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Archive for the ‘Japan’ Category

Shuuhen Temple Revisited

Posted in Asia, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2011, Visited in 2016 on 2016/07/12| 2 Comments »

I genuinely care about the places I explore – not just when I am there by following the “Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints” rule (I actually try to avoid leaving footprints…), but also afterwards. That’s why I tend to keep an eye on more or less all of the locations I’ve been to. Most of the time it ends with them being demolished, but the story of the *Shuuhen Temple* took a different route…

It was a beautiful autumn day in November of 2011 when I first headed out to the Shuuhen Temple in the countryside of Hyogo prefecture. Abandoned temples are rather rare, even in a country like Japan, where you can barely throw a stone without hitting one. But this historic site dating back to the year 651 fell into disrepair after the local monk left his house (whether on foot or on a stretcher is unknown), and it apparently got even worse when a landslide damaged the road leading up to the temple. I on the other hand enjoyed a gorgeous, serene afternoon during the height of momijigari, the little brother of looking at cherry blossoms – looking at the changing colors of the maple leaves.
About four years later I found out that the Shuuhen Temple had been under renovation or reconstruction, without getting to know any specifics. I have to admit that revisits are not really high on my priority list as I rather explore locations I haven’t been to before (especially since nothing had changed according to GoogleMaps), but during Golden Week of 2016 I finally had the opportunity to go back to this rather unique location.
To get to the Shuuhen Temple, it’s about about a 45 to 60 minute walk from the next train station – a local one, with about one connection in each direction per hour. The last stretch is up a hill. Not too steep, but a total height difference of about 160 meters. The first major change to 4.5 years prior? A brandnew sign at the main road, so this abandoned place has become *a tourist attraction*! The second major difference? About a dozen warning signs making you aware that the place is now under camera surveillance – and there was indeed a solar-powered, motion-activated camera along the road! Of course they repaired and improved the dirt road once leading up the hill… but that was not all! The rough rocks on the mostly overgrown slope leading up the final meters to Shuuhen Temple were replaced by real stairs made from cut stone, the whole area was gardened, and a new entrance was created, including a slightly rewritten info sign – as neither were part of the *previous article*, I added a 2011 flashback photo. The temple area itself underwent quite a few changes, too. First of all: The monk’s house has been demolished and is nothing more than a gravel covered piece of land now. The bell tower has been rebuilt and the gorgeous split tree trunk used to clang the bell is a brand-new piece of wood now. Everything has been cleaned up and a new rest house has been placed on the edge of the slope – the view was still gorgeous, but the new wood and concrete construction felt completely out of place. The mix of old and new was strangely odd. Although I had the place all to myself again, the atmosphere was totally different than before. I tremendously enjoyed *my first visit to the Shuuhen Temple*, but this second trip… was missing the serenity – and when a religious place feels like the magic has gone, it was probably not a good idea to have the area renovated. Some places are just destined to fade away – and I feel like the Shuuhen Temple was one of them. (Hopefully the place will recover over time. If I am still in Japan in 10 years, I’ll let you know!)

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Tomogashima

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Lighthouse, Military, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Wakayama on 2016/06/28| 2 Comments »

What kind of places should be considered when doing urban exploration? I think everybody has their own definition – I try to focus on abandoned modern ruins, but every once in a while I make exceptions (security on site, historic ruins), especially when the situation is ambiguous. *Gunkanjima* for example could be considered both a modern and a historic ruin, probably as it is currently transitioning from a classic urbex location to a tourist attraction. Similar arguments could be made for *Okunoshima* and the *Nakagawa Brick Factory*; while the first has proper barriers and information signs, the latter is a historic ruin without historians taking adequate care of it.
Tomogashima and its old fort I always considered a historic ruin that shouldn’t make it to websites about abandoned places as it reminds me of the countless historic ruins back home: More than 100 years old, accessible by public transportation, proper barriers and information signs, mentioned in tourist guides, partly or fully maintained. If you include places like that, you could keep yourself busy writing about hundreds or even thousands of castles in Germany alone. BUT: Tomogashima appears on most Japanese urbex blogs and I receive messages about legal “urbex” spots in Japan on a regular basis, so I guess it’s about time to dig up six year old photos and long repressed memories…

Tomogashima is a small island off the coast of Wakayama, right between Awaji Island and the mainland, in the Kitan Strait (紀淡海峡, Kitan kaikyō) – the fort and its cannons were prtecting the Bay of Osaka with cities like Kobe, Osaka and Sakai as well as quick access to Kyoto and Nara. Well, technically Tomogashima is a cluster of four islands (Jinoshima (地ノ島), Kamishima (神島), Okinoshima (沖ノ島) and Torajima (虎島)) – and when people talk about Tomogashima, they usually refer to Okinoshima (shima / jima = island, hence Tomogashima, not Tomogashima Island); the only one that is accessible by public transportation and the one of most interest to tourists. Take the train to Kada Station (near Wakayama City), walk to the harbor and take a boat to the island – four connections per day from March till November (except Tuesday and Wednesday), two the rest of the year; with a handful of exceptions (for example Golden Week and summer holidays), of course – your can *find the detailed schedule in Japanese here*. 2000 Yen for the roundtrip isn’t exactly cheap, but you are going off the beaten tracks… and those places usually cost a buck or two extra.
The islands were originally used by Buddhist monks for a practice called shugendō (修験道) back in the seventh and eighth century (to develop spiritual experience and power…), but are now famous for their ruins of Meiji era (1868-1912) military fortifications and a beautiful lighthouse.
And while Jinoshima, Kamishima and Torajima are indeed uninhabited, Okinoshima has in fact a low population running both a camping ground and a guest house (including a café / bar!) called Uminoya, making Tomogashima by definition neither abandoned nor uninhabited, no matter how many people on the internet claim differently! I know, the truth hurts sometimes, but Tomogashima is / are NOT ABANDONED! (There are even four (!) public toilets on the island…)
As for the brick fort, I guess you can consider it abandoned, despite the fact that some people still take care of it – putting up information and do not cross this rope signs… But like I said, for my taste those ruins are too old, they are too empty, they have too much historical significance. They are mentioned in all kinds of guides, are too well-signposted and attract thousands of tourists per year. That has little to nothing to do with urban exploration… but I hope you’ll like the photos anyway! 🙂

When I made my way to Tomogashima back in 2010, it was much less popular than it is now, and I expected it to be really abandoned and full of spectacular military ruins – instead I found myself amongst tourists in what looked a little bit like an open air museum to me. In addition to that, the mid-July summer heat and humidity, the rocky paths and the fact that Okinoshima is a constant up and down quickly took a toll on me, so my expectations differed completely from reality.
Visiting Tomogashima makes a lovely day trip or even weekend trip though, when you know what you are in for – especially in summer! Okinoshima and Torashima are combined about three kilometers long, there are two signposted hiking trails and countless minor routes you can take, Okinoshima features several more or less rocky beaches, and you can actually learn something about Japanese military history. And if you are an anime fan, you might be excited to hear that Tomogashima reportedly inspired the Studio Ghibli movie “Laputa: Castle in the Sky” – though there are similar island all over Japan, so I wouldn’t bet on it without 100% verifying it…

Also, if you are interested in touristy urbex spots, you might want to have a look / keep an eye on the irregularly updated *Urbex for Tourists* special here on *Abandoned Kansai*!

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Aichi Sento

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Spa / Onsen, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2016 on 2016/06/21| 3 Comments »

Last week I was talking about bears quite a bit – this week could be all about bare-naked ladies and their beavers, but I think that’s a slippery slope nobody wants to go down… (One photo shows some bare boobs though… If you are easily offended by the beauty of the human body, scroll down to the gallery at the end of the article at your own risk! And if you are not offended I know that you will most likely have a look now before you continue reading… 🙂 )

When you think of Japanese bathing culture, you think of mountains, creeks, beautiful scenery, wooden bathtubs, natural stone floors – but not all public baths are in gorgeous little onsen towns! A lot of them are in the suburbs of major cities; next to supermalls, in the middle of residential areas or opposite a factory. Quite a few of them lack all the classic charme of an onsen and are more reminiscence of shared hotel baths or saunas with some additional pools. Some are not even fed by a hot spring, but by water from regular pipes. Those sento are not bad places at all, they are just not that different from similar facilities you might know from your home country. (They are still gender separated though – and swimwear is not an option!)
The Aichi Sento had quite an unusual layout spread across three floors. The main entrance was in some kind of semi-basement – shoe lockers to the left, front desk to the right and from there you went to the baths… one for women, one for men. The main entrance area also featured quite an unusual vending machine, selling Meiji branded milk (regular, coffee flavored and mixed with fruit juice) and a totally destroyed TV – no vandalism in Japan? Yeah, right…
After a quick look at the middle floor with the kitchen, a lunch / dining room and some more private rooms I headed down for the men’s bath. The changing room looked like many others I’ve seen before – lockers for the guests’ clothes, sinks, mirrors, hair driers. A nice detail was the smaller version of the statue outside in front of the building, of a naked kneeling woman with a Rubenesque figure. From the locker I got access to a massage room and the actual bath. The latter was surprisingly impressive as it had quite an open design across two floors – that place must have cost a fortune to heat! Walking up the white tiled stairs I almost slipped and fell as some jasshole spread the liquid soap from the ground floor all over the place. Bunch of savages in that friggin town! Luckily the “risky climb” got rewarded by a nice view at the bath and the outdoor/indoor mini bamboo grove as well as the pristine sauna. Beautiful, just beautiful! To cool down, you could go “outside” to a smaller tub clad with stone that was kept at 14°C, while all the indoor pools apparently had the really hot water you usually find in public Japanese baths.
The women’s bath was mirrored in the other half of the building and for that reason looked pretty much the same – just with a bit more vandalism… and a lot more porn magazines. Abandoned places in Japan and porn, they basically go hand in hand. First signs were actually visible in the entrance area, where I took some pictures of a magazine. If you are American and / or religious, check your level of prudery; everybody else should be fine as Japanese porn has primary sexual characteristics pixelated before publishing. In this case a good thing as neither you nor I have to worry about me showing too much. A bit banky though was the person who used the massage room of the female bath as his porn stash. Dozens of magazines, the guy probably thought that variety is the spice of life; must have liked a wide selection… Anyway, the women’s bath was just a more rundown version of the men’s bath so I had a quick look at the third floor, which was nasty and hot, and had little more to offer than a fitness room, including some ping-pong tables – nice for sure when the place was still open, rather smelly and uncomfortable at the time of my visit, so I called it quits.

Upon leaving I had spent about two hours at the Aichi Sento, which is probably as long as regular customer spent there when the place was still in business. 800 Yen got you through the door (elementary school students and younger received a 50% discount), opening hours were from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., closed on every other Tuesday. Abandoned about a decade ago, the Aichi Sento was a slightly above average exploration, saved by the surprisingly nice men’s side of the bath – the rest of the building was just another rundown, vandalized piece of real estate you see all across Japan. Definitely better than the *Health Land Yutopi*, but not nearly as beautiful and unique as the *Tokushima Countryside Healthspa*.

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Tokiyama Power Station #1

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2016/06/14| 6 Comments »

Bear with me or no bear with me? Neither my buddy Rory nor I were able to answer that wildlife question when exploring the Tokiyama Power Station #1…

I *recently listed* the nastiest / most dangerous animals I ran into during my explorations – of course I forgot the leeches of that horrible hotel in Chubu, but I remembered to mention Master Bruin. Bears can be found on three out of Japan’s four major islands (Honshu, Hokkaido, and Shikoku) and within the last three weeks four people died from bear attacks in Akita prefecture, so they are a viable threat. Even in the densely populated Kansai region you can find signs warning of bears on a regular basis when hiking – and since most abandoned places are… well… at least off the beaten tracks, there is a certain risk to run into Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus), especially when exploring places in the mountains; like the Tokiyama Power Station #1.
When Rory and I headed for the mountains in the Shiga / Mie / Gifu area, we expected a sunny or at least overcast day – the Japanese weather forecast being even more unreliable than in the rest of the world, we were welcomed by rain. Steady rain. In addition to that, the first couple of potential locations to explore turned out to be duds, so we headed for a very old and rather famous one… the Tokiyama Power Station #2. Sadly a massive landslide prohibited us from reaching our goal (when it rains, it pours!), so we turned towards the other Tokiyama Power Station. Built in 1940 to support the legendary and now demolished *White Stone Mine*, there is no word when this installation was shut down – probably together with the mine in 1969. After about 40 years of abandonment and decay, the building was covered with blue tarps around 2010 and apparently security is having a look every once in a while. (There were similar reports about the White Stone Mine, which was demolished from June 2012 on…) In late 2013 the blue tarps were definitely still there, but I guess security stayed at home due to the heavy rain – while the tarps kept the building (reachable via a sketchy looking bridge and a path washed away by a little landslide) dry, they also made the inside even darker – overall an uncomfortable place to be and to take pictures of. Dark, damp… and I always had the feeling that something was observing us. Noises outside, both breaking twigs and some kind of growling; not loud and maybe just in our heads, but… perception is reality. A little bit further up the stream we found an abandoned house in really bad condition – I’m not sure if it was an administrative building or if somebody was living there. Maybe both, you never know. In any case, we didn’t waste much time and got out of there and back across the dodgy bridge rather quickly.
While no bear was spotted during this exploration, I hope you will bear with me for a handful of less spectacular locations – the last couple of weeks have been crazy busy and the upcoming ones most likely won’t allow much time for relaxation either, so I might pick some less photogenic places to write about, resulting in shorter articles and fewer photos. BUT… beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and maybe you’ll enjoy them even more than the locations I’ve recently written about!

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Ye Olde Tea Factory

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Factory, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2016 on 2016/06/07| 4 Comments »

We all know that Britons are peculiar when it comes to tea, and I hope my British readers forgive me for saying this out loud, but… who cares? Half of Asia already had a highly developed tea culture at a time when your island was still up for grabs – and half of Europe actually gave it shot! Nevertheless I couldn’t resist giving this abandoned Japanese tea factory a pseudo-early modern British name… in honor of you guys doing something very Japanese at the time: taking a foreign food item and just totally owning it! 🙂

Why did I give that abandoned tea factory a made-up name? Well, mainly because there is no official name known to the best of my knowledge. Japanese people usually call it the equivalent of “Abandoned Tea Factory next to Kowada Station”, which is terribly uncreative and way too descriptive for my taste.
The history of the place is rather interesting, though pretty much none of it is confirmed as Ye Olde Tea Factory is indeed quite an old tea factory. Located just below Kowada Station on a rather steep slope at the banks of the Tenryu River in an area famous for tea plantations, the factory is said to be founded in 1950. Back then it was just another small business in a rather remote area. That changed drastically seven years later, when the Sakuma Dam downstream started operating – the water level of the Tenryu River rose significantly, apparently not only setting some houses under water, but also cutting both the factory and the train station off the road network. Yes, neither the factory nor the train station are accessible by car anymore – a fact I was unaware of one and a half years prior to my successful exploration, when I passed through the area and failed to reach the dam(n) thing. I am not sure if that cut-off was part of the plan, but since construction of the dam began in 1952, the owners of the factory probably weren’t aware of it – and most likely neither were the people living a couple of hundred meters up the river or the people running the restaurant / inn (?) next to the tea factory… all abandoned now, too. Since the trains kept running (south to north: 7 connections per day, north to south 6 connections) and the area was / is beautiful for hiking, people apparently continued to live in the area till the late 1970s / early 1980s. (The nearby Azuki Station was built in 1955 as a result of rerouting the Iida Line, while Kowada Station remained where it was originally established in 1936.) About 30 years ago that part of the Tenryu River bank, including the factory and the soon to be written about building next to it, was finally abandoned and the number of passengers using the Kowada Station dropped to six per day in average – given that I used it to arrive and to depart, I most likely counted as two passengers. You can access the area by hiking and mountain bike, too, but the remaining roads and paths are narrow and worn out, some of them are completely overgrown, others suffer regularly from falling rocks and tree parts; some sections even require climbing ladders! Originally I considered hiking to the next station north or south, but after checking out the remaining infrastructure and the fact that I was exploring solo, I decided not to for safety reasons – just scouting the area I considered dangerous enough…

Exploring Ye Olde Tea Factory was rather easy and relaxing though, despite the fact that the wooden shack probably will collapse during the next bigger earthquake. It was basically three levels carved into a slope and covered by some slabs of wood and corrugated iron… and then stuffed with all kinds of machinery. As you can see in the video, it was a rather small factory, but the heavy metal objects left behind all looked very unfamiliar to me. I am not an expert on tea or industrial machines, and if I wouldn’t have known that it was a tea factory, I probably wouldn’t have guessed it; especially since I didn’t see a single tea plant in the four hours I spent in the area. (Yes, I skipped a train…) Overall a fun day outdoors, though the more than five hours it took me to get there was a major turnoff!

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Niigata Russian Village

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Demolished, Haikyo, Japan, Niigata, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2016/05/31| 3 Comments »

The relationship between Japan and Russia has pretty much always been either non-existent or full of conflicts – so whoever thought that building a Russian themed park in Japan would be a good idea… probably was a moron with too much money.

When the Empire of Japan acted like the prototype version of current day *North Korea* from the early 1600s till the 1850/60s, it tried to keep out pretty much all foreigners, with the exception of a few Chinese and Dutch, who were strongly restricted in where they were allowed to go and what they were allowed to do (sounds familiar?). Back then most Russian settlements were too far away from Japan to make contact easily as cities like Khabarovsk (1858), Vladivostok (1860) and Magadan (1930) had yet to be founded – and so it was Yakutsk merchant Pavel Lebedev-Lastoschkin who first tried to establish a Russian-Japanese contact 1778 in Hokkaido. He was told to come back one year, only to be turned away again (sounds familiar?). In the early 19th century the Russians tried again several times without success – this time reacting with brute force when the shogunate stalled again; of course without much success. In 1860 Vladivostok was founded, but since it was not an ice-free port, the Russians were looking for a more convenient location and decided to seize Tsushima, an island under Japanese control, located between Korea and Kyushu. At this point the relationship turned really sour, and after being ignored by the consul Goshkevitch, the Japanese asked the British for help, finally forcing the Russians to leave Tsushima. Over the next few decades, Japan gave up its isolation policy and turned from an agrarian state to an industrialized nation; with the massive help of countries like Prussia, the United States, France, Great Britain and many more, of course. The Japanese-Russian relationships on the other hand didn’t develop for the better though, culminating in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05; the first time an Asian country significantly and surprisingly defeated a Western superpower. In World War 2 Japan fought less successful overall – and more than 70 years later, both countries are still arguing over the southern part of Sakhalin and the Kuril chain of islands. According to a 2012 survey, 72% of Japanese people view Russia unfavorably, a number that most likely rose since then, making Japan the country with the biggest anti-Russian sentiments of all participating countries.
So why a Russian themed park in Niigata? Because a banker said so! (Oh… so it was indeed a moron with too much money…)

Niigata Russian Village (1993 – 2003/04) was pretty much the borscht version of the *Tenkaen – Japan’s Lost China Themed Park* (1992 – 1999). Cultural exchange, “exotic” weddings, demonstrations of folk dances, sale of artisan craftwork… and carft beer. Financed with the help of and heavily supported by Ryutaro Omori, then president of the Niigata Chuo Bank, the Niigata Russian Village opened on September 1st 1993 and was heavily expanded in 1994… and then again in 2000 – a year after the financing Niigata Chuo Bank collapsed. The park closed in December 2003 for a winter break and didn’t open again as originally scheduled in April 2004.
The rather remote location of the Niigata Russian Village (6 km away from the next train station, 30 km outside of Niigata, almost 400 km away from Tokyo and therefore out of day trip range) was its downfall twice – first it wasn’t able to attract enough visitors / customers… and then it attracted too many visitors / vandals. Photos from 2008 already showed significant signs of vandalism, in September 2009 the hotel was partly destroyed by fire, and since nobody ever used a fake name for it, the Niigata Russian Village went to hell in a handbasket in record time.

By the time I started exploring in 2009/10 people started rumors about tight security and demolition to prevent bigger masses from trampling through like Siberian mammoths, but at the time I never thought I would ever explore outside of Kansai (hence the blog name, *Abandoned Kansai*) – in addition to that, Niigata is probably the worst area to go to from Kansai as flights are insanely expensive (32500 Yen!) and trains take about 7 hours at a price of 22500 Yen… per direction! 700 bucks for one location? Hell no!
Speaking of hell: As satellite photos more and more confirmed the demolition of the Niigata Russian Village, I more and more regretted that I was never able to take a picture or two of that iconic church that was part of the park; apparently a copy of Cathedral of the Nativity of the Theotokos in Suzdal. Years later, in 2015, I was compiling locations for a three day urbex road trip starting in Tokyo. Of course there are plenty of great abandoned places around Tokyo… but Niigata is in perfect range for a three day trip. Exploring stuff on the way north, heading to the coast after dark, exploring Niigata Russian Village and some stuff on the way south, spending the night in Fukushima or Tochigi, continue exploring on the third day on the way back to Tokyo… Since satellite photos can be rather old and outdated I confirmed that the cathedral was still standing via a quick photo search and added Niigata Russian Village to our schedule – as the first thing on the second day!
Arriving at the Russian Village was exciting and sobering at the same time. The road up to the park was blocked by a massive gate fortified with tons of tree trunks and branches, all held together by barbed wire; signs informing about the start of further demolition work just days prior and the existence of camera surveillance. I traveled 650 km to fail 650 meters away from the church? Hell no! So my buddy *Hamish* and I went on to find an alternative way in, successfully… after a while.
As so often, the reality about the Niigata Russian Village lied between the reports of total demolition and the dozen buildings visible on satellite photos. At the time of our visit the lower area with the village part was pretty much gone already, little more than large piles of rubble and a small monument left behind. The upper area was missing several buildings, too – but the two most famous structures were still there, the church and the hotel. Despite the fact that 80 to 90% of the Niigata Russian Village had been demolished, it was still fun taking pictures there – especially the church was everything I was hoping for… and I don’t think I ever had as much fun in a religious building before or after! Overall for sure not nearly as spectacular as the *Tenkaen* or any of the *New Zealand Villages*, but still worth the detour…

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Crocodile School

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, School, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2016/05/24| 11 Comments »

Giant hornets, large spiders, wild boars, monkeys, deers, snakes, mosquitos, bumble bees, regular bees, rats, mice, cats, pigeons, dragonflies, raccoons… and maybe even a bear – you have to love animals if you want to do urbex in Japan!

Japanese people are very proud of their four seasons and some of them actually think that Japan is the only country in the world with four distinctive seasons – which is ridiculous, because not only are there many other countries with four distinctive seasons, but Japan stretches over a length of about 3000 kilometers – there are definitely not four seasons in Okinawa; and in Hokkaido they are anything but equally spread. Furthermore the majority of Japan is affected by a thing called tsuyu; literally plum rain, but commonly translated as (East Asian) rainy season… bringing the count to five seasons. Living in Osaka, “winters” can be cool and windy between late December and mid-March (hardly any snow, but temperatures can drop below the freezing point shortly, but tend to stay between 5°C and 10°C), while summers tend to be hot and humid nightmares between early July and late September with daytime temperatures reaching 35°C and nighttime temperatures not falling below 30°C for countless weeks in a row. The time between “winter” and hell (and vice versa) is usually really nice though – warm autumns with colorful maple leaves and springs with clear skies and millions of blooming cheery trees. Personally I like spring a little bit better as nature is still slumbering, which means that abandoned places tend to be more accessible and the previously mentioned local fauna is still awakening, too. Well… and then there is tsuyu, the rainy season, squished in between spring and hell, usually starting in early June and ending early July – give or take a week or two. About one month of torrential rain on about 5 out of 7 days a week… and a significant rise in humidity, making urbex not only unpredictable, but also not fun at all for the next four months; including the hellish summer. (And I go from one weekend per month not exploring to one weekend per month exploring… at best.)

Exploring the Crocodile School marked the beginning of tsuyu and the end of my spring urbex season last year, 2015. At first sight it was just another abandoned elementary school, the main entrance covered by a wide green net to prevent animals from entering; flexible and large enough to allow humans to gain access easily. The main area was still in decent condition, despite the fact that there were visible signs of vandalism and progressing decay in the back. While somebody was still mowing the lawn and kept things like the net intact, nobody was able or willing to spend money repairing rotting wood or the partly collapsed roof. At the end of a hallway, close to the nurse’s room, was a (b)locked door – luckily there was a separate entrance available from the outside… and that room turned out to be the highlight of the school. Most likely used for storage and maybe as a staff room, this end of the Crocodile School was packed with all kinds of items – including the name-giving taxidermy crocodile! But of course that was not all. Next to a table saw and what looked like a pottery oven (maybe?) I found a taxidermy turtle, countless pieces of china, several sea creatures preserved in half-empty glass tubes and much, much more…
When it comes to season endings, this was one of the better ones – for sure better than the ending of the sixth season of Lost! 😉 It was the first weekend of tsuyu… and I paid the price for it. It was hot, it was humid… and exploring the *Silent Hill Hotel* on the day before was much spookier than necessary. Luckily it didn’t rain on the morning of Day 2, nevertheless getting up to and exploring the Crocodile School was a sweat-inducing endeavor, rewarded by a beautiful view, an interesting amount of decay and plenty of unusual items left behind.

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Nara Dreamland 2016

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Japan, Nara, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2016 on 2016/05/03| 11 Comments »

Nara Dreamland and Abandoned Kansai are inseparable… A long time ago I brought you the first pictures (taken in 2009!) and now I publish the latest – none of the photos in the gallery below is older than 24 hours; some have been taken barely half a day ago, literally this morning, May 3rd!

My visits to *Nara Dreamland* have always been troublesome. I’ve been cut short by security twice and afterwards went to great lengths to avoid that damn guard(s). As much as I love the place, my visits there were never relaxed and barely ever a good experience. The same goes for the so-called *Golden Week*, an agglomeration of national holidays in Japan that causes the whole country to travel, which means that hotels, trains and tourist spots are crowded and overpriced as heck – which causes a lot of people to travel abroad, this year including my regular urbex buddies: honeymoon, vernissage, surprise marriage. Facing another disastrous week of binge-watching overrated TV shows or playing the Xth installment of a video game series I lost interest in half a decade ago, I decided to make the best of the situation. What better time of the year to mess with my biorhythm than the time of the year I actually have nothing better to do than to recover from a night and early morning stay at Nara Dreamland?
Last year it took me 10 days between exploring Nara Dreamland and publishing the photos here on Abandoned Kansai… 9.5 to be exact. On a regular weekend I would be able to reduce it to 2.5 days – but thanks to Golden Week I was actually able to lower that delay to half a day; which is as fast as I will ever get since I don’t take pictures with a smartphone… mainly because I don’t have one. 🙂
(Though I am sure you don’t really care how old the photos are. If I learned one thing over the last couple of years, then that Nara Dreamland pictures are always are crowd-pleaser – one I probably should have milked more often, as I still have whole sets of old unpublished NDL photos; not to mention the hundreds of photos of used sets I never published…)

My main goal for this visit was to duplicate some shots I took back in 2010 to illustrate the insane amount of vandalism Nara Dreamland has suffered from just within a few years – those I saved for a future article, but of course I took a lot more photos; some in areas I have missed during my first few visits.
If you follow the news closely, you might have heard that *Nara Dreamland* has been sold in November of 2015 to SK Housing, a real estate company based in Osaka. The previous owner owed the city of Nara something like 650 million Yen in property tax – and the only way to get the money was to foreclose the former theme park. After a failed public auction a year prior, SK Housing was the only bidder willing to pay the minimum amount of 730 million Yen, pretty much 6 million USD. This looks like a steal considering the property size of 297,000 square meters (3.2 million square feet!) and the fact that it comes with 75 buildings and other structures (that’s less than 20 EUR per sqm!), BUT the deal comes with some serious drawbacks. First of all: None of the buildings / structures are usable anymore – most of them are actually beyond repair. But even if you would level the whole park (which SK Housing has no plans for, according to a friend of mine who contacted them recently!) you’d have to invest several hundred million Yen more and then deal with nightmarish zoning regulations: new buildings are not allowed to be taller than 10 meters (the wooden rollercoaster Aska is 30 meter high!) and have to be used for libraries, museums, schools, sporting grounds, welfare facilities or a zoo – commercial, hotel, residential and retail developments are prohibited. So what is SK Housing going to do with their six million dollar investment? I have no idea…

(For all your Nara Dreamland needs please have a look at the *Nara Dreamland Special*. *Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

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Japanese Youth Hostel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2014 on 2016/04/26| 6 Comments »

You can’t throw a stone without hitting an abandoned hotel in some parts of Japan, deserted youth hostels on the other hand are rather rare…

There are about 300 youth hostels all across Nippon, which is not a lot in comparison to the 500 hostels in Germany (Japan: 127 million people, Germany: 82 million inhabitants) – probably because youth hostels tend to be more expensive in the land of the rising sun, while low-price competition in the form of minshuku and business hotels is much bigger. The lack of cheap places to stay for young people and families was actually the reason why youth hostels were invented – by German teacher Richard Schirrmann, who liked to go on hiking trips with his students and often had to spend the nights in barns or school buildings. As a proof of concept, Schirrmann opened the first youth hostel in an old school on a trial basis in 1907. In 1910 he presented his idea of an exhaustive network of affordable accommodations in an article for the Kölnische Zeitung (back then a big nationwide newspaper) and received lots of support. With that Schirrmann was able to move his provisional youth hostel to the renovated Altena Castle in 1912, making it the first permanent (and still existing!) youth hostel – and him becoming its warden. (Sadly the annual details differ depending on the sources… I went with the numbers that made the most sense to me.) Soon after the idea was picked up internationally and today there are more than 4000 youth hostels all over the world, organized by an association called Hostelling International.

The Japanese Youth Hostel I explored with my buddy *Hamish* was in the outskirts of a famous resort town, in the middle of a forest, surrounded by dozens, maybe hundreds of retreats for rich people and companies. From the outside the building was still in good condition and only the CLOSED sign in a window and the massive amount of foliage gave away that this JYH youth hostel was actually abandoned. Both the exterior and interior looked a bit outdated, probably 1950s or 60s, but there were no signs of vandalism, which is even more impressive as the place had been abandoned for almost 25 years at the time of our visit. Sure, some previous visitors obviously moved around a couple of items, but nothing had been smashed or covered with spray paint. It was almost like a time capsule… strangely beautiful in its own way – yet kind of eerie, as in: all of a sudden you could be trapped inside, like in a supernatural horror movie…

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Asama Observatory & Volcano Museum

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Demolished, Gunma, Haikyo, Japan, Museum, Non-Urbex, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2016/04/19| 8 Comments »

Urbex is a dangerous hobby – even more so in Japan, where wildlife can be nasty and deadly earthquakes are a constant threat that can strike anywhere at any time (most recently last weekend in Kumamoto). How to up the ante? By exploring near one of the country’s many active volcanoes…

I always wanted to travel to the mountains of central Japan – not just for urban exploration, but for sightseeing, too: Matsumoto, Nagano, Karuizawa. And while the area is easy to access from Kansai, it’s also a time-consuming endeavor of up to six hours each way (plus one for the bus to Mount Asama). With winter looming, I finally took last trains to Matsumoto on a Friday after work in early November of 2012, and from there I made my way through the valley of the Chikuma River to Karuizawa and Mount Asama, the most active volcano on Japan’s main island Honshu.
Luckily the weather played along on both days, so I had a really good time in the Chubu area, though I made a couple of mistakes that affected this article and some future ones: First of all, I forgot my trusty video camera, so I had to use the video mode of my D7000 – and I wasn’t familiar with it at all. The second, even worse mistake was that I thought it would be a good idea to shoot in NEF and only take some “safety shots” in JPG, despite me never doing any enhancing post-production – as a result it took me 3.5 years to write about this trip for the first time… and only because I took plenty of safety shots at Mount Asama. When will I write about the other half a dozen locations I visited during that weekend? It might take a while. Probably never, as I still have zero interest in photo editing! (Luckily I never repeated this lapse of judgment and from the following weekend on I started to shoot in NEF and JPG simultaneously, using the JPGs and archiving the NEFs just in case I ever need them…)

Arriving at Mount Asama I had a quick look at the new Asama Volcano Museum (opened in 1993 to replace the old Asama (Garden) Observatory and Volcano Museum), but only at the gift store and for a couple of minutes, because my time in the middle of nowhere was limited – I had to catch a certain bus back to Karuizawa to still be able to make it home the same day.
At first I was worried that it would take me a while to find the old, at that point abandoned museum as other people wrote they hiked for like an hour to get there… luckily the old museum was right next to the new one – and both of them were right next to the Onioshidashi Park. Oni-oshi-dashi means something like “demons pushing rocks” and is a huge area of Mount Asama’s northeastern slope covered by volcanic rocks as a result of the Tenmei Eruption in 1783, killing more than 1400 locals and intensifying a famine that lasted several years, causing nearby provinces to under-produce for half a decade. In 1958 a temple dedicated to Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, was built – and in 1974 a wheelchair-friendly hiking trail with several routes was opened in the oni-oshi-dashi, creating Onioshidashi Park.
Between the temple and the hiking trail, an observatory and museum about the history of Mount Asama and volcanoes in general was built between 1965 and 1967 – and closed / abandoned in 1993, when the new museum opened in the shadow of the old one. Since Mount Asama is an active volcano (with most recent eruptions in 2004, 2008, and 2009) that causes up to +1000 earthquakes per month (!), you can imagine that the exposed concrete observatory / museum had a tough time being hit by rocks and standing on shaky ground. And though the abandoned old museum was easily accessible for many, many years, it wasn’t anymore upon my visit in November of 2012 – the whole damn thing was thoroughly boarded up on all possible levels of entry.
Given the extremely dilapidated condition of the building and its location right next to two (!) tourist attractions I couldn’t blame the people in charge, but I was nevertheless a little bit disappointed. Not for long though, because it was an incredibly beautiful autumn day and I was in a touristy mood anyway, so I enjoyed a wonderful stroll through the Onioshidashi Park… until I wanted to cross the suspension bridge at the end of the course, the one that would get me back to the parking lot / bus stop within 5 minutes. Unfortunately the thing was closed! Whether for maintenance or for good I wasn’t able to find out, but it didn’t matter, because either way I had to rush back to make it home on time…

Despite not being able to enter the old Asama Observatory & Volcano Museum I had a great time out there at Mount Asama. The weather was gorgeous and the area so stunningly beautiful in its very own way. And the old building… was just perfect the way it was, crumbling before my eyes. (It was actually demolished just months later, in June of 2013, and replaced by yet another observation platform.)
The Onioshidashi Park was a treat by itself and it’s definitely a stop you should include on your next off the beaten tracks tour of Japan. (Be aware though that the new museum and the hiking trails are closed between December and March, both included.) Having to pass concrete shelters every couple of dozen meters was a strange feeling! You know that the volcano can erupt at any time, but seeing those shelters makes it a lot more real than just having book knowledge. Having experienced time and again how unnerving earthquakes can be, I really don’t want to be near a volcano when it erupts…

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