All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum – and many, many more! Plus: North Korea Special – 2 trips, 16 days / 14 nights! As seen on CNN…
“Flash? I don’t use flash! Most photos look ugly when using flash!”
In February of 2010 I had no clue what my dear friend *Enric* was talking about. I had my first DSLR for 3 months and I had no clue about photography either. But when I was using the flash of my D90 in the darker corners of the Kasagi Sightseeing Hotel my now truly missed buddy got really upset. I didn’t think much about it, to be honest. I just picked up urban exploration and photography as a hobby, and I was happy about every decent shot I was able to take. Flash or not…
Who cares? Just let the crazy Spaniard talk! — Gosh, was I ignorant. But I really had no clue what I was doing. Couldn’t have known a good photo from a bad one even if Ansel Adams would have hit me in the face with a picture book! I continued the learning by doing process and half a year later I bought an ultra-wide angle lens and a tripod – and I guess my photos improved massively since then, probably because I barely ever used flash again. But whenever I do, I remember Enric’s words at the Kasagi Tourist Hotel…
I don’t know why it took me more than 3 years to write about the Kasagi Hotel; this is actually one of the oldest unpublished locations I had on my hard-drive – and the other ones are way less interesting! It’s probably because of the name… or its rather convenient location in walking distance of a train station… Guess which one! Although I have to admit “convenient” and “walking distance” is relative. It’s convenient and in walking distance for urban explorers. If you arrived as guests with suitcases you better took a taxi!
Although one of the most popular abandoned places in Japan for many, many years there is not much information floating around about the Kasagi Hotel. It’s widely known as a ghost spot, since rumors have it that the owner committed suicide by arson – half of the Japanese blogs writing about the place admit that they didn’t dare to enter. Or care to find out more about the hotel’s history. So here’s some information I got from reading a dented sign near the entrance and that is nowhere to be found on any Japanese blog: It seems like the Kasagi Hotel was famous for its onsen. The hot spring was fed by a spring 1200 meters below the hotel, rich in sodium and alkali. Staying at the hotel for one night including two meals was 6500 Yen, onsen only was 1000 Yen, onsen and one meal 2000 Yen.
Enric and I didn’t mind those suicide stories to scare away children and walked straight in, past the barricade that once prevented nosy people from entering; but of course it was ripped apart by some vandals by the time of our arrival. We mostly ignored the smaller storage buildings to the right and headed straight for the hotel, squeezing past another barricade made of conjugated iron, a lot more solid, but nevertheless wide open even for foreigners.
The ground floor was a pitiable sight. Half destroyed by arson and littered by bent and rusted iron it offered a sample of the general condition of the Kasagi Hotel. I guess that’s the downside of the hotel’s fame and location: It was vandalized like hardly any place I’ve been to before or after – graffiti, arson and ripped apart walls, floors, ceilings… you name it. Even two staircases were completely ripped apart, although it looked like that was done professionally and with heavy machinery; especially since there was barely any rubble left. The whole floor was dark and gloomy, with holes in the wooden floor spared by the fire. The hotel kitchen also became the victim of flames, underlining the spooky first impression.
A concrete and graffiti stained staircase in the back lead to the upper floors, but the door to the second one was blocked by a huge welded metal plate. Somebody built an improvised metal ladder from 1F to 2F, but I preferred not to climb it – especially since 2F suffered as much damage from vandals as all the other floors. Except for the ground floor and the top floor all the floors looked pretty much the same with different kinds of destructions: On one floor the toilets were completely intact, on other floors you could still see parts of the wallpaper, while on another floor the intact walls gave a good impression how big the rooms really were – the whole building was one big puzzle.
The Kasagi Hotel was one of the first 20 explorations I did and therefore everything was extremely exciting. Looking back years later it was one of the more unspectacular locations I visited; except for the view. The view was fantastic, especially from the terrace on the roof top and from the corner baths, which allowed free sight on the Kizu River ten meters below the ground floor of the hotel.
One word of warning though to all the people planning trips there to have a look themselves: I wouldn’t do it! About a year ago I went there again for a quick revisit. More about that trip later this week or early next week…
The Restaurant Kent, on Japanese haikyo blogs mostly known as the Good Omen Garden, is one of the staples of urban exploration in Japan. Located on quite a long country road connecting Osaka with Miyazu (home of the famous sandbar Amanohashidate, one of Japan’s three scenic views) the Restaurant Kent was one of the most popular local haikyo when I started doing urban exploration three years ago. Nowadays it lost quite a bit of its popularity, probably because it was photographed to death over the years – or maybe because there are a couple of signs announcing camera surveillance… which I totally respect if it’s true.
In this case the claim was complete bullshit, which annoys the heck out of me as it just cost me time and nerves. The signs looked rather new, so maybe they were put up before the local city administration set up the cameras (government involvement, even on the lowest level, is always a bad thing since it usually means serious business – private companies might hire some slackers, but you don’t want to mess with bureaucrats, especially in a country like Japan…), but when I visited the Restaurant Kent in March of 2011 there were no cameras or other forms of security; a topic I usually leave out, but if somebody lies to me blatantly I have to set the record straight!
Sadly there is not much else to report about the Restaurant Kent, since nobody seems to know a lot of facts about the place. I don’t even know if it was named after the county of Kent in South East England – or after the hugely popular cigarette brand “Kent”, which famously used carcinogenic blue asbestos in their filters from 1952 till 1956 (I guess at least British American Tobacco made cigarettes healthier after all…). The restaurant area itself seemed to be quite small, but neat. Previous explorers set up some tableware in front of a chair with armrests, but other than that there was not much to see.
The Good Omen Garden seemed to be much bigger – one of those festivity locations Japan so desperately needs when you want to be loud and / or with some friends. My buddy Dan and I found several party rooms of various sizes (Western Style and Japanese style, i.e. either carpet floor and tables or tatami floor and furniture that is long gone now…) equipped with all kinds of electronics including laser disc karaoke machines, beamers, microphones (not for karaoke as they were installed to the ceiling…) and mountings for camera and / or additional lighting. One room even featured a disco ball, although it was quite severely damaged – and so was the fake wedding cake one floor down outside. At the first look the Good Omen Garden didn’t seem that big, but then it turned out that there was a second building behind the first one, connected by a kitchen on the upper floor. There were more rooms, including some guest rooms for overnight stays and the usual array of baths for men and women.
My favorite item though wasn’t in the building, it was outside in the backyard – a wooden electronic organ, beyond repair thanks to years of abuse from vandals and weather; nevertheless an unusual and strangely beautiful sight.
Since the Kent Restaurant / Good Omen Garden was along a busy road, but not within a city, town or even village, there were almost always cars parked outside. But nobody had the intention to bother us, I guess the camera warning signs outside worked. When Dan and I were about to leave though, a pickup-truck with a small crane parked next to the building. We “escaped” through the front entrance while two or three men entered the building through the restaurant. On official order or to loot? We’ll never find out. Dan and I were kind of in a hurry anyway, since on the way to the Kent Restaurant we spotted a location I’ve never seen anywhere else before. But that’s a story for another time. Probably Christmas time…
Since I’ve been terribly busy recently both at work and with several urbex projects / explorations it sadly has to be a short article this week; a location that took me just a couple of minutes to shoot, actually – the Kurhaus Sand (or Hotel Sand).
When I went on vacation to Germany in summer this year I met up with a kindergarten friend of mine, Nina. She became a regular reader of this blog and was eager to explore with me, so I planned a daytrip to the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) area of Germany. I had several leads there and thanks to an early start we managed to visit 7 (!) different locations on one day – possible only because some of them weren’t accessible; one of them being the Kurhaus Sand. Strangely enough a name that works both in English and German, but since kurhaus isn’t nearly as common as kindergarten let me give you a quick translation: health resort.
And that’s basically what the Kurhaus Sand was – a health resort in one of Germany’s most beautiful regions, the Black Forest. Not much more than a couple of houses in the middle of nowhere, Sand isn’t even a village. Its origin though is the now abandoned kurhaus. Around 1845 a mountain shelter was build on sandy soil (hence the name Sand, which means sand… Captain Obvious strikes again!) as a refugee for forestry workers. A couple of years later somebody started to sell beverages, with little success (the hut was subsidized by the city…), but after some state investments in 1874 the hut was turned into an inn under the direction of the retired country constable Josef Martin Weis at the age of 57. The place became more and more popular amongst hikers and in 1884 the previous head chef August Maier became the new tenant. In the early 1890s Maier bought, enlarged and enhanced the inn and re-opened it as the Kurhaus Sand in the presence of Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden – the last Grand Duke of Baden. The area continued to thrive, so around 1920 a gas station was added, in 1930 a post office opened and in 1936 a police station started its service. During those days the ownership of the Kurhaus Sand changed several times, but I’ll spare you the details.
Nowadays all of these installations are closed. Only the 1949 opened Bergwaldhütte (Mountain Forest Hut), a convalescent home for children and later for policemen, is still in business – offering food and drinks for all travelers coming through on the popular Schwarzwaldhochstraße (Black Forest High Street).
When Nina and I drove up to the Kurhaus Sand we were forced to stay inside the car for a couple of minutes as a cloudburst made it impossible to start our exploration right away. When we were finally able to get close we were still not sure if the Kurhaus Sand was really abandoned or not as the place isn’t really popular amongst German urban explorers. The building was in pretty good condition, but since there was no activity during a time that is considered the busiest vacation time in Germany it must have been abandoned… We were able to walk around the building clockwise once – no signs of anybody, no signs of vandalism, but also no way to enter the building…
It wasn’t until my return to Japan that I found out that a family named Wiedemann were the owners of the Kurhaus Sand from the 1930s on. In 1977 Günter Milz took over and turned the place into a popular destination for day trippers – he modernized the hotel part (baths, elevator, …) and his restaurant became famous for the cuisine of Baden; like Flädlesuppe, Käsespätzle, Maultaschen and Schupfnudeln. Milz retired in 1994, but I couldn’t find any information about the almost 20 years since then. Given the decent condition the Kurhaus Sand is still in it must have been opened for business for another couple of years, but who knows? Thanks to its remote condition hardly anybody would go there just to vandalize it… Luckily there are many local historians in Germany – maybe one of them finds this article and can add some information?
The Lequio Resort Okinawa, to the net usually known as the Rekio Hotel thanks to the usual katakana transcription problems, is one of those countless hotel ruins you can find all over Japan and that most urban explorers only visit because nobody has torn them down yet. The most interesting thing I can say about the place is the fact that it was built in the 1970s during the Okinawan hotel boom and right in time for the Okinawan Ocean Expo in 1975 – like the *Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin*, the most amazing unfinished hotel I’ve ever seen. Unlike the Nakagusku Hotel the Lequio Resort was actually finished and opened, at least for a while. Nowadays it’s completely vandalized and gutted, almost as bare Okinawa’s all outshining haikyo further down south. Bare except for the impressive amount of graffiti – almost as plenty, but barely ever as good as at the *La Rainbow Hotel* in Okayama. Built halfway up a mountain overlooking a gorgeous bay the Rekio Hotel offered some stunning views and visitors should be very careful where their steps lead them, because the place is a death trap with barely any safety barriers. The elevator shaft was cracked open on every floor and the balconies had no railings, except for some low hanging ropes on some of them. The vandalized state and the exposed position of the hotel make it and everybody inside susceptible for the always present winds, so seriously: Be careful when you go there. If you go there, because there is really not much to see. My favourite part was the glasses shaped pool, now green, moldy and pretty disgusting. But overall *Michael* and I spent just about an hour at the Lequio Resort – which is a ridiculously short amount of time for a hotel of that size, considering that it took me more than 12 minutes to shoot a walking tour there. If the Rekio Hotel would have been one of my first explorations I’m sure it would have been an exciting adventure, but after seeing so many abandoned hotels it turned out to be barely more than a footnote in my (imaginary) haikyo book…
(Addendum 2012-07-19: It seems like “Lequio” was the Portuguese name for Okinawa when it was still the kingdom of Ryukyu – thanks to my dear colleague and regular reader Mayuko for that information!)
Exploring the Sunset View Inn Shah Bay (combining two dozen cottages and the Shah Bay hotel) was one of the worst urbex experiences I ever had – so bad that I cut it short and left after about half an hour. I could have easily faked an interesting article about a smooth exploration since I took enough photos and even a short video, but what’s the point? Not all urbex trips go as planned and not all explorations are successful. Here’s one that turned out to be a nerve-wrecking waste of time.
The Sunset View Inn is (or better: was) a resort complex in the northern part of Okinawa on top of a mountain with a gorgeous view, but pretty much in the middle of nowhere even by Okinawan standards. When *Michael* and I drove up there using narrow countryside roads and half-overgrown streets of decent size I already was kind of aware that we were slipping into a disaster. Tired from the previous day we arrived on the mountain top with no food, drinks or umbrellas at the nearby scenic outpost when it just started to drizzle again. Michael opted for a bathroom break (yes, there was a maintained concrete restroom at an abandoned scenic outpost…) while I walked down the road for a couple of dozen meters as I thought I saw an abandoned concrete building behind a wall of green – I was right. Sadly I didn’t bring my camera, but it was unspectacular anyway; just a vandalized one floor concrete building, probably a restaurant. Of course the rain got stronger, so I had to wait for about ten minutes before I could reunite with Michael. It still drizzled heavily when my haikyo buddy told me that he saw house with some activity and a sign that says that the police will be called if somebody gets close to the hotel. Great. Could it get any worse? Yes: When we climbed over a road block on the way to the hotel Michael made me aware of another sign informing potential visitors about security patrolling the area. And of course the rain was pouring heavily again. Hot, humid, hungry, tired, potential security, heavy rain, no umbrella – a nightmare scenario. After about 150 meters the road split. Right cottages, left the Shah Bay hotel. We decided to have a look at the cottages first, but even their slightly vandalized state didn’t make me more confident. I felt uneasy and would have probably left at that point if I would have been alone. The road lining up the cottages lead back to the entrance area where Michael told me the occupied house with the warning sign was… Was the street leading there? Could security get to us by car? (The way we entered was blocked for vehicles.) Or even worse: silently on foot? I mentioned it before in other articles – I’m tired of vandalized hotels, and those abandoned cottages looked all the same, were all moldy, had all the typical look, feel and smell of abandoned Japanese accommodations. Michael didn’t seem to be that excited either, so after about ten minutes we decided to turn around and go to the hotel. Hot, wet, sweaty, nervous, tired and bored we approached the big deserted building when all of a sudden Michael yelled whisperingly “There’s a car coming, there’s a car coming!” (or something like that) – so we sprinted and dug into the wet bushed while the rain continued to get stronger. Of course there was no car coming, but now we were completely wet and at least I was a nervous wreck and getting seriously paranoid. As I mentioned twice recently (*here* and *here*) I am not into infiltration, I have explored way too many haikyo (especially hotels) and I am just too old for this shit! But the situation got worse. We entered the empty lobby of the hotel with a beautiful, untouched area straight out of a museum to the left when all of a sudden I thought I heard footsteps. We ran again, this time hiding in the close-by former gift shop. While my knees were screaming in pain I still heard footsteps – irregularly, louder and quieter. After two or three minutes I had enough. I already told Michael at the cottages that I didn’t like the current situation and while hiding at the gift shop I finally draw the line – this far and not a single step further. So I left. Michael decided to stay and joined me at the car about an hour later. It turned out that the footsteps were a mix of dripping water and an unspecified animal making noises – we couldn’t get in contact because the phone reception up there was close to non-existent. I couldn’t have gotten back in anyways since tourists in cars were coming up constantly to pay a visit to the abandoned observation point. So I took a couple of photos there and in passing found out that the first warning sign wasn’t at the house where people lived, but at an derelict kiosk a couple of meters away, outside of the premises – small details…
I know this article doesn’t fit the self-publicizing image of urban explorers hiding from the police, dodging security and doing all kinds of “cool” things. But that’s not me anyways. I’m just a regular guy who likes to take pictures of urban decay. This exploration turned into a small disaster for many reasons and I’m actually still shocked that Michael and I, two of the most experienced foreign urban explorers in Japan, stumbled into this adventure the way we did. But then again… Isn’t the only currency in this bankrupt world what we share with someone else when we are uncool?
Would I go back to the Sunset View Inn Shah Bay with sufficient supplies on a sunny day? Most likely yes. The area looked awesome and the map close to the abandoned viewpoint showed that the resort had more to offer than the cottages and the hotel – there was also a stone garden, a huge fountain, an area for band practice, a gateball course, tennis courts, a sports club house, a BBQ area, some kind of race track and two pools. I had seen the pools on a satellite photo and it really hurt that I missed them. Luckily I was able to take abandoned hotel pool shots later that day when we visited another one of those concrete giants that obviously never get demolished in Japan.
Chances that the Sunset View Inn Shah Bay will get demolished are rather slim, too. Opened in 1986 in the structurally weak north of Okinawa by a successful businessman from Naha (sounds familiar, eh?) the resort went bankrupt and closed in 1995, less than 10 years after the hopeful opening. So no Persian investor as the name might have implied. Shah is actually an old Okinawan / Ryukyuan word, meaning salt – the owner of the resort named the Shah Bay hotek after he saw the term on a map in Matthew Perry’s “The Japan Expedition”. (Matthew Perry as in “the guy who forced Japan to open its ports for foreign ships”, not the “Friends” goofball!) Shah Bay once was the name of the bight at the feet of the hotel, the one that made the sunset view so remarkable, the one that people still try to see from the once so wonderful vantage point…
When *Michael* and I approached the Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin I knew we were in for a treat. I’ve explored enough ruins (about 200 so far…) to recognize a triple A, a five star, a first class abandoned place. But in this case I had no clue about the epic glory that was waiting for us. I actually didn’t find out until 5 hours into our exploration. At that point I was lying on the hot concrete roof of the hotel in the merciless Okinawan sun, hiding from a group of tourists visiting the Nakagusuku Castle, when a gigantic Lockheed C-130 Hercules (Edit: Thanks to La Mian World I now know that it was a C17 Globemaster! Which replaced the Hercules…) was heading towards me as if it was trying to bomb both the castle and the hotel…
“But how did it come to this?”, I hear ya say. Well, it’s a long story. Come closer, and I’ll tell ya. It all started… earlier that day. And what a day that was. It’s what I call… an excellent exploration day. (To everybody not admiring Conker’s Bad Fur Day: Sorry for this silly paragraph, I just had to do it. And if by any chance Robin Beanland and / or Chris Seavor read this: Thanks for creating one of the best platformers ever, a true masterpiece!)
If I would have judged Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin after the first two hours I would have been disappointed. Yes, it was big. Yes, it was made of concrete. Yes, it was abandoned. Yes, it was overgrown. But entering the place and following the beaten paths countless urban explorers and by-chance-visitors have walked along for more than 30 years was actually quite disillusioning. The hotel looked awesome from the distance, but the entrance area was rather dull. It even had a burned-out area, though there was hardly anything to burn. I didn’t want to stray too far away from Michael since last time he visited the place he saw a white pick-up truck driving by and I read in one report that there was security. So at one point, probably two hours into our little adventure, I walked up to Michael and told him that I was bored – after he spent about half an hour taking pictures of a column of ants at the wall of a small room. My highlight up to that point? Taking photos of a singing bird sitting at one of the smaller roofs outside…
We continued to the north across a little covered bridge over a small road (leading up the hill to the top part of the hotel) – and there things started to become interesting. While the architecture at the entrance area was quite quirky (wide aisles, small rooms and corners that didn’t have a clear purpose) all of a sudden it became downright weird. The annex wasn’t properly connected to the main building, it was about a meter too low. And there were no stairs, not even a ladder. But it got stranger… and stranger… and stranger. (You can see all of that in the video I published with *the first article about the Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin*.) The staircase in the annex… it wasn’t high enough for an adult to walk upright and it was freakishly narrow. Nevertheless that’s where we headed next. If we were incautious Michael and I could have been seen from the castle, but we had a great view at the overgrown lower parts of the hotel and at the landmark top of it. Michael wasn’t happy with the cloud situation, so while he killed some time on the roof I took the long video I published with the last article – we agreed to meet in the burned out main hall later. From there we walked up the mountain and entered the annex complex again. Basically the area you can see in the first half of the third video. Michael and I left the building to take some photos when all of a sudden we heard voices. We ducked down, being as quiet as possible. The voices came closer… two female, one male – obviously American tourists who saw the hotel ruin when visiting the castle ruin. They passed by us without noticing us when Michael realized that the cloud was finally gone, so we went back to the little tower of the annex building. While still on a lower floor the family came back and we decided to scare them a little bit. Sadly we were quite indecisive about it, so by the time Michael yelled at them in Japanese with a low aggressive voice right out of a classic samurai movie they were already too far down the road for us to see their reaction. Well, it wasn’t that funny anyway…
So up the annex building and taking more photos outside. That’s when Michael realized that he could walk across the roof of the covered bridge to reach the roof of the main building. I’m sure it was perfectly safe, but since I saw another way to reach the main building’s roof I made my way through the main building when I received a phone call from Michael – he was pinned down on the roof thanks to a bunch of tourists at the castle. So I went back to get his tripod and finally made it to the upper part of the main building to get onto the roof myself. Five minutes later I was lying there with the C-130 Hercules flying over my head… and I couldn’t get a close-up since I had my ultra wide-angle lens mounted and not a snowball’s chance in hell to switch it in time. (Edit: Thanks to La Mian World I now know that it was a C17 Globemaster, not a Hercules…)
After having seen most of the Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin Michael and I were willing to take more risks and finally walked up the hill to the exposed skeleton part of the hotel ruin. On the ground floor there we made an unexpected discovery – a completely burned out and rusted car INSIDE the building. It definitely was a car, but in absolutely abysmal condition, so I have no idea which manufacturer or model it was. Then we went to the top of the building and enjoyed a spectacular view – the hotel, the castle, the small cities and of course the Pacific Ocean and the East Chinese Sea. A slight breeze and the gorgeous view almost made us forget that we were completely exposed.
On the way back to the exit I shot the second and the third video, both published with this article. Although the exploration was great I was kind of eager to get out of the deserted hotel after seven hours when Michael found a building we hadn’t been to yet. Which lead to a lower floor, which lead to a balcony, which lead to a whole new world. The annex building we explored 4 hours earlier was actually the gateway to an area mostly overgrown and lower than the rest of the construction, reminding me of Mayan or Aztec temple in the middle of the jungle. The sun was already setting (it was past 5 p.m. which basically prefaces the end of the day in Japanese spring time…) and bathed the area in warm light. As much as I wanted to get out of there, this part of the hotel was just way too gorgeous to be left behind without us having seen it. So we went deeper and deeper, up and down staircases, through walls of green and past all kinds of weird and sometimes dangerous architecture (one photo shows a flight of stairs separated by a massive concrete handrail – if you would have walked up the right side you would have banged your head unless you are smaller than 30cm…). I really wonder if there was no construction supervision agency in Japan back in the 70s… or what they did all day. Or what the architect was paid for. If there was an architect. Why nobody on the construction site said “If we do it like that people won’t be able to use it properly…”. But whatever, for people with a predilection for the surreal it’s a mind-blowing place to see, although some things don’t make sense at first. Like when Michael jumped into the now empty pool and had no clue where he was, because things just didn’t made sense at first sight. From the pool we had an awesome view looking up to the hotel complex, some overgrown concrete water slides in the background. At that point we were in such a hurry that we didn’t even set up our tripods for good photos – snapshots, snapshots, snapshots. When we finally left the lost civilization area we did it via a part of the building that was home to the cage like installations you can see at the end of the last video where my camera ran out of memory space. It seems like the hotel had a rather decently sized half-underground zoo, although I’m pretty sure that no animal ever lived there. The main area there was composed of a maze of stairs, most of them basically unusable thanks to the ubiquitous misplanning – I loved it, though I’m about 1.90 meters tall. It’s hard to believe that a place like that exists, especially when coming from a country where the state’s building control department is such a powerful institution.
After about eight hours Michael and I finally left the Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin, exhausted but happy.
When Michael told me about the hotel *two months prior to our visit* I was skeptical. When I saw it that morning I was excited. After two hours I was slightly disappointed – and from that point on it grew on me. And it actually kind of still does. The Nakagusku Hotel Ruin is one of the most amazing places I ever had to the pleasure to explore. The location was gorgeous, the fact that most of it was never finished lessened the effect of the always present vandalism, the warm and sunny spring day and a couple of singing birds following us up the mountain was heartwarming, no security present was a pleasant surprise, the size of the site was enormous (I think it would take about an hour of straight ambling without stopping to look at details to see the whole complex) – but what really separated the Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin from most other places was the constant flow of surprises. The architecture of the place was mind-blowing in so many ways, and items like the wrecked car made it such a unique exploration. It actually made it an exploration. At so many other urbex spots you get what you expect and once you’ve seen one floor you’ve basically seen 90% of the site. The Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin put exploration back in urban exploration – I never knew what to expect behind the next corner, on the next floor, below the next overgrown flight of stairs. And although I spent about eight hours on the premises the Nakagusku Hotel Ruin became one of the few places I really want to revisit, if possible in late winter (whatever that means in Okinawa…) when there is a little less vegetation – without the shadow of a doubt the best abandoned hotel I’ve ever been to, probably the most amazing urbex hotel in the world!
ADDENDUM 2013-2-12: On February 9th user stuzbob left a comment on one of the videos, shedding some light on the car remains: “The engine appears to be a Nissan J-series and the remains of the leaf springs and solid frame at the back lead me to conclude that it was, at one time, a Nissan 520 or 521 pickup.” Thanks a lot stuzbob, much appreciated!
The Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin on the Japanese island of Okinawa is a prime example for a problem pretty much everybody has when writing about abandoned places – how to name the location? I could have called it the N# Hotel or the N# Hotel Ruin, but it would have been pretty pointless, because the name is revealed with a location description when you google “urban exploration Okinawa”. First hit, at least at the time I am writing this article. I could as well mark it on a map, but I’m still reluctant to do that since the Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin clearly is not a tourist attraction – the Nakagusuku Castle (中城城), right next to the hotel ruin, on the other hand is a tourist attraction. A major one, since they are a UNESCO World Heritage Site – and it’s visible on a lot of photos and videos I took. Gusuku is a term to describe Okinawan castles (jo, 城) and in Japanese it actually uses the same kanji – and that makes a gusuku-jo a castle-castle. But this article is not about the castle ruin, it’s about the hotel ruin, which actually is a place of many names. Most people refer to it as the Nakagusku Hotel Ruin in English, but I’ve also seen it been called the Royal Hotel (I have no clue why…) and the Nakagusuku Takahara Hotel / Nakagusuku Kogen Hotel – both names are based on the common Japanese term for the place, 中城高原ホテル. The first two characters mean Nakagusuku, the last three mean hotel. Characters three and four can be read takahara or kogen / kougen. The latter reading makes more sense as it means plateau – the Nakagusuku Plateau Hotel, because it’s actually on the Nakagusuku plateau…
The complex naming of this deserted hotel is rather suiting, because nothing about the Nakagusku Hotel Ruin is simple or small. The place is actually gigantic and fascinating. So gigantic and fascinating that I decided to split up the article in two. This first one will be about the background information, a soon to come second one will describe my experiences exploring the never finished hotel.
Yep, the Nakagusku Hotel Ruin is an unfinished building – carcass and interior completion are both unfinished. The story is that a rich business man from Naha, Okinawa’s capital about 10km to the southwest, wanted to take advantage of the beautiful location right next to the Nakagusku Castle, where both the Pacific Ocean and the East Chinese Sea are visible. Locals warned him not to build a hotel there since the area overgrown by jungle like vegetation was the home to countless old graves – of course he ignored the advice, even when a Buddhist monk told him that the land was sacred and that he was building too close to a tomb inhabited by restless souls. Upon hearing that some of the workers quit – and others died by accidents on the construction site. Having spent millions of dollars on the vast concrete construction the unnamed businessman wanted to prove that the hotel wasn’t cursed, so he pledged that he would sleep on the premises until the building was finished. After three nights he went insane and people still don’t agree if he was institutionalized or if he committed suicide – or both.
That’s the folklore story you can read in most articles about the Nakagusku Hotel Ruin. Another version, less spectacular, is that the hotel was built under the responsibility of the Nakagusku Park Union (中城公園組合), which was in charge of the Nakagusku Castle since it was declared important cultural property by the government’s Cultural Properties Protection Committee in 1955. The first plans became a political issue when the information became public that the hotel was supposed to be built too close to or actually on the castle ruin, risking its status as a cultural property site (and making it impossible to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a program that was ratified in 1972). So the planned construction site of the hotel was moved from the castle’s rampart further to the west, away from the historical ruin. Construction of the massive concrete hotel began in the first half of the 1970s and was supposed to be finished right on time for the opening of the Okinawa International Marine Exhibition (better known as “Expo 75”) on July 20th of 1975. But of course the inevitable happened: The contractor went bankrupt and the access road was specified as part of the “preservation of cultural properties zone” after Okinawa became part of Japan a couple of years prior (between the end of WW2 in 1945 and May 15th of 1972 Okinawa was run by a U.S. military government), bringing the construction of the Nakagusuku Hotel to a complete standstill – permanently. (I had to compile / confirm this version of the hotel ruin’s background story from different Japanese sources, so if there is an inaccuracy I apologize in advance.)
And to end the stories about the history of the Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin with another one based on rumors, not on facts: It’s said that a part of the hotel was used as a brothel for several years – the upper part, where the now burned interior was already finished. A highly unlikely story, since that brothel would have been within sight of a major tourist attraction and kind of tough to access, especially at night – I can’t imagine that happening without the knowledge of the authorities…
Okay, so much for the background story. The next article will be about *Michael* and myself exploring the huge concrete carcass. We spent about 8 hours on the premises, so there is plenty to tell you – and to show you! All the photos below are from the easy to access parts most urban explorers see, and so is 22 minute long video, representing maybe a third of the huge complex. *If you like what you see below you better read the next article, too, because it will blow you away!*
Urban exploration in Okinawa? Not exactly my first association when I think of the former kingdom of Ryukyu. For me it would be more like sun, beaches and… Karate Kid 2 – a movie I’ve never seen, or at least I can’t remember seeing it, but in Germany it had the tagline “Entscheidung in Okinawa” (something like “Decision in Okinawa”) and I guess that stuck with me ever since. Okinawa = Karate Kid – but I always thought it was the third one, not the second one…
When my haikyo buddy *Michael Gakuranman* and I went on a *road trip to southern Honshu* earlier this year we were talking about future expeditions. Michael mentioned that he went to Okinawa just a couple of months prior and that he explored a huge hotel he really wanted to re-visit. So he suggested a haikyo trip to Okinawa. And I was skeptical. Going to Okinawa to revisit a hotel? I knew right away which hotel Michael was talking about since it is one of the few famous abandoned places in Okinawa (Okinawa really isn’t famous for urban decay, not even amongst urban explorers), but him saying that he wants to stay a whole day there didn’t exactly seal the deal. But I am currently re-discovering Japan as a tourist (I travelled a lot in spring!) and the chances to go to Okinawa are limited, so what the heck. Let’s go to Okinawa and do some urbex! It would surely beat the beaten tracks of urbex in Kanto!
A couple of years ago the concept of budget airlines finally reached Japan and if you book early you can get really good deals. To make sure that we both arrive and departure at around the same time and we both would get reasonable rates Michael was kind enough to take care of the booking – 10.800 Yen for the roundtrip Osaka-Naha-Osaka; booyah! A Shinkansen train ticket Osaka to Hiroshima costs about the same – one way…
Late May isn’t exactly the best time to go to Okinawa since May and June are two out of three most rainy months down there, but again… why not? It’s Okinawa and I’ve never been there. The places we planned to explore sounded kind of okayish on paper, but I was more interested in Okinawa itself. The local atmosphere, the local architecture, the local food. Biggest surprise: shikuwasa (pronounced something like sheek-wasa), a Okinawan citrus fruit and the basis for all kinds of food and drinks – juice, cake, wine, mochi, sodas, chiffon cake, syrup (for kakigori), fruits chews, … In the humid pre-summer heat the most refreshing taste I ever had the pleasure to enjoy. Another popular local fruit is the pineapple. Close to the city of Nago are actually two pineapple theme parks close to each other – separated by the Okinawa Fruits Land. Michael and I visited the Nago Pineapple Park on one of the three days we spent in Okinawa. Not much of a park it features one of the tackiest rides possible – automatically driven carts through a pineapple field, telling you everything you (never) wanted to know about pineapples in horrendously pronounced English. And that was it for the park part – we basically paid 600 Yen to enter a gift shop. One of the most awesome gift shops ever though. Here you could buy (and sample!) all kinds of pineapple and (some) shikuwasa related products. Wine, cookies, chocolates, prize-winning cakes, dried fruits, different kinds of fresh pineapples, pineapple charcoal soap (!) and of course the usual gift shop stuff like plush dolls, key chains and whatnot. Awesome place, expensive though – I nevertheless loved it.
Over the course of our visit Michael and I managed to enjoy a good mix of urban exploration and tourist stuff, although Okinawa isn’t exactly famous for urban exploration. Luckily the urbex locations turned out to be way more interesting than they looked on paper, including an original find – one location freaked me out so much that I got fed up and left, one of the worst urbex experiences I ever had. So in the end we saw three abandoned hotels, two abandoned cactus parks and one abandoned restaurant island on the course of three days. As for touristy locations we visited the already mentioned Nago Pineapple Park, Shuri Castle (awesome!), Nakagusku Castle, the Underground Naval Headquarters of WW2 (overrated – it almost always makes me cringe a little seeing Japan presenting WW2…) and of course Kokusai Dori, the main tourist / night life street in Naha, Okinawa’s capital.
I didn’t plan to write about this trip so quickly, but last weekend opened up out of nothing and the East Asian rainy season (tsuyu) hitting Japan basically rendered it useless for outdoor activities – and overall I loved the trip, so it was the next best thing to get this series of articles started. The weather was constantly changing, but sunny most of the time. The food was awesome (I’m still not a fan of goya though…) and the places we visited were interesting. Life in Okinawa seems to be much more relaxed that in mainland Japan. For example: Taxi drivers in Osaka wear suits and white gloves, taxi drivers in Okinawa wear kariyushi – basically the Okinawan version of the Hawaiian shirt. And what’s not to love about an island that has strong reservations about Americans and Japanese alike? 😉
What do you do when you get thrown off your horse? You get right back on! And that’s what Sebastian and I did after we ran into some trouble at the *Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne*. Since Sebastian came up with the (almost) deserted US Army base it was my turn to select a place to explore – and I chose the Clubhotel Messel a.k.a. Clubhotel Sehr / Clubhotel Seher.
At the time of my visit the place was virtually unknown to the internet. It was obvious that plenty of vandals, arsonists and paintball players were there before me, but it was almost impossible to find any hard information about the place on the net – luckily that change earlier this year when the German urbex community, usually more interested in photos than the historical background of abandoned places, took care of that situation.
It seems like the Clubhotel Messel (named after the municipality of Messel near Darmstadt, usually known for the UNESCO World Heritage site Messel Pit where all kinds of fossils were found) was not only a single hotel, but a conglomerate of businesses, all part of the frivolous nightlife industry. The nightclub “Broadway-Bar” and the hotel “Je t’aime” were right next to the “Swimming Pool / Sauna Club d’Amour” and the “Nightclub d’Amour” – basically one big brothel complex, one of the biggest in the Rhine-Main area. Since all establishments were owned by a guy named Wolfgang Sehr the place was also called Clubhotel Sehr or, misspelled, Clubhotel Seher. The special attraction of the Clubhotel was a mini zoo including a pair of cheetahs – the cages are still in the forest! I’m not exactly sure when the place opened, but I guess it grew kind of organically and was in full bloom in the late 70s and throughout the 80s. In January of 1988 it was mentioned by leading news magazine Der Spiegel in an article about a scandal regarding nuclear waste. A company called Transnuklear Hanau (a subsidiary of Nukem – I’m not joking!) illegally imported 1942 barrels of nuclear waste from Belgium and of course there were bribery and other manipulations / irregularities involved – one of them was a bill to the amount of 14010 Mark (roughly 7000 Euros) after some managers of the nuclear industry had a fun night at the Clubhotel. (The article mentioned a nightclub called “Mon Bijou” and a fine dining restaurant named “La Chandelle“ – probably both part of the Clubhotel complex.
The Spiegel report was the beginning of the end of the Clubhotel, although the details are vague since everything happened before the age of the internet. It seems like the German State wasn’t very fond of the local sex businesses and started to shut them down one after another – either in the late 80s or early 90s. Some of the brothel owners went to jail for procurement and promotion of prostitution; and according to an article by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in late 1994 Sehr was convicted of those crimes…
When the brothel complex was abandoned but still in good condition the Zeitung für Darmstadt (Newspaper for Darmstadt) reported in 1993 that the State of Hesse had plans to reconvert the place into a *deportation prison* for 250 illegal aliens. These considerations were terminated abruptly when parts of the club hotel complex burned down to the ground on January 25th of 1994 as the Zeitung für Darmstadt reported in early 1994. It seems like the then owner, most likely still Sehr, tried to commit insurance fraud to make up for the millions he lost when the place was shut down. (The guy definitely went to jail – I’m just not sure if it was for one or both of the alleged crimes.)
Later in the 90s the Clubhotel made the news when paintball players occupied the premises and actually started to do minor construction work. The rural district Darmstadt-Dieburg intervened and a court of law decided that the “Magic Boys Rhein Main” needed to find another location for their colorful war games… (The small building next to the big outdoor pool was their safe house and Gotcha related graffiti are still all over the place.)
For more than a decade all kinds of people came to the Clubhotel for all kinds of reasons. Some people played paintball, others airsoft. Some homeless people looked for shelter in one of the smaller buildings that weren’t affected by arson and of course photographers came to… well, do what photographers do. It seems like for a while artists lived on the premises and in summer of 2011 Sebastian and I had a quick look. Only to find a rather uninteresting burned out hotel and some vandalized smaller buildings. In the early 80s the Clubhotel must have been quite a sight – nowadays it’s just another unspectacular rotting place in the woods. Luckily it has a story worth telling. But maybe this patch of land in the middle of nowhere will find new beauty and glory soon. On March 26th of 2012 a public auction of the property by court order took place and on May 13th Echo-Online reported that the (new?) owner of the site is looking at plans to build a new hotel – probably for the whole family this time, not only for dads…
Well, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sir, Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. But you’ve most likely never been into urban exploration… As an urban explorer there is one other thing you have to fear and most urbexers do fear: watchdogs. It took me more than 150 explorations to finally run into one, but that one proved to be an insurmountable hurdle. Not only for myself, but also for my haikyo buddy *Michael*.
On the way up to the Noga Hotel we stopped to take a couple of photos from the foot of the mountain as it was already early afternoon and we most likely wouldn’t have the chance to take some on the way down. Little did we know that those would be the only photos of the Noga Hotel we’d take that day…
Halfway up the mountain we were stopped by a gate blocking the street – decorated with four huge signs telling us why we shall not pass. A seemingly endless list starting at private property up ahead (so what, this was a public road…) and ending with the local cities authorities trying to prevent illegal waste disposal and forest fires; well, who could argue with environmental reasons that are pleaded to keep people away from an abandoned hotel that is falling apart? Right, we could, so we opened the gate and continued driving, but soon we decided that it might not be a good idea, since an unlocked gate means that whoever decided to put it there actually wants people to pass – which meant that we would most likely run into somebody at one point or the other. So we went back down the mountain and walked up again. A very good decision, because just a couple of 100 meters after the point where we turned around the car we found a second gate. Not just a gate, more like a checkpoint. I was walking a couple of meters ahead of Michael when I saw the control point and it took just a few seconds for a watchdog to bark as if there was no tomorrow. So I ran. Although going to the gym 4 times a week I haven’t been running that fast since I was caught by the security guard at *Nara Dreamland*. Luckily just down the road was a fenced off deadlock; a fence to prevent cars, not humans. So we ran down that road to hide from whatever might have followed us and waited. And waited. And waited. Until Michael decided to have a look at the checkpoint himself – I preferred to wait at the hideout. While Michael was away I heard another big dog barking, probably from where the hotel was – Michael on the other hand only heard some animal scratching as he told me when he came back. Which was at the exact same moment when a van on the way down passed the fence of the dead end road, causing us keep our heads down for another couple of minutes. While I was willing to admit defeat and move on to another location Michael really wanted to get to the hotel, although it was getting late afternoon already; either passing the checkpoint or straight ahead up the mountain through the forest, path or not. Having been lost in the mountain before I strongly objected to the latter idea, so we agreed that Michael would first check if somebody from the van was waiting at our car and then come up again to have a really close look at the checkpoint. Maybe the dog was gone?
About two minutes after I received a text message that the car was clear 4 more vans passed my position on the way down – I tried to call Michael, but it was already too late. When he reached me out of breath several minutes later he told me that the guys in the vans ignored him completely. Neither for the first time nor for the last time on our *road trip to southern Honshu* I asked myself the question when you can consider a place really abandoned. Or if abandonment is the basis for urban exploration. The grey area between exploration and infiltration – and that a place somebody hires security for is not really abandoned by the word’s true meaning. But I guess that’s part of the beauty of that hobby, too. Everybody defines those lines for themselves. The same applies for graffiti. To me they are a form of vandalism when put onto abandoned buildings (I like them as art on designated areas or canvas!), and I guess I’m also more conservative (or cautious – or cowardly?) when it comes to explorations as I’m trying to avoid trouble; except for *Nara Dreamland*: I visited that place against better judgement way too often!
Against better judgement I also agreed to walk up to the checkpoint again as Michael was eager to try his luck as a dog whisperer – or preferably talking to a security guard, if there was one. We were about to get back to the main road when the sound of motors made us hide again. Four more cars went down the mountain and we finally agreed that we won’t make it to the Noga Hotel that way that day. But maybe on another day or sneaking up a different way…
Abandoned Kansai 