tourism in Japan. It was AWESOME! *I even wrote an article about it back in 2022.* (The only negative experience I made during that time was getting denied entry to the Pear Museum in Kurashiki early during the pandemic, long before the vaccine, as they restricted access to Tottori prefecture residents.) Anyway, a total of 7 years passed between my first and my second visit to Mount Teine… but it was really worth the wait as the abandoned Teine Olympic Amusement Park turned out to be Nara Dreamland 2. Maybe even better than Nara Dreamland 2, thanks to the park’s most iconic ride – a gigantic blue Ferris wheel at Plaza II!

At the time of being closed for good after the 2009 season, the entry fee to Sapporo Dreamland was 2500 Yen (an extra 300 Yen around Golden Week!). Due to cold weather at “best” and tons of snow at “worst” the park was only open from Golden Week till late September / early October, which is a very short season to make money. (Ski season on the same mountain is usually from late November / early December till late April, but you had to add a few more weeks to make the rides winter-proof / ready for operation.) It surely didn’t help that even during that time, the park was only open on Saturdays, Sundays, and national holidays – with the exception of summer school holidays, when the Teine Olympic Amusement Park was open every day. The place also had a reputation for being rather run-down and having occasional accidents, so it was probably good that they shut it down before something really bad happened, like at *Expoland*, where a student died due to a rollercoaster accident.

Speaking of rollercoasters – the park had two of them, though neither was modern, like the ones you might know from USJ or Fuji-Q Highland. In total there were 26 attractions, the latest being an area called Exciting Dinosaur Land (Wakuwaku Kyōryū Rando), constructed in 2004 – two or three dozen dinosaurs on about 500 square meters (sorry, I have no idea what’s that in Fahrenheit…) with some of them being parts of rides or slides. The dinosaur playground was located right between Plaza I and Plaza II, the two main areas of Teine Olympic Amusement Park, which were connected by a short path through the surrounding forest. The origins of the park date back to 1966, when Sapporo won the bid for the Olympic Games – six years before the actual event. The city was actually one of the few that really benefited from the Games as it managed to make a profit and also opened the first section of its newly built subway system, now consisting of three lines. Hence the nostalgia and bids for future games, despite the fact that those most likely will turn into a disaster, similar to Osaka and the Expo (1970 / 2025).

The first time I explored Sapporo Dreamland was back in 2019 on a rather unpleasant spring day – not only can you see patches of snow on some photos, but the weather was a bit windy and constantly changing between foggy, drizzly, and overcast. All the photos in the gallery below are from that visit, which took me about 2.5 hours – admittedly a bit rushed, but while I was in the Dinosaur Land, I got an excitement boost when seeing somebody driving around in a car, which brought back terrible memories from when I first explored Nara Dreamland almost a decade prior. Fortunately I was able to hide in the fog, but as soon as the car was gone I moved on to Plaza I, where I took only a few quick shots before leaving. The atmosphere there was mind-blowing though, especially when exploring solo and not knowing exactly what to expect. It is absolutely beyond me, why this location is not more popular and all over the internet. Even among Japanese urbexers it’s not even close to being Top 20 in my guesstimation, probably not even Top 50, despite being rather easily accessible. Nara Dreamland on the other hand was all over the web back in the mid-2010s, a few years after I started writing about it. I met more tourists at Nara Dreamland than Sapporo Dreamland most likely had explorers in total. Let’s see if that changes after this article. I kept my mouth shut for almost six years, but I wanted to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of Abandoned Kansai with a spectacular location – and on this day 15 years ago I published my (partly failed) exploration of the *Mount Atago Cable Car*, the first real article. Who would have thought that 15 years later I would still be exploring and writing about it? My first exploration of Sapporo Dreamland wasn’t my last, of course. Since then I’ve been back twice – once on a sunny late spring afternoon and once on a rainy autumn day. So if one or more of the international urbex tourists picks up on Sapporo Dreamland later this year, I’ll be ready with another article… and another article. And then I have another large, abandoned amusement park on hold – one I haven’t seen anywhere on any urbex site, not even Japanese ones. Not to mention all the other spectacular places I’ve been exploring. I kept quiet about Sapporo Dreamland for more than five years… Imagine what and how many other locations you don’t know about yet! 15 years into it and the best is still to come!

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Japanese Work Bus

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Transportation, Travel, Urbex on 2024/08/28| 7 Comments »

Three months ago I posted an *abandoned blue bus* – today it’s a white, yellow, orange, and red one… but with completely different interior! 🙂

My apologies, the last few months have been hot, humid, and extremely busy. For a while it looked like as if I could go back to posting at least biweekly again, now I’m rushing to get one done before the month ends. Once more another quick one because of it, but I hope that I’ll be able to publish some meatier yet vegan friendly locations soon.
For now there we have another bus on the side of the road. I almost walked by it, but then I looked down a dirt road leading up a slope and saw this fine specimen parked there, partly overgrown already. Upon approach I sunk ankle deep into the slightly swampy ground. Fortunately it was only late spring on a cloudy day, not summer already, or the situation most likely would have been a lot worse. Nevertheless not really a fun experience wearing new sneakers. (I was on vacation and didn’t really gear up with boots and protectors…)
It looks like the bus belonged to a (now defunct) construction company, so I guess this one was used to transport employees to work sites. Not much to say about it. Standard interior, just a nice little roadside find. Nobody around, decent decay – less than half an hour total. Enjoy!

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Olympic Ruins Of Japan

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Nagano, Olympia, Photography, Sports, Travel, Urbex on 2024/07/24| 2 Comments »

A few days from now the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris will begin. A spectacle that costs about €9 billion – and probably will leave some abandoned places behind… like in Japan!

Japan’s history as a host of the Olympic Games dates back to 1964, when Tokyo was home of the Summer Games. Sapporo 1972 and Nagano 1998 followed with Winter Games, before the disastrous Tokyo Summer Games 2020 were held in 2021. Sapporo (who had won the bid for 1940, but couldn’t follow through for obvious reasons) remembers the 1972 games so fondly that there was a large campaign to get the games in 2030 – an effort that became rather unpopular quickly in the aftermath of Tokyo 2020. 2034 is still in talks, but extremely unlikely… Some politicians seem to cling to it, but that’s pretty much it.

Since I avoid Tokyo like the plague (or Corona… still no infection!) I don’t know what the status of their Olympic ruins is, but both Nagano and Sapporo still have some installations left. The Olympic bobsleigh track in Nagano called Spiral is a tourist attraction now (coordinates: 36.71088, 138.1578), the other remaining venues that have been abandoned are mostly forgotten now – some have been demolished after my visit, for example the bobsleigh goal house in Sapporo and that gymnasium used by athletes to change and prepare right before their competitions. I compiled a little gallery with some interesting photos at the end of this blog entry, but here is a list of links to the full articles I’ve written in the past, in case you want to see (and read?) more:
*Sapporo 1972 (1)*
*Sapporo 1972 (2)*
*Nagano 1998 (1)*

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Horror Wolf – My Scariest Urbex Related Experience (So Far)

Posted in Animals, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Non-Urbex, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2024/07/17| 5 Comments »

A new video in a long time, just weeks after I said to expect no more. But this one is different…

For most of its existence, Abandoned Kansai featured a video or two with every article, in addition to text and photos. They were pretty much always taken at the end, after I’ve explored the respective location and knew it reasonably well – which was kind of necessary since I didn’t edit them at all. As I mentioned before, I initially took them only for my own reference… and to make use of a Sanyo Xacti I originally intended to be my main camera in Japan, but then I picked up urbex as a hobby and the photo quality was kind of sub-par for that hobby, but the videos were pretty good (for the time), so I switched to Nikon for photos and kept the Xacti for videos. Fast forward something like 10 years and the Sanyo died – at first I was upset since I also lost a days’ worth of walkthroughs, including the amazing *Trump Hotel*, but then I was kinda glad that I had an excuse to not take videos anymore.
Fast forward six or seven years. I had forgotten what a pain in the behind those videos were for me and my co-explorers, so I made the stupid mistake of buying a Insta360 X4 at Yodobashi Camera for an upcoming trip to Hokkaido after being instantly fascinated by the camera’s ability to easily take 360° photos and videos – something I quickly regretted. *Please click here if you missed that story…* Long story short: The experience with Insta360 and Yodosucky Camera was so off-putting that I probably lost interest in video for good.

A few days later I was exploring an original find in the outskirts of a rather remote town in Hokkaido, when I heard some ungodly noise in the distance – as if animals were screaming and somebody was yelling. It really kinda freaked me out, but of course I finishing taking photos. If I would have quit because I was afraid a little bit, I wouldn’t have made it past my first explorations back in 2009. Afterwards I continued up a hill, further away from the town, and entered another abandoned building – and again I heard those bloodcurdling screams, this time a bit closer. I once more finished my exploration, trying to stay calm and then… I walked further up the hill, towards the noise. As you do when you are by yourself on a rainy day exploring what are supposed to be abandoned buildings in the outskirts of a rundown town in Hokkaido. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, I walked around a corner of a road, when all of a sudden I saw some fur on a metal construction – and seconds later the screams again! My first thought was: a dog on some torture device! Then some kind of head was turning towards me… and I realized that it was a wolf Halloween mask with flickering eyes. Like something from a haunted house. Now, you have to know that I don’t like Halloween or horror… or violence in general; except for Dead Rising – Frank West covered wars, you know! So this thing freaked me out for the third time, but this time really for real! What the heck was this contraption?!
Well, the sound obviously was pre-recorded and came from a speaker, so at least I wouldn’t have to deal with some animal torturing hillbilly. When the most messed up animatronics I have ever seen finally stopped after 20 or 30 seconds I carefully had a closer look. Upon inspection the setup apparently consisted of a solar panel connected to a battery, connected to the screaming furry fella, with a control unit and two speakers underneath. I was intrigued, but nothing happened for a while…
I quickly set up my photo camera, which I hardly ever use for recording videos, but this was too strange to not record. Initially I came from behind and didn’t know what to expect, but for the pictures and videos I decided to use an angle that shows a bit more. Nothing happened for another 15 minutes. I got closer from the road at the left side, trying to trigger the device. Still nothing. Then a friggin fox walked by on the main road, right in front of it! Still nothing. My camera was mounted on a tripod, set to video – and everything happened super fast, so I only got blurry photos of the second furry fella. Fortunately the fox couldn’t care less about me and I was spared an attack as well as a rabies shot. At this point I was running out of time, and when you have to catch one of four buses per day, you make sure to meet their schedule! So I walked a bit down the “main” road, in front of the damn contraption – and finally it triggered! Repeatedly. With different sound samples. So I adjusted the camera in a way that I could trigger the thing without being seen and… well, enjoy! It might not be that scary on video, but in reality it got me pretty good. Both from a distance as well as approaching it for the first time from behind.
I still don’t know what the Horror Wolf was for though. It was located at a T crossing halfway up a hill amidst abandoned / rundown companies in the outskirts of a rather remote town. The next residential buildings were about half a kilometer away, the town center with the bus stops rather 2 kilometers. The purpose most likely was to scare away bears, but I don’t know for sure.

And now please enjoy the first videos I have published in years… and probably the last ones ever. That stuff in a 360° video would have been so cool, but *the unholy alliance of Insta360 and Yodobashi Camera* had to mess up… 😦

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Hokkaido Sanitation Center

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2024/06/27| 4 Comments »

No joy and excitement greater than finding and exploring an abandoned place without prior information. Please join me on a journey to a remote sanitation center in the far north of Japan!

To me, Google Maps is one of the greatest pieces of software ever written. Without it (or something similar) I probably would have never gotten into urban exploration – and Street View is the icing on that amazing cake. I was always fascinated by maps, from child days on, so even before I picked up urban exploration as a hobby in 2009, I liked Google Maps. In 2009 though I fell in love with it. I saw abandoned places popping up here and there on the internet, back then it was kind of an underground hobby and not nearly as mainstream as it is today – so of course I tried to had a look at them on Google Maps. I started creating my own maps dropping pins…
… And then I went out there exploring. At first most parts of the world map were rather blurry, and Street View wasn’t as widely available. The better the maps and SV got, the more I just had a look randomly. At first nearby, the Kansai area. Later all over Japan. Instead of watching TV I’d rather looked at Google Maps for half an hour. When I needed a break for 5 minutes, I checked out a countryside onsen town or a remote stretch of coastline – hoping to find a place that looked abandoned. I actually still do that several times a week. That’s how I found the Hokkaido Sanitation Center. Just a couple of abandoned looking structures in a remote area of Hokkaido, not a single soul nearby – which made it hard to get to, but easy to access. Fortunately the buildings not only looked abandoned, they actually were abandoned! That could have easily turned into a wasted day instead of a wastewater day.

When I explore in Kansai, I’m basically a good weather explorer. Don’t get me wrong, taking pictures in the rain has its own charm, but despite spending a lot of time outdoors, I’m actually not much of an ourdoorsy person. I like the comfort of a comfy couch and comfort food. I also like nature, but I prefer it tamed… or barbecued! So when it looks like a rainy day in Kansai and I have plans to explore (solo), I tend to postpone those plans to the next weekend. A luxury I don’t have on longer trips, because transportation tickets need to be booked and hotels need to be reserved – so then options on potentially rainy days are not “Now” and “Next week”, the options are “Now” and “Maybe never”. And never is such a sorry word, so I tend to explore in the rain. Which is what I did a while ago when I was in Hokkaido and I had to choose between a day of museums and onsen – and a day of exploring two original finds; places I found by chance on Google Maps.
A few modes of transportation after a delicious breakfast I found myself walking up to the Hokkaido Sanitation Center, about two kilometers away from the closest bus stop. Well, at least back then there was a bus stop. Looks like it disappeared since then, like so many others on Hokkaido, which becomes harder and harder to travel to by public transport – and that is really sad, because once you get away from what I call the Silver Route (Otaru, Sapporo, Noboribetsu Onsen, Hakodate), Hokkaido is probably the greatest prefecture of all!
Anyway, I was walking up to the Hokkaido Sanitation Center, nervous as always when approaching an original find, despite not having seen a single soul or car for like 20 minutes. Fortunately it took another 90 minutes and a hike back to civilization for me to see anybody else. There was a rather small fence around the sanitation center, which I guess is a fancy word for water treatment plant, but there were also some additional buildings, so they might have done some testing and stuff there to justify the name. Like I said, access was easy – I never break anything to enter anyway, but this time I didn’t even have to climb over or into something, there was enough space on the side of the main gate to get onto the premises. The hard part was finding the place and getting to it. I took some outdoor shots of various buildings, when the clouds finally opened and it started to rain. Time to find a way inside, which was equally easy as I hit the sweet spot of being there after curious visitors willing to crack open a (roll-up) door, but before vandals and metal thieves – and definitely before other urban explorers as I had never seen the place on other blogs or social media accounts. Therefore my nervousness quickly turning into having the time of my life leisurely exploring a mid-sized unknown abandoned industrial – it was amazing, despite the rain occasionally ruining a shot or two when I was taking more photos as I switched between buildings.
Speaking of unknown: Of course I know the full name of the Hokkaido Sanitation Center, it was written on a plaque next to the gate at the entrance, nevertheless I couldn’t find anything on the internet about its history. My gut tells me it was built post-war and abandoned in the 1980s, though I could be off by 20 years for both the opening and closing date. But who cares? I enjoyed the exploration and I really hope that you will equally enjoy the gallery below!

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Insta360 – How Is That Even Legal?

Posted in Abandoned, Aichi, Airport, Akita, Amusement Park, Animals, Aquarium, Asia, Asylum, Beijing, Berlin, Cemetery, China, Chugoku, Church, Chūbu, Cinema, Closed, Communications, Dark Tourism, Demolished, Depot, Driving School, Europe, Exhibition, Factory, Farm, Ferris Wheel, Festival, Fire Station, Food, Fukuoka, Fukushima, Gifu, Golf, Gunma, Haikyo, HDR, Hiking, Hiroshima, Hokkaido, Hospital, Hotel / Ryokan, House, Hyogo, Ibaraki, Ishikawa, Iwate, Japan, Kagawa, Kanagawa, Kanazawa, Kansai, Kanto, Kindergarten / Nursery, Kochi, Korea, Kumamoto, Kyoto, Kyushu, Lighthouse, Love Hotel, Mie, Military, Mine, Miyagi, Monochrome, Monument, Museum, Nagano, Nagasaki, Nampo, Nara, New Zealand, Night, Niigata, Non-Urbex, Oita, Okayama, Okinawa, Olympia, Original Find, Osaka, Pachinko, Photography, Power Station, Prison, Race Track, Restaurant, Roadside Attraction, Sacred Site, Saitama, Sapporo, School, Sex, Shiga, Shikoku, Shipyard, Shizuoka, Shrine, Ski, Snow, Spa / Onsen, Sports, Store, Strip Club, Supermarket, Taxidermy, Temple, Theater, Tochigi, Tohoku, Tokushima, Tokyo, Tottori, Transportation, Travel, University, Urbex, US Military, Video, Wakayama, Yamagata, Yamaguchi, Yamanashi, Zombies, Zoo on 2024/06/15| 15 Comments »

I’ve been urbexing for almost 15 years. During that time I’ve never written any articles about equipment, despite being very happy with three different Nikon DSLRs, two Manfrotto tripods, and a Sanyo video camera – which broke in 2019 after almost 15 years of recording countless hours at hundreds of locations as well as places like Chernobyl and North Korea. Videos I always considered a bonus anyway… and I’m still having a hard time thinking of myself as a photographer, given that I have no formal education in that field and only do it as a hobby. A really time-consuming hobby, but nevertheless just a hobby. I also don’t have a background in technology, so what’s the point of reviewing camera equipment when I just have an opinion based on learning by doing? Well, that doesn’t keep countless “influencers” and Youtubers from churning out incompetent nonsense, but I wouldn’t want to be found dead with either label on me! And like my favorite professor at university once said in regards to papers we had to hand in: “Don’t claim anything you can’t proof!”

Fortunately there is no need to be technical or scientific about this Insta360 X4 article, because unfortunately we never got that far…
Like I said, I always considered video walkthroughs of the locations I explore a bonus. I started them pretty much right away, but at first I didn’t even publish them, because I only took them for myself. And even when I published them, I didn’t edit them. No cuts, no voice overs. Just me walking around breathing heavily into the silence. That all came to a sudden halt when my Sanyo stopped working after exploring the abandoned *Trump Hotel*, also wiping out the recordings of the whole day. At that point I was tired of doing the videos anyway – and my co-explorers were increasingly annoyed, because I added 10 to 30 minutes at the end of every exploration for the walkthrough. So I stopped doing them.
For the past 18 months I’ve been exploring solo again (don’t ask, it’s complicated and often quite frustrating, to be honest), but a few weeks ago a colleague of mine showed me an older model Insta360 video camera that a visiting cousin from the States forgot at his place in Japan. I was fascinated by the easy to use 360 photos and videos, so I did some research and decided to get one. I’ve read reviews, I’ve read product pages – I did my best to make an informed decision, because at first I considered buying the X2 or X3 as older models often are cheaper with only slightly fewer / worse features. The X2 was out of the race when I read in a review that it required a smartphone to be activated – something I didn’t read anywhere about the X3 and X4. I guess because it’s an idea that is so stupid that it probably was a one-time mistake by Insta360, facing so much backlash that they removed the requirement from following models. The price difference between the X3 and X4 wasn’t very big and since the latter was only four weeks old at the time, the price on Amazon and in brick and mortar stores was the same, so I decided to get it at my local Yodobashi Camera (street block sized electronics stores with hundreds of employees each, in case you are not familiar with the chain), where I’ve been a customer for almost 18 years – ever since I moved to Japan.
BIG MISTAKE!

Yodobashi Camera was extremely stingy, giving only 1% points on the video camera, despite a promotional campaign of giving 13% points for purchases over amount X – except for (small print)… But when you shell out 80k Yen on a new video camera you are looking forward to use, store points are the last thing you worry about anyway. Fortunately I still had some of those points, which I used to get a seriously overpriced MicroSD card, because without it the video camera would be useless and I wanted to try it out on the weekend before an upcoming urbex trip. 83500 Yen poorer, but with a big smile on my face I left Yodobashi Camera on a Friday evening after an otherwise pretty horrible week.

Saturday was supposed to be a great day, though it started with a rude awakening / realization…
After sleeping in and having a delicious breakfast, I enjoyed a nice unboxing. The first slight disappointment was when I realized that the included battery was dead. Well, not dead dead, but completely empty. Whatever, an hour or two wouldn’t make a difference. It would not dent my great mood for sure. That came a few hours later when the battery was fully charged. I booted the small brick for the first time, its screen came to life, asking me to choose a language – and then the screen showed what the camera was seeing… for about a second or so. Then some text popped up and my heart sank. You gotta be kidding me! What I was looking at was a screen telling me to download an app by Insta360 to a smartphone, iOS or Android, to unlock the video camera. What. The. Heck? I literally felt it in my fingers how my blood-pressure exploded, because unlike pretty much every person on the planet above the age of 6 years I don’t own a smartphone. Never have. In the late 90s I had a black and white Nokia for work (yes, I’m not the youngest anymore, though I started working full-time in my early 20s). When I moved to Japan I had a flip phone or two, but for the past 15 years or so I didn’t have any mobile phone at all, smart or not, because I don’t like them as they turn way too many people into dumb zombies. So here I had a brand-new, quite expensive video camera… that forced me to make it usable by using another device with cameras? Who comes up with stupid ideas like that?!
Certainly not Nikon! Their D7500 DSLR I bought just weeks prior worked with a partly charged battery and regular SD cards straight out of the box 5 minutes after purchase – without any charging or unlocking BS!
So I started to do some research… and didn’t find much. Like I said, I couldn’t care less about smartphones, apps and all that stuff, so I tried to find a solution to unlock the darn X4 via PC or MicroSD card. Of course I couldn’t find anything about that either, so I contacted Insta360 directly – who apparently didn’t read my message and instead sent me a standard reply. So I got back to them, apologized for not describing my problem properly (I’ve been in Japan too long…), and this time got an answer that at least implied that they understood the situation I was in – without being able to help, because though it seems to be nowhere stated on the box, the promo material or even on the X4 website (at least back in mid / late May, maybe they changed it by now)… you really need a smartphone and the Insta360 app to use a newly bought X4 video camera, that seems to work perfectly fine, but is made not usable on purpose by the manufacturer. Which absolutely blows my mind!
How is that even legal?
How can a company force you to use a completely unrelated piece of expensive technology that actually partly does the job of the product you just bought, to make your purchase usable? Without mentioning that essential detail with big warnings before purchase! And in addition, forces you to use an app, which does who knows what in the background without one knowing?
What’s next? You need an electric bike with WiFi to unlock your newly bought car? And if you don’t… sucks to be you, it’s completely useless!

Yodobashi Camera – (The Lack Of) Customer Service In Japan!
After some back and forth it was Monday and I came to the conclusion that I won’t be able to use the Insta360 X4, because it really needs a smartphone to unlock, which wasn’t properly communicated. So after work I went back to Yodobashi Camera, my go-to electronics store for the past almost 18 years. Never had a problem with them, because all the products I bought worked as intended right out of the box. So I went back to the cashier counter where I bought the video camera… and already ran into the first minor bump in the road – apparently I hadn’t paid for it in the camera department, but a neighboring one, which wasn’t a problem on Friday evening, but very well on Monday evening. So I went 20 meters over to the camera department and told them about my unfortunate situation: That I had bought this video camera three days prior, but couldn’t use it, because it doesn’t work without a smartphone, which wasn’t properly communicated by Insta360 or Yodobashi Camera. But I was very careful with everything, I didn’t even remove the protective film from either of the lenses. Some air through the teeth sucking, some going back behind the counter to talk to a superior and then something like the following conversation – it’s in quotation marks, but they are not really quotes, you know… just something like that, from memory:
“I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.”
“But I can’t use the video camera.”
“I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.”
“I don’t have a smartphone. The X4 is useless to me.”
“I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.”
“I did proper research and I only found out about this after I opened the box and tried to use the X4.”
“I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.”
“I bought a D7500 last month, it worked out of the box…”
“I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.”
“Then take it back and ask Insta360 to exchange the X4 – you have dozens of them here, you probably have to return one once in a while anyway.”
“I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.”
“Are you serious? I’ve been a customer here for almost 18 years, spent millions at your store and other ones in the building that has your name. Never had a problem – and the first time I have, you are stonewalling me?”
“I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.”
“Really?”
“I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.”

At this point I gave up and exchanged a few more e-mails with Insta360 (“You should try to return the X4 where you bought it!” No kidding…), but their responses quickly became as useless and repetitive as the one of the guy at Yodobashi Camera – who is just a small cog in a big machine, so I don’t blame him; he’s punished enough with the lighting in the store and the uniform he has to wear all day.
So here we are, after me falling for the usual misconception about (customer) service in Japan, because I rarely ever had a real problem anywhere. It’s great as long as everything is within procedures – if somebody has planned for it, it most likely will go smoothly. Service is great. When service becomes customer service though, i.e. an individual customer needs help that requires improvisation outside of the planned service… you’re basically on your own. The only thing flexible in Japan is bamboo.

Nevertheless I still have moments when I wonder: AITAH?
I’m a huge believer in personal responsibility. If I make a mistake, I stand by it. I find behavior like ordering 20 items of clothes in different sizes and colors with the intention of sending 18 of them back despicable. In fact I’ve never sent anything back that I’ve ordered online, except for two USB-HDDs – and only because they didn’t work. I don’t do fast fashion, I don’t buy garbage from questionable sites like Shein oder Temu, I don’t replace electronics unless they are broken. (RIP, Nikon D7100!) I did due diligence before buying the Insta360 X4 and to this day everything in that (opened…) box is in mint condition. If I would have known about the smartphone requirement, I wouldn’t have bought the X4. It’s the reason why I didn’t buy the X2.
This is actually only the second time that I tell this story to anybody, because part of me is a bit ashamed that this series of unfortunate events happened – despite all the research before buying. But spending more than 80k on a useless brick of tech isn’t exactly something to be proud of. I don’t regret much in my life, but buying the Insta360 X4 I regret. And buying it at Yodobashi Camera is something I regret, too. Maybe Amazon would have been more accommodating with returns…
But I guess it is what it is – only money in the end. And no videos for Abandoned Kansai in the future. Heck, even if I would get the currently useless X4 to work, I would always be reminded of this story. Screw video cameras! Never was a fan, now I dislike them almost as much as smartphones. Which kind of closes the circle. But I’ll make sure to never ever even consider buying anything from Insta360 again – I still don’t understand how it’s even legal that they can do this. What’s next to unlock their cameras? Having to send them a voice message, swearing loyalty to Winnie the Xi(thead)? Apparently they can do anything without people questioning it…
I went back to Yodobashi Camera once more though, two days ago. I spent the remaining shop points I had on presents for my nephews without having to pay a single sen – my goal was it to hit +/- 20 points/Yen, but going to exactly 0 was priceless – and so I left the Yodobashi Camera building one last time with a big smile on my face. Upon arriving back home I cut up my loyalty card after almost 18 years. It probably doesn’t mean much to a large store chain like that. But it meant a lot to me!

Thank you for reading till the end and… What has your worst experience with Japanese (customer) service been? Write it in the comments!

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Sumitomo Ponbetsu Coal Mine

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Mine, Photography, Transportation, Urbex, Visited in 2017 on 2022/05/11| 4 Comments »

The Sumitomo Ponbetsu Coal Mine in Hokkaido is one of the most famous abandoned industrial sites in Japan – and kind of a tourist attraction, too…
I’ve been traveling to Hokkaido since 2012… the first few trips for urbex only, with a couple of touristy exceptions to kill time, like a tram tour of Sapporo to visit Mount Moiwa. It wasn’t until 2019 that I did my first real mini vacation there during Golden Week – wonderful because of places like the Shakotan Peninsula and Kushiro, annoying as heck because of… well… the insane amount of constantly yapping tourists that completely ruined the atmosphere of places like Otaru. A year later that problem had solved itself and in autumn of 2020 I did my first pandemic trip… to see the autumn leaves in Hokkaido – and I totally fell in love with Japan’s most northern prefecture. It was the perfect trip… food, atmosphere, weather, urbex, touristy places. There’s so much to see and do in Hokkaido, especially if you are a history buff with a strong interest in social history and the age of industry, as the prefecture is basically what the Ruhr area is for Germany or the Rust Belt is for the United States – and unlike Osucka the seasons actually feel really different. So I came back four more times since then, another trip is planned, raising the count to six in something like one and a half years – more than in my first 14 years of living in Japan…
Unfortunately more and more train lines in Hokkaido get shut down, making navigating the island much more complicated when relying on public transportation – which has nothing to do with Covid, no matter how much certain overseas tourists like to see themselves as the saviors of the Japanese economy; the partial closure of the Hidaka Main Line was decided in the late 2010s (at the height of tourism to Japan!), the closure of the Yubari Branch Line was announced on August 17th 2016 for March 31st 2019; not to mention the 25 individual stations on various lines closed between March 2021 and March 22 alone! At the same time, Hokkaido seems to remember and hold on to its industrial past – you can find hundreds of sites big and small all over the prefecture. From recently abandoned train stations to whole mining towns deserted decades ago. Some places are completely abandoned, others have been turned into museums… so many museums! Not just in cities like Sapporo and Otaru, but even in small towns hardly anybody ever visits anymore – more about two of those in the future!
Today I’d like to talk about a place in-between… a large complex that looks completely abandoned, but is roped off and features large bilingual signs in Japanese and English, illustrated with photos and maps – so they want visitors there… but not really. 🙂

The Sumitomo Ponbetsu Coal Mine (or Old Pombetsu Coal Mine as it is called on the sign) opened as the Nara Coal Mine in 1900, though Wikipedia lists 1902 as start of mining – if you are really interested in the mine’s history I recommend reading the information on the last photo and doing your own research – long story short: The still visible tower was built in 1959 and operated till the mine’s closure in 1971. When they tried to dismantle the mine and the headframe an explosion resulted in the death of five people, stopping the demolition of the mine. Decades later the perception of the mine remains changed from eyesore to asset, so the area was cleaned up a bit to make it save for visitors. It’s still technically off limits, but there seem to be guided tours (in Japanese) that even allow access to the headframe structure since something like 2007.
In 2017, during an urbex road trip to Hokkaido, I was lucky enough to spend two and a half hours on the premises, including in the hopper building in the background, which dates back to before the spectacular headframe. Since neither guards nor guides showed up it was a very relaxed exploration – mostly outdoors, rust, steel, concrete, natural decay, a rather dramatic sky… my kind of exploration! You could almost feel the history, despite the fact that 90% or so of the mine had been demolished decades ago. And while there are several similar places all over *Hokkaido*, the Sumitomo Ponbetsu Coal Mine is probably the most famous one, thanks to the gorgeous shaft turret.

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Demolished Olympic Ruins Of Sapporo 1972

Posted in Abandoned, Demolished, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Race Track, Sports, Travel, Urbex on 2022/02/01| 10 Comments »

The Olympic Ruins of Beijing 2022 is an article I really want to write, but I’m sure certain Olympic venues in China’s capital will go down faster than opposition members – and Covid making international travel rather complicated I hope some locals will take over. Instead today we’ll focus on the Demolished Olympic Ruins Of Sapporo 1972, a small follow-up on an article I wrote a decade ago!

Happy New Year! Well, most likely not when you are an Uyghur, but more than a billion Chinese people are probably having a jolly good time today and the days to come… Especially Winnie the Xi(thead)! Not only can he stuff his face without regrets due to the holidays, in a few days the years long bribery of IOC members will finally pay off and he can present his home country to the world like the Nazis did Theresienstadt to the Red Cross. By his side: Thomas Bach, who probably would be in jail or dead for acting like he did in the past few years, if he were a Chinese politician and not the president of the International Olympic Committee. Those two must be so proud! Finally Olympic Games again in a country with concentration camps after only 86 years…
*hrumph* Where was I? Oh, yes, focusing on the demolished ruins of the Sapporo Olympic Games… Usually around the beginning or the end of Olympic games I re-release a photo of the bobsleigh goal house of the 1972 Olympics that I first published in an article called “The Olympic Ruins Of Sapporo 1972” back in 2012. It was one of the few abandoned buildings worldwide with the Olympic Rings still attached, and it was already partly collapsing and covered by snow, so overall a nice photo. That building was demolished in early 2017 and I took some photos of it two years later. Rather unspectacular on a grey, overcast day – pretty miserable actually. Since there was no snow this time you can actually see more of the abandoned bobsleigh track, which was still there at the time of my visit. And I doubt that they will ever demolish that concrete half-tube… Maybe they can refurbish it? Apparently Sapporo is a candidate for the Olympic Winter Games 2030!
And now let’s raise a glass to the Lightning Seeds and their missed opportunity of making a buck remaking their most famous song for the Beijing Olympics: “It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming…”

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Non-Urbex: Overtourism and 3 Months of enjoying Japan without it

Posted in Akita, Asia, Chugoku, Chūbu, Food, Fukushima, Gifu, Hiroshima, Hokkaido, Ishikawa, Japan, Kanagawa, Miyagi, Monument, Museum, Niigata, Non-Urbex, Photography, Prison, Sacred Site, Shiga, Tohoku, Transportation, Travel, Yamagata, Yamaguchi on 2021/05/13| 9 Comments »

When I first came to Japan in 1998 the country had only 4.1 million foreign visitors. I was in my second year at university, traveled alone and barely ever saw another tourist (despite being there during cherry blossom season!), neither the internet nor cell phones were common, and Japan had a reputation for being kind of “inaccessible” – and expensive. The good old days…

By the time I moved to Japan in 2006 the number of tourists had almost doubled to 7.3 million, but that didn’t really matter to me, especially since they kept going up and down. Being a tourist and being an expat (i.e. being a tax payer with a job!) are two completely different things, two completely different experiences; especially in Japan. It’s like visiting an amusement park and working in an amusement park! And as a new hire at a Japanese company I neither had the time nor the financial resources, so for the first two or three years all I saw of Japan was Kansai in day trips. Now, there is a lot to see and do in this area, so I didn’t feel restricted – I was just living my daily life and my vacation time I spent visiting family and friends back home.
In late 2009 I picked up urban exploration as a hobby and a few months later started this blog, Abandoned Kansai. Kansai, because that was my home, the area I was familiar with, the area I traveled well. Not Abandoned Japan, because I never expected that I would travel much outside of Kansai – I hadn’t for three years, so why start now?
Well, because I wanted to document certain abandoned places in other prefectures, as I realized rather quickly… Two months after the *Mount Atago Cable Car* I did my first exploration in another region (Chubu), three months later I went to another main island (Kyushu) – and eight years later I traveled so much that I covered all nine regions of Japan (Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu, Kansai, Chugoku, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa) within one calendar year! Though it wasn’t until 2020 that I had visited and explored abandoned places in all of Japan’s 47 prefectures… (Ehime was last ؘ– by something like two years!)
For the first few years those urbex trips were more or less strictly urbex trips. I did them to explore certain abandoned places, *a lot of which don’t exist anymore as described in this article*, with little time for other things to do, except enjoying local food after sunset. And I didn’t think much about it, because I lived in Japan. I could go sightseeing at any time anyway! Meanwhile Abe and his monkey bunch decided that Japan should be a vacation destination (under his reign the number of tourists exploded from 6.2 million to 31.9 million visitors!) and aggressively pushed for overseas tourists by devaluating the Yen, propaganda campaigns and tax exemptions for shoppers from overseas while raising taxes on his own people, including doubling the consumption tax in two steps. Anyway, Japan became more and more popular worldwide, including among urban explorers, some of which came for hardcore trips with half a dozen locations per day, hardly any sleep, and definitely no sightseeing – which changed my attitude towards my own trips within Japan significantly around 2015/2016, because I felt so sorry for those poor souls who came all this way and experienced little more than moldy buildings similar to others in the rest of the world. Unfortunately for me around that time Japan had already passed the 20 million mass market mark, 5 times as many tourists as I was used to in 1998. Nearby places like Kyoto and Nara had already become unbearable as I found out on occasion when friends and family visited me in my new home country, but even in places like Otaru I heard more Chinese than Japanese in the streets as tourists from China went from 267k in 1998 to 9.6 million in 2019, the last full year of worldwide tourism before the coronavirus. To me overtourism is one of the ultimate turnoffs in life. And that’s a general thing. When I’m in Otaru I don’t want to hear Chinese everywhere, when I’m at the Great Wall I don’t want to hear Italian everywhere, when I’m at the Coliseum I don’t want to hear German everywhere, when I’m at the Berlin Wall I don’t want to hear Russian everywhere, when I’m at the Red Square I don’t want to hear French everywhere – and when I’m at the Eiffel Tower I don’t want Japanese to be the dominant language. So as much as I tried to implement touristic places into my urbex trips I mainly limited them to rather off the beaten track locations like Hirosaki or Lake Ikeda, because even places like Hakodate, Kanazawa, or Nagasaki had been overrun by the Eurasian hordes. (And it’s not just the amount of people and their constant yapping, it’s also the (misbehaving) type of people that visited Japan in recent years. When the country was still special interest, in the 20th century, people went to Japan for specific reasons; to see or do something, to educate themselves about a certain topic – nowadays it seems to be a cool Instagram location for dumb phonies with selfish sticks that book flights to Japan and then go through the Top 5 lists on Instagram, Tripadvisor, or some “True soul of Japan!!!” blogger to find out what they can actually brag about on social media with. The amount of signs EVERYWHERE about “How to use a toilet!” / “How to not misbehave!” in four languages has become ridiculous and should be embarrassing to every person visiting Japan. Unfortunately most tourists don’t seem to be bothered by those signs as they are too self-absorbed and busy taking selfies, but as somebody who lives here I feel bad that locals need to state the obvious so often as visitors have become a serious nuisance.)

When the coronavirus spread across the world in late 2019 / early 2020 Japan was one of the last countries to close its borders, desperately clinging to its Frankenstein’s monster tourism industry and the Tokyo Olympics. Despite that, the country was hit much less hard than most others due to cultural coincidences – Japanese people are not exactly affectionate in public / outside of the family, and wearing masks is a long-standing flu season tradition, so what prevented spreading the coronavirus (avoiding close contact and wearing masks) was common practice in Japan anyway. If kisses on the cheeks and drinking red wine would have prevented the disease, France would have done much better and Japan would have been screwed… Anyway, Japan did comparatively well (though it is currently hitting record high numbers!), so the overall terribly phlegmatic Japanese government imposed only few restrictions, most of them in form of “recommendations”. Since recommendations usually are considered orders due to preemptive obedience, I spent most of the summer 2020 working from home, a liberating and deeply frustrating experience at the same time as I didn’t meet any friends for months and left my hamster cage maybe three times a week for grocery shopping to avoid the second wave, that’s it; work, eat, sleep, repeat. The same for a few weeks around New Year’s Day – while Japanese people were visiting their families (recommendations are only followed unless people really don’t want to…) I sat alone at home and skyped with mine to get past the third wave.

February: Matsumoto, Nagano, Obuse, Gero, Takayama, Shirakawa-go, Kanazawa
In early 2020 things went “back to normal” in Japan with as few as 698 new cases per day nationwide (Kanto and Kansai being responsible for the vast majority of cases and some prefectures going down to 0 active cases and no new infections for weeks!), so I decided to jump on the opportunity and visit some places that had been unbearably crowed in the last five to eight years – especially since some of my regular co-explorers had become increasingly busy with fur and other babies. My first main destination on February 12th, after nights in Matsumoto and Nagano (where I had been years prior on the way to the abandoned *Asama Volcano Museum*), were the famous onsen snow macaques in the Jigokudani Monkey Park; a place so touristy and swamped that my buddy Hamish discouraged me from going there many, many years ago. Upon my arrival towards noon I shared the park with hardly more than a dozen people, and that number barely doubled during my hour long stay there – now that turned out even much better than I had hoped for in my wildest dreams! 🙂 So for the next weekend I made even bolder plans, for a place usually so overrun by busloads of foreign and domestic tourists that you could have offered me serious money to go there and I would have declined without hesitating – Shirakawa-go in winter! And to make it the ultimate challenge I added Takayama the day before and Kanazawa the day after, with a quick stop in Gero on the way to Takayama. What can I say? Gero was lovely, Takayama absolutely gorgeous, Kanazawa virtually empty (I was able to take photos in the old samurai district without people ruining them!), and Shirakawa-go… Shirakawa-go was still busy, but bearable. Already borderline too busy for my taste, but knowing that there usually were five or ten times as many people made me enjoy my visit much more than expected. (The car parking lots were rather busy, the bus parking spots basically empty – the lack of mass tourism saved my day!)

March 2021: Hokkaido, Yamaguchi, Kamakura / Hakone
March started with another touristy trip to Hokkaido. If you are a regular of Abandoned Kansai and paid attention reading my article about the *Toya-Usu Geopark* you already know that I had been up north in early November – too early for the drift ice of the Okhotsk Sea, so I went back just four months and a coronavirus wave later. Despite the unusually warm weather in Abashiri (10°C!) I was able to experience the drift ice by pure luck before moving on to Kitami and the peppermint museum, Onneyu Onsen and the fox farm, as well as the mostly closed Sounkyo Onsen and its ice festival (-9°C and strong wind!). Also worth mentioning was my stop in Asahikawa and its cross country ski track right behind the main train station in the city center. Gotta love Japan! Two weeks later I took advantage of the early cherry blossom season and went south – Iwakuni, Tsuwano, Hagi, and Akiyoshido / Akiyoshidai. All four places rather off the beaten tracks, but even more so in the spring of 2021. On both of those trips I didn’t see a single non-Asian person after my first stop (New Chitose Airport and Iwakuni respectively), which gave me serious flashbacks to 1998 – not only did I enjoy both of those trips tremendously, I felt young again! 🙂
Next a trip to Kanto (Kamakura, Odawara, Hakone) with a quick stop in Omihachiman on the way back – as expected full of ups and downs, both literally and figuratively… and with significantly more people than on the trips before. Overall worth the time and effort, but especially Hakone seemed terribly overrated to me (the Museum Of Photography is a joke, but the pizza at 808 Monsmare made up for that disappointment).

April: Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, Tsumago / Magome
Which brings us to April and one more cliché destination for Instagram victims: the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route with the Tateyama Snow Wall and the Kurobe Dam. The latter is impressive, but in the end just a dam with little to see and do in spring, whereas the snow wall is only accessible / existing in spring as that part is closed in winter. Summer and autumn promises tons of nature, a boat cruise on Lake Kurobe, and heaps of hiking trails, but when you do the route in spring you basically only get the snow wall and lots of waiting in line without proper social distancing / climbing stairs. Really disappointing! Fortunately I was able to visit two gorgeous post towns called Tsumago and Magome on my way back to Osucka, which was absolutely lovely – I’d call them hidden gems, but Magome was already surprisingly busy, I can only imagine how insanely crowded the town has been and probably will be again soon.

May: Oga, Akita, Tsuruoka, Niigata, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Ouchi
Golden Week was my final opportunity to travel before most of Japan will turn into a hot and humid hellhole for about four months, so I went to Tohoku for the first time in three years, mainly for those locations: The Namahage Museum in Oga, Dewa Sanzan and the five-storey pagoda of Mount Haguro as well as Aizu-Wakamatsu for the Sazaedo (a 225 year old wooden temple with a double-helix staircase) and the Ouchi post town – and my really high expectations were fulfilled and partly surpassed. All of those places were absolutely gorgeous, especially the pagoda and the temple; both of which I had to myself for a couple of minutes between small groups of people supporting domestic tourism like I did. To get to Ouchi I took a tourist train to Yunokami Onsen that featured animations in dark tunnels and made special stops at Ashinomaki Onsen Station (as it “employs” cats as the station master and the rail manager…) as well as at scenic spots along the route. I was the only passenger that day, so the train driver consulted with the conductor that I had taken all the photos I needed before continuing, while the train’s shop lady (on special trains exclusive merchandising is often sold) was visibly amused by the situation; of course there were limits to that, bit apparently we had two or three minutes of wiggle room and weirdly enough they let me take advantage of that!

Final thoughts
Attached you’ll find a rather large gallery… the largest in Abandoned Kansai history. All photos are freehand snapshots as I didn’t bring my tripod or much time to any of those late winter / early spring trips, on some of which I struggled with the weather and lighting (wind, rain, snow, rather extreme temperatures, (lack of) clouds, darkness). Despite having done a lot less urbex than usual this year, this was definitely my most active and probably my favorite spring I’ve spent in Japan. Overtourism has become a problem for many countries and maybe this health crisis will initiate some change – domestic tourists should be more appreciated instead of alienated… and quality instead of quantity be attracted!
I don’t think anybody who experienced 31.9 million tourists to Japan in 2019 really wants to live through 60 million tourists in 2030… Not even the many of my friends who actually work(ed) in the tourism industry!

Oh, and if you are interested in specific locations or trips let me know – I might expand some of those quick sneak peaks into full articles. But first I will publish a spectacular abandoned place next week, one of my all-time favorites. Easily Top 10! 🙂

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