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Archive for the ‘Japan’ Category

Partly Collapsed Red Bridge

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Shizuoka, Transportation, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2015/03/24| 11 Comments »

On the Izu Peninsula south of Tokyo you can hardly throw a stone without hitting an abandoned place – though I doubt that it was a simple rock that brought down this bright red loop bridge…

There are actually several stories / story elements why this iconic *haikyo* became a modern ruin:
– One part of the bridge collapsed during an earthquake in the 1970s and the bridge was then abandoned.
– Somebody planned a spa resort on top of the mountain, but the plans fell through and construction of the bridge stopped.
– Somebody planned dozens of holiday homes and company retreats on top of the mountain in the 1970s, finished building the bridge and opened it to the public, but then went bankrupt without constructing anything else – so the bridge fell into disrepair and the road leading up to the bridge was dismantled for security reasons.
– The bridge was built in the 1970s, but didn’t collapse until 1993.
– The bridge was built in the 1970s, collapsed in the 1980s, but city officials didn’t admit to that fact until 1993.

40 years later and without access to a local historian or some kind of city archive it’s pretty much impossible to say what happened here. You should think that building bridges is the responsibility of the State, but there are plenty of private roads and bridges in Japan, so having a private investor being responsible for this modern ruin is by all means a possibility. Given that there are no solid roads beyond the bridge, I doubt that it was ever finished and opened to the public; that’s supported by the surroundings, which looked like an unfinished construction site abandoned decades ago. On the other hand it is very likely that somebody wanted to build something on top of the mountain, given that there is another “colony” with dozens of holiday homes and company retreats in walking distance. The Izu Peninsula was indeed hit by three serious earthquakes in the 1970s (1974, 1976 & 1978), but there is no way to say that one of them caused the bridge to partly collapse – though I think it is likely that the bridge was finished in the 70s, then whoever was in charge went bankrupt / stopped caring about the construction, it fell into disrepair and finally came down in the 1980s or 90s. The current position looks very, very instable, too – the massive rocks the nosedived bridge element is resting on now shows huge cracks from the pressure and I wouldn’t be surprised if we will see more movement in the not so far future…

The Partly Collapsed Red Bridge is actually quite a famous abandoned place in Japan, first reports date back to 2004, when hardly anybody did urbex in Japan, and I was never really eager to see it – photographed to death, potentially instable, fences around, rather remote location… and just boring. An abandoned bridge with a collapsed element, come on, how interesting can that be?
EXTREMELY interesting, probably one of the coolest places ever! Yeah, there were large construction fences where the bridge was planned to connect with a regular street, but a few dozen meters down the road was a flat parking area to the right and partly overgrown steps lead up the hill directly to where the bridge begins now, past auxiliary structures to support the construction workers, now more looking like a dump. (And probably used as a dump by locals these days as getting rid of electronics and bigger furniture can be really expensive in Japan…) So I climbed these fading steps with little to no expectations, but then I left the shadow of the forest and stepped into the light, literally and figuratively – I know it sounds cheesy, but it was like a choir of angels started singing. Holy shit – there was a partly collapsed bridge right in front of me, its damaged element pointing almost vertically to the sky, and one step to the left the asphalted loop started! Before I went to see the bridge myself I had seen dozens, maybe hundreds of photos… of quite a rather simple and not very elaborate (failed) construction, yet none of those pictures came even close to capture what I felt like standing there, all of a sudden feeling very small and vulnerable. So cool, so damn cool!
Although I swore to myself that I would not get even close to where the final bridge element slipped off the huge pillar, all of a sudden I realized how my feet were walking towards the metal fence once put in the middle of the road to keep nosy people with bad sense of balance from killing themselves accidentally or on purpose. The lower part of the wire netting had been long gone, so it was easy to get past this now rather symbolic obstacle. In the main corner of the uphill loop I took a photo (now the wallpaper of my computer) and all I could think of was: “This would be an awesome Mario Kart 9 track!” The bridge was actually quite wide, perfect for sliding karts, especially in a video game environment as the crash barrier wasn’t very high and the width of the road varied. I’ve seen my share of amazing yet weird bridges in Japan (including one coming out of a mountain tunnel and looping back in a few meters lower, all of that several hundred meters above the ground!), but this one didn’t look like it fulfilled any modern safety standards!
The very top of the bridge was every little bit as vertigo-inducing as you would it expect it to be – what an awesome sight! Sadly not for me, so I took a few quick shots and filmed some video material on my way back to the “barricade”. From there I headed over to the element that had fallen off at least 20 years prior to my visit, not without a bad feeling in my stomach – the massive piece of dented metal, plastic and asphalt was resting on massive rocks with huge cracks in them, and despite weighing tons, the setup looked very fragile. A few more shots and a quick video from underneath the slipped off part and back to safety I went… still not really believing how cool this location was, especially on a sunny spring day!

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Red Bridge

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Irozaki Jungle Park – Japan’s Gigantic Abandoned Botanical Garden

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Shizuoka, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2015/03/17| 15 Comments »

After more than 400 explorations only a few things wow me anymore. The Irozaki Jungle Park did, more than once; continually actually!
The first thing that wowed me was the extremely bad weather upon arrival: March 1st, but heavy rain like in late June / early July. Urbex isn’t fun like that, especially when the first things you find are the former gift shop and another building boarded up! A few minutes later we reached the main entrance, patched up, too. Wow, damn, no easy access! I decided to have a look outside first, only to realize that the buildings of the Irozaki Jungle Park stretched across an area of about 200 by 400 meters (wow!), while my friends decided to find a way in closer to the main entrance. The back of the gigantic botanical theme park was roped off, the main building complex sealed tight, a car with license plates parked on the premises. Wow, this former urbex paradise definitely had been more welcoming before the city of Minamiizu took over to re-develop the area about two years ago.

The Irozaki Jungle Park opened in 1969 on 12,000 square meters, developed and run by the Iwasaki group, a conglomerate of about 50 companies, dealing with communications, transportation and tourism; hotels and resorts as well as artificial sightseeing spots like this humongous botanical garden. The park was an instant success, peaking at about 750,000 visitors in 1973. But instant success is rather easy to achieve in Japan, where everybody is on the hunt for the newest, the shiniest, the trendiest – long term success on the other hand is a real challenge, one that the IJP lost. The numbers of visitors went down significantly as the buildings aged. When less than 100,000 people visited the park within a year, Iwasaki pulled the plug and closed the Irozaki Jungle Park on September 30th 2003. Interestingly enough the JNTO (Japanese National Travel Organization) is mentioning / recommending the IJP in an old version of their official tourist guide to the Izu Peninsula, which is still available online. WOW, that’s a whole new level of expert fail! (According to the guide it is “containing well over 3000 species of tropical plants. Open daily: 8:30 – 16:50. Admission: \900.”)

Upon my return to the main entrance I found my friends were able to gain access to the first huge structure without breaking anything, so I joined them to have a look inside. About 15 meters wide, 50 meters long and maybe 7 meters high, this first greenhouse made quite an impression on me (wow!), though that doesn’t mean a lot given that I am not exactly a regular visitor of botanical gardens… Despite the park being closed a dozen years ago, some of the plants inside of the conservatory were in pretty good condition. There was plenty of foliage on the ground, so I had to choose my steps wisely, especially since the greenhouse was located on a gentle slope. The path split and reunited several times before leading into a pitch black and pretty much empty area, connecting the first greenhouse with a slightly wider one of almost the same length, followed by a 15 meter long Rainforest Zone, connecting the middle part with a third greenhouse; about 20 meters wide and 60 meters long. The height inside the halls varied between maybe 4 meters and probably 7 or 8 meters, before we finally reached the end of the tube like biosphere looking complex. There we found some restrooms, a rest area and lots of pamphlets of other nearby tourist attractions. Wow, I knew that the Irozaki Jungle Park was big, but this was much larger than I expected, even though I had already seen the entire place from the outside! The park’s mascots apparently were two slightly dumb looking white “jungle explorers” equipped with helmets, guns and binoculars as well as a dark skinned “jungle dweller” wearing rings around his ankles, his neck, through his ears and through his nose (!) – the three interacted in “funny” ways, for example when the jungle man was drumming, he used the white guys’ helmets, too. I guess you don’t have to be overly sensitive to find this at least slightly racist, and of course we were cracking jokes that the only plywood cutout scene missing was the black guy boiling the white guys in a big cauldron.
And so we headed through a pair of sliding doors – not the exit, but the connection to a huge last greenhouse, a rectangle of about 50 by 70 meters, probably 10 meters high. WOW, WOW, WOW! This gigantic hall featured several ponds of various sizes, several food stands, sculptures made from different materials, and two large glass containers with specimen; the kind you’ve seen in several of my articles about *abandoned schools* before – a ray and some kind of eel, maybe. Wow! Some of the ceiling panels were broken… pretty much in all halls, but especially in this one, so the vegetation here was especially lush. We could even see and hear a couple of birds inside the greenhouse. This place would be amazing to film a 1970s style science fiction movie or some kind of horror flick – gosh, I bet you could scare urban explorers shitless by playing John Barry’s The Black Hole theme when they enter the last gigantic greenhouse! 🙂
Overall the Irozaki Jungle Park was a really mind-blowing location! There was so much to see, so many paths to explore. Sadly we had to leave around lunch time already as we had to return our car before 5 p.m. in Mishima, with traffic being unpredictable due to nearby hanami festivals, the first in all of Japan this year – and we also lost quite some time finding a way inside the gargantuan structure, so taking photos was kind of a rushed job, nevertheless I enjoyed my visit to the Irozaki Jungle Park tremendously. The last thing I did, as always, was filming the walkthrough, and for that we looked for the official former exit of the park. And guess what… There it was, the plywood cutout of the black guy boiling a white guy in a large cauldron, tasting the “soup” with a scoop! WOW…

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Sanyo Securities – Vault, Training Center & Company Retreat

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chūbu, Haikyo, House, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2014, Yamanashi on 2015/03/03| 11 Comments »

Small, but spooky… Hardly any abandoned place gave me the creeps as much as the Sanyo Securities Vault, a massive semi-underground construction inhabited by bats and gigantic bugs.

Sanyo Securities (not to be confused with the world renowned Sanyo Electric!) was a mid-size Japanese brokerage firm. Founded in 1910 it got into serious financial trouble after the Japanese price asset bubble burst in the early 1990s. In March of 1998 the financial situation was so dire that there were talks about Mitsui Sumitomo taking over, but that option fell through. Even a restructuring of the company in June of the same year couldn’t save it, and so all employees were sacked on August 31st.

Like many successful companies of the 1980s, Sanyo Securities owned a scenic countryside retreat and training center for employees, in this case with a massive semi-underground safe. The first thing my explorer buddy *Hamish* and I found upon reaching the premises were some tennis courts in really bad condition – it was more than obvious that the area had been abandoned for quite a while.
On the way back to the training center buildings I spotted a low dome like construction in the vegetation to our left. It took us no time to find the entrance, though I can’t remember seeing any sign of the metal door, except for its left-behind solid frame. The hallway behind was lit from above through the glass dome we spotted from the outside, the walls probably quite massive ferroconcrete – the thing looked like from a 1960s SciFi movie! And there it was, behind a corner, the biggest metal door I’ve ever seen in my life, open – as if a watching mastermind was just waiting for somebody to enter, so it could be slammed shut via a remote control. Some bored people with too much strength actually removed a panel on the back, so the locking mechanism was exposed; quite interesting! Behind that door was a narrow square hallway, surrounding the inner sanctum: a room about four by four meters, guarded by another set of inside concrete walls at least 30 centimeters thick and another massive metal door with a complicated lock. This must have been the safe for most prized possessions owned by the customers of Sanyo Securities; now inhabited by a few bats in the inner hallway and some huge bugs (giant grasshoppers, if I remember correctly) in the center room. Fascinating place, but creepy as hell!
The company retreat part was quite interesting in its own way. Built from various materials and partly in line with its surroundings, I especially liked the fire place and the huge windows in what must have been some kind of cafeteria / conference room. Sadly the upper floor suffered from arson – and whoever took care of that problem probably cleared / cleaned some of the building, as parts of it looked a lot more cluttered on older photos I’ve seen before my visit. The burned-out room offered a gorgeous few at the other building below and especially at the lake across the street. The other rooms were either tatami rooms that looked like regular hotel rooms – or carpeted dormitory style rooms with bunk beds. I guess not all Sanyo Securities employees were treated the same…
The training center below was quite unspectacular though; mainly conference rooms, from the looks of it. The upper floors were mostly moldy and rotten, the lower floor showed signs of severe vandalism – broken windows and graffiti. Usually I try to avoid showing graffiti to not motivate those “artists” vandalizing abandoned places, but the One Piece one kinda looked nice and almost suited the wall it was sprayed on.

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Japanese Castle Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2014 on 2015/02/24| 7 Comments »

Japan and Germany are both famous for their castles – the ones in Japan are either tourist attractions or (in very rare cases) abandoned. In Germany there is a third kind, the ones that were turned into accommodations. Youth hostels, hotels or private homes; usually located in a very beautiful landscape on top of a mountain. To the best of my knowledge all “castle hotels” in Japan are hotels NEAR famous castles, not former castles themselves. Until a few years ago there was one sort-of exception, a huge hotel that kind of looked like a pre-modern fortress, but was a post-war concrete construction – similar to the tourist trap called Osaka Castle… 😉
Then the Great Tohoku Earthquake a.k.a. 3/11 hit the northern half of Japan in 2011, and while the hotel was spared the flood, it suffered some damages from the earthquake and its aftershocks. Even worse: tourists avoided the area between Tokyo and Hokkaido like the plague… or an earthquake-ridden nuclear wasteland… and so the Japanese Castle Hotel had to close its doors.
In 2013 I saw a video on Youtube (now offline…), taken at the then closed / abandoned hotel – everything was in almost pristine condition, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It looked like the best abandoned hotel ever! I had to find it somehow, yet I failed for months. In early 2014 I was talking with my urbex buddy Rory about (finding) new locations and I sent him a link to the then still working video. A few days later he got back to me: his wife watched the video, too, and based on that she not only found the hotel’s location, but its Twitter account and blog, too. In moments like that I wish my Japanese was better…
Almost a year had gone by since I first watched the (edited) walkthrough, but I still considered it one of the most amazing and rarest abandoned places in Japan – so I got a plane ticket to the north and headed there a couple of months later. Upon arrival at the hotel disappointment set in quickly: it wasn’t abandoned… not even closed – it was under renovation! This was only the third time I’ve heard that a once abandoned place was under renovation. The first was a windmill restaurant, the second a regular hotel. Now this…

But well, what can you do – you gotta roll with the punches. My two fellow explorers though seemed to be of different opinion. Judging by their faces, they would have called it a day and went straight to dinner instead, but I took a plane to explore this very location… and an open door and the noise of construction work in the background wouldn’t prevent me from doing so!
We carefully progressed through the building, trying to avoid making any noise, but sooner or later the inevitable happened – we ran into a construction worker. Luckily my friends agreed to my strategy, so instead of trying to bolt, we approached the guy and explained to him what we were doing. He clearly thought we were crazy, but didn’t mind that we were hanging around taking photos… and from that point on it was easy going.
Now you might ask yourself the question whether or not exploring a hotel under renovation belongs on a blog about urban exploration. Personally I prefer 100% abandoned places, but that’s the ideal. Most of the interesting locations, especially in Europe and the States, are patrolled by security, so technically they are not abandoned either; and who could imagine urbex in Japan without *Nara Dreamland*? So this was kind of a special exploration and very interesting in its own way, as the renovation work wasn’t limited to roofing and a new layer of paint for the building. While some of the rooms were in surprisingly bad condition considering that only three years had passed since 3/11, others just had been renovated, still looking and smelling brand-new. That before / after experience is almost as rare as castle shaped hotels in Japan… and I truly enjoyed it, almost as much as the gorgeous weather and the beautiful architecture, including shots of the damaged roof with its shachihoko, a Japanese folklore creature with the head of a tiger and the body of a carp.
Sadly once again time was of the essence, so in the end I had to squeeze an exploration that should have taken at least three hours into less than one – nevertheless I am happy that I was able to see the Japanese Castle Hotel at the beginning of its renovation. I have to admit that it was not as spectacular as I hoped it would be (not nearly as impressive as the *Hachijo Royal Hotel*!), but it still was one of those unique places you long to see as an urban explorer, as there are hundreds of other abandoned hotels all over the country – but none of them looks like a Japanese castle…

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Stolen Anatomic Model School

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, School, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2015/02/17| 17 Comments »

Writing an urbex blog is a double-edged sword – on one side I would like to present every single location in the best light and with the most information possible, on the other side I am aware that this kind of exposure may attract people that don’t treat those deserted places with the same respect as I do. A year or two ago I saw that wonderful abandoned school on a Japanese blog and I was especially captivated by its amazing anatomic model of a human body. It was tall, it was detailed, it was clean; everything you could hope for as an urban explorer. The school was virtually unknown to the internet, but the author used its real name – not caring about the school’s future or thinking that the tiny village could not be found anyway; it took me about five minutes to locate it, even with basic Japanese skills. In January I finally had the chance to explore the school, eager to take photos of the anatomic model… but it was gone, somebody stole it and left the box behind as if to mock later visitors like me. If you ever wondered why I sometimes use fake names for locations or don’t reply to “Hey dude, where exactly is XYZ?” messages via e-mail or *Facebook* – that’s the reason! And now let me show you the remains of the Stolen Anatomic Model School…

When I told my regular explorer friend Dan about that amazing school somewhere in the mountains I was super excited… and a bit nervous, as it would take us several hours to get there. On day trips I usually avoid locations that are further than 2.5 hours away from Osaka, just because driving there and back takes so much time of the day – and the school was well outside that perimeter, especially in case of heavy traffic. So Dan, his girlfriend Kyoko and I met just around sunrise and headed for the countryside. What started as an overcast day turned into a sunny one on a surprisingly warm winter day.
Walking up to the school in a small and sleepy yet picturesque mountain village, we were relieved to see that the slightly out of sight school was still in good condition, unlocked and without any “Do not enter!” signs. Nothing like sunny days and close to 0 risk of getting into trouble… 🙂
We first entered the main building, another example of a gorgeous wooden school right out of an anime series or a manga. One of the rooms was used as a storage for those huge plywood signs Japanese politicians stick their election posters to, other rooms were stuffed with school furniture, handwritten slogans, posters and all kind of equipment you would expect to find in an old Japanese school. A good start, but unspectacular.
We left through an open side entrance, right next to a spot where the floor caved in and a former classroom started to rot – that’s why you always close doors and windows you open as an explorer! Giving the forces of nature easy access to abandoned buildings can contribute as much to their demise as active acts of vandalism.
The next building, connected by a short roofed walkway, basically consisted of only two rooms, but those two rooms made this abandoned school so wonderful! One room was full of musical instruments (pianos, keyboards, xylophones, accordions), speakers and lines of a stave on the green blackboard – the other room was the science room with countless models, samples and instruments to teach physics, chemistry, and biology. There I was hoping to find the anatomic model of a human body, but it was gone, only parts of the box left behind. Disappointing, but not a complete catastrophe since I have previously taken picture of similar models, for example at the *Blizzard School* and at the *Landslide School*. Luckily there were so many other things to see and to take pictures of that I quickly forgot about that one missing item – especially after Dan and Kyoko told me that there was more to explore!
The gymnasium was in much better condition than the main part of the school, with the exception of the storage area. Nevertheless the floor felt a lot more unstable. I guess the wooden ground got a bit loose during countless changes of seasons. The auditorium / sports hall was easily the most beautiful I have ever seen at an abandoned Japanese school – and some of the extra rooms behind the stage and near the entrance told their own stories silently. One of them was actually kind of a memorial for a guy from that village who cycled around the world and brought back several gifts, at the same time it explained the history of the school; dating back to the 19th century and revealing that the building we first entered had to be reconstructed after a fire during World War 2.

Overall the Stolen Anatomic Model School was an amazing exploration and the continuation of documenting nearly untouched abandoned Japanese schools, a series that started with the *Kyoto Countryside School* about 1.5 years ago.

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Female Fertility Festival

Posted in Aichi, Asia, Festival, Japan, Non-Urbex, Photography, Travel, Video, Visited in 2014 on 2015/02/10| 4 Comments »

There are famous local and nationwide festivals all over Japan all year round, but two of them stick out like a sore peni–… uhm… thumb: the fertility festivals near Nagoya, Aichi.
A year ago I wrote in great lengths (no pun intended!) about the second part of the Honen Matsuri, better known as “That Japanese penis festival!” – just in time for you to visit it, as it is held every year on March 15th, no matter which day of the week it is; it’s a Sunday in 2015, so be prepared to see some additional dicks and chocolate covered bananas there…
Last year I also visited the much less famous first part of the Honen Matsuri, better known as “There is another fertility festival in Nagoya?” – it’s always on the Sunday before March 15th (which is March 8th this year, less than four weeks from now!) and it is all about female fertility, symbolized by an enshrined stone vulva; well, at least on paper it’s all about the vajayjay…

The history of the festival, which is held near Gakuden Station on the Meitetsu Komaki Line, just one stop away from the dick-ish penis festival at Tagatajinjamae, dates back hundreds of years and ties directly into the other festival, making it all about… agriculture. Yes, instead of Thanksgiving, it’s kind of Thankspraying – and since fertility is much easier to understand (and to market!) when it’s symbolized by human genitals instead of a tiny kernel and some dirt…

The Himenomiya Honen Matsuri (as the Female Fertility Festival is really called) loosely translates as Princess’s Shrine Harvest Festival and starts at 9:00 a.m. with a prayer service for good crops, followed by a ceremony blessing the kodomo mikoshi, the portable shrine for children. From 11:00 a.m. on a child procession is leading up to the main event venue, the Oagata Shrine – which is super cute as all the little ones are dressed up and their parents, also dressed up, are walking right beside them, proud as peacocks. This is followed by a car parade from 12 o’clock on and the arrival of several mikoshi, portable shrines, carried by up to two dozen young men, in the afternoon. In addition to that, there are all kinds of entertainment, like an amazing drum troupe and the beautiful flower garden of the adjunct Taikokuebisu Shrine. The Himenomiya Honen Matsuri ends at around 4 p.m. with a mochi nage, in which elevated elderly officials shower the masses below with huge rice cakes the size of an adult’s palm.
While the famous *penis festival* is a rather loud, fleshy… flashy… festival where drunk people from all over the world (yes, tons of foreigners, more than I’ve ever seen anywhere at the same place in Japan!) openly celebrate an otherwise suppressed love for everything phallic, the Himenomiya Honen Matsuri is much more subtle and feels like a real traditional Japanese festival, not like a spectacle for tourists from near and far. The usual festival stalls sell almost no frivolous / quirky food and souvenirs, the noise level barely ever goes up, and each element of the festival is just lovely to observe – the colorful costumes and beautiful mikoshi a feast for the eyes. While the ema (small wooden plaques for wishes or prayers) at the Tagata Shrine come in various very explicit variations, there is only one motif at the Himenomiya Honen Matsuri – and last year it showed breasts, but it shied away from spread legs or bent over bodies. Even the vulva shaped stone doesn’t get much attention and isn’t recognizable as such if you don’t pay much attention.
If you are ever in the Nagoya area in early / mid-March I strongly recommend visiting both festivals, if possible. The Himenomiya Honen Matsuri on the Sunday before March 15th is a busy yet halcyon event for the whole family with only a slight sexual connotation, while the *penis festival* on March 15th of every year is one big sausage fest, a party for everybody old and drunk enough!

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Yamanashi Ghost Town

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, House, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2014, Yamanashi on 2015/02/03| 7 Comments »

Abandoned looking houses are everywhere in the Japanese countryside – but just because they look abandoned, doesn’t mean that they are abandoned. Better safe than sorry, so if deserted private homes are your thing, I recommend visiting one of hundreds derelict villages in Japan… like the Yamanashi Ghost Town!
Some of my urbex friends love abandoned houses. I usually don’t. Exploring them, there is a certain amount of voyeurism involved, far beyond the usual level, as those places are a lot more personal than shared spaces like hotels, amusement parks or hospitals. Most of the time interesting items are in drawers, behind closed doors… and I don’t like to go through other people’s things, that’s when urbex becomes borderline burglarizing to me, even if you don’t break something getting in and don’t take something on the way out. There also is an uncomfortable sadness to them – the people there left their houses, probably family homes for generations, and they often left personal things behind; letters, photos, diaries, …

My buddy *Hamish* and I were actually looking for an abandoned school when we found this little ghost town in the mountains of Yamanashi prefecture, off the beaten tracks and barely connected to Japan’s regular road system, given the condition of some stretches. At the same time we were very sure that the area was really abandoned, which made it easier to enter some buildings without knocking first. Most houses / huts were in rather bad condition, but two or three of them looked like there still might have been living somebody; but just from the outside. All buildings seemed to have many visitors before, including some who enjoyed going through stuff, which was scattered all over the floors. An abandoned hairdryer here, some old soda / juice cans there. The biggest surprise probably was a wooden box in a barn, once containing rindless cheddar cheese from Australia, a country not exactly famous for dairy exports. I also loved the last building we explored – the pink main door lead to a stinky hallway full of garbage, but when we entered through the living room, we gained access to an amazingly lit part of the house with lots of decay and animal feces; very challenging to shoot due the difficult natural light though.

Overall the Yamanashi Ghost Town wasn’t a terribly exciting location with spectacular views or items, but much like it’s rather famous counterpart *Mukainokura* it offered another glimpse into the past – items of daily use, how houses were built in Japan 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago… the hardships of making a living in the mountains. One impressive proof of that I found when I made a last attempt finding the previously mentioned school – instead I came across a series of hand-built levelled fields on a slope next to a river, probably the main source of fruits and vegetables for a whole village most likely abandoned in the 1970s…

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Sumitomo Osaka Cement Factory

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Factory, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Shiga, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2014 on 2015/01/27| 6 Comments »

Almost completely demolished, yet exploration fun for more than two hours – this Sumitomo Osaka Cement Factory delivered one last time!

Sumitomo is one of the oldest companies in all of Japan, tracing their roots back to Masatomo Sumitomo, who gave up his life as a Buddhist priest to become a businessman at age 45 in 1630. Starting with a shop selling books and medicine in Kyoto, he later became closely associated with copper – his brother-in-law Riemon Soga had learned from Europeans how to separate silver from unrefined copper in the late 16th century… and when Soga’s first son Tomomochi married one of Sumitomo’s daughters, the business expanded to Osaka under the Sumitomo name. In the following centuries the company diversified and became one of Japan’s four big conglomerates called zaibatsu; along with Mitsui, Mitsubishi and the now dissolved Yasuda.
After ignoring the cement market for decades, Sumitomo got into the business in the early 60s, when the demand for coal plummeted and the subsidiary Sumitomo Coal Mining was looking for new opportunities. In 1962 Sumitomo invested in one of Japan’s most successful cement producers, Iwaki Cement, and basically took them over in 1963. The new company soon opened / acquired more plants and in 1994 merged with competitor Osaka Cement to form the Sumitomo Osaka Cement Co., Ltd – one of their plants was in Shiga prefecture and ran from 1952 till 2003; shortly afterwards the demolition of the factory and partly new use of the premises began.

When my buddy Marvin came to visit from Berlin, it was pretty clear that we wouldn’t meet at a cute little café to spend 12 bucks on a piece of cake and a cup of coffee – instead we took the opportunity for a ride to the Shiga countryside on a lovely September Sunday; one of the first bearable days after a long, hot and humid summer. The Sumitomo Osaka Cement Factory was the second location of the day as its current condition was pretty much unknown to us, the area a blurry spot on GoogleMaps. All I knew was that demolition had started years ago and that there was at least one new company on the former factory ground. We approached from the south and it turned out that the area was a lot bigger than I expected – easily 400 by 800 meters, including the active looking part, most of it (sight) protected by partly overgrown fences; some fitted with barbed wire, some just plain fences of various kinds. When we found a section that looked like a possible entrance, Marvin was eager to get in, but I had a bad feeling and wasn’t ready to finish scouting yet; good decision as the area behind that fence was accessible from other places and still in use. About 15 minutes later I finally gave in at a gate we were able to pass easily. I still wasn’t fully convinced that it was a good idea, but most urbex noobs have an untainted enthusiasm that is infectious. We explored the former back of the now mostly demolished cement plant and actually found an open gate with no “Do not enter! / No Trespassing!” signs, which calmed me down noticeably. Still in the upper back part, all of a sudden I heard a heavy truck approaching – it turned out that they still loaded rocks on trucks there, they just stopped the production of cement. So Marvin and headed for cover and were just able to duck down before the truck rushed through. Phew, close call!
To avoid further run-ins with heavy trucks we headed down the slope to the concrete remains of the former cement factory, away from the main road crossing the vast premises. Technically there wasn’t much to see – one or two rusty machines here, some rusty packing devices there; but the atmosphere was just amazing. Very post-apocalyptic, like straight out of a Terminator or Mad Mad movie, the scorching sun on the almost clear sky physically supporting the feeling. Who would have thought that shooting a 90% demolished factory could be that much fun? There is just something about gigantic ferroconcrete structures I can’t get enough of…
Yet the most interesting part was actually a Hitachi transformer station, partly stripped, but still equipped with some switchboxes and all kinds of steampunk looking metal and ceramics parts. Sadly there were mosquitos everywhere, eating us alive and rendering some photos unusable.

Despite the fact that most of the plant was gone already, this was an amazing exploration – especially since at the time I didn’t know what kind of industrial complex the Sumitomo Osaka Cement Factory had been. I knew it under the name “Sumitomo Plant”, so it could have been anything. Just by looking at the remains and the surroundings, we figured out that it must have been a cement factory; later research at home confirmed our assumptions and revealed a lot more about the plant and its history. Good times!

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Fuji Five Lakes Onsen

Posted in Abandoned, Chūbu, Haikyo, House, Japan, Photography, Spa / Onsen, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2014, Yamanashi, tagged , on 2015/01/20| 4 Comments »

The Fuji 5 Lakes area consists of Lake Yamanaka, Lake Kawaguchi, Lake Sai, Lake Shoji, and Lake Motosu – forming an arch around the northern part of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi prefecture. Famous for hiking, mountain climbing, sailing, fishing, the Aokigahara Suicide Forest, Fujikyu Highland and local udon noodles, this recreational area two hours outside of Tokyo attracts about nine million visitors per year… and many of them enjoy a soak at an onsen in the evening. Of course not all of those public baths can be successful – bad for the owners, good for explorers like me and readers like you…
The Fuji Five Lakes Onsen is a surprisingly rare location and apparently virtually unknown to the Japanese urbex scene. It’s actually easier to find information about the time when it was open for business than about its current abandoned state; hence the rather vague fake name for it. The place was actually not just a day trip spa (charging 300 Yen for the time between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.), it was also a ryokan, a Japanese inn for overnight guests. Located next to a river in a tiny mountain town, the Fuji Five Lakes Onsen turned out to be a hidden wooden gem, a glimpse at Japan’s simple past that is disappearing quickly.

At 7,000 to 10,000 Yen per person and night the FFLO wasn’t exactly a cheap place to stay at, especially considering that it closed about 10 years ago. I am sure back then it was easily possible to get a more luxurious accommodation for a lower price – but probably with a lot less character. The main building of the Fuji Five Lakes Onsen was a narrow, but rather long wooden construction – followed by small apartments in the backyard along the river. After ten years of abandonment rather wobbly and squeaky, the main hallway wasn’t for the faint of heart, especially with road construction going on right outside. If we were able to hear them scavenge the street, they were able to hear almost any noise we made. Luckily they weren’t aware of *Hamish* and I being there, so they didn’t pay attention; a huge advantage on our side and a late reward for us approaching the Fuji Five Lakes Onsen carefully, avoiding any noises getting in.
The tricky part was the upper floor with its tatami party room. Regular readers know what kind of place I mean – the big one with the stage and the karaoke machine and stuff like that. What was so tricky about it? Well, the upper part was actually on road level, so the construction workers were able to look inside through some of the windows… if they would have paid attention, which they didn’t. Good for me, as the party room held some interesting items to take pictures of, including some 60s or 70s music devices and a Konami Hyper Shot controller for use with the smash hit Hyper Sports.
Down on the main floor again I took some photos of the pretty run down onsen part, the gender-separated shared bath. Surprisingly small, it must have offered a nice view on the river a few decades prior. Now the huge windows were mostly overgrown from the outside and vandalized by penis graffiti from the inside – the whole room felt rather cold and inhospitable on this beautiful autumn day.
The half a dozen guest “houses” in the back looked a bit like an afterthought and some were already in quite questionable condition. The eclectic conglomerate was big enough for about 30 people, with each hut hosting a family or a carload full of friends. Been there, done that… and the light was disappearing quickly.
What made the Fuji Five Lakes Onsen such a memorable exploration was the simplicity of the place. No shiny modern kitchen, no ten-storey concrete building, no spa area the size of a football field, no arcade, no elevators – just plain wooden buildings, a handful of guest apartments and an almost underwhelming shared bath. The most modern item probably was that controller for said Konami game, every other item there most likely was from the 70s, 60s or even 50s.
The last couple of places I presented on *Abandoned Kansai* were not very Japanese at first sight, especially locations like the *Western Village* or the *Hachijo Royal Hotel*… but the Fuji Five Lakes Onsen is as Japanese as it gets!

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Japanese Mental Hospital

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Asylum, Haikyo, Hospital, Japan, Kanto, Photography, Saitama, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2015 on 2015/01/13| 17 Comments »

The morning after exploring the abandoned *Western Village*, I woke up physically and mentally drained like hardly ever before. All I wanted to do is getting home, so I skipped breakfast and the first location I considered exploring that day. Feeling slightly better on the two or three trains I had to take towards Tokyo, I decided to stop at a small station with a large shopping mall. Two fences later I found myself in the semi-basement of an abandoned psychiatric hospital, taking pictures of metal-grilled solitary cells – by far the most nerve-wrecking solo exploration I’ve done so far!

Insane, crazy, bonkers, lunatic, nuts. It was really stupid to explore the Japanese Mental Hospital all by myself, especially since pretty much everything that could go wrong, went wrong – yet I got away with it…
I wasn’t up to a good start when I woke up with a cramp in my right leg, only to realize that I had a serious headache, too. The previous day had taken its toll as I totally forgot to eat or drink between breakfast at 7.30 a.m. and dinner at 8.30 p.m. – not a problem 10 years ago, but I am no spring chicken anymore. The first location I planned to explore required a 12 kilometer roundtrip walk, so I scrapped the idea quickly as I didn’t even feel like walking from the bed to the bathroom in a really tiny hotel room. My secondary target that day was an abandoned hospital in Saitama, kind of on the way home and much closer to Osaka than my then current location in Tochigi’s capital. So I did some last minute research plus some paperwork and headed south 1.5 hours later. While I had no urge in the morning to ever take a single photo again, that feeling was gone around noon as my shutter finger was itching again. I wasn’t as super excited as I usually am, but at least I didn’t feel like turning inside out anymore – and the weather was really nice!
To my surprise the small station I arrived at was super busy, and so was the large supermarket / shopping mall right across the street. I had a general idea where to look for the mental hospital, so I walked right into a developing area that now more or less surrounded the former asylum – you could say that I entered the psychiatric ward. Most plots already had houses on, their inhabitants busy with cleaning and bringing out trash. Great. Exactly what I needed. Soon the old hospital stood out like a sore thumb and visible from quite a distance as it was two floors taller than the surrounding residential area. It was fenced off by a typical Japanese construction fence – the one consisting of connecting metal plates, about 30 centimeters wide and 2.5 meters tall. Faaaaaan-tastic. But it got better. Between the road I was on and said site fence was an elevated barbed wire fence, rusty as if it was made to spread tetanus. In-between was a grassy area… mown, which means that somebody still took care of the premises. Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner – full-blown urbex nightmare. Or so I thought, because I actually found a small hole in the outer fence where I was able to squeeze my bag and tripod through, followed by a bigger hole some 40 meters down the road where I could enter – I already had figured out how to get past the inner fence, but of course the outer opening was in the opposite direction of the inner opening. So I put my equipment through the outer fence and turned around to make my way to the Florian sized access point, when I looked directly at a woman living two doors down another road. Darn! So I walked towards her, trying to start a conversation, but she just closed the veranda door and disappeared. Damn, damn, damn! I was too close to give up, so I hurried down the first road, got past the outer fence, ran back on the inside, grabbed my equipment and… ROAR, another neighbor started his car! Seriously?! I didn’t even take the time to look up, headed towards the inner fence and went all in. Literally and figuratively.
The Japanese Mental Hospital turned out to be some kind of whitewashed concrete building, 95% boarded up or blocked by rusty grilles. For obvious reasons super nervous I first had a quick look at the semi-basement in the back, from the outside of course – separated from the real world only by a solid metal fence I could hear neighbors, the kids of neighbors, and of course the dogs of neighbors… as if they were right next to me. I assumed I would have 20 minutes max until a ballsy neighbor, security or police would show up to politely ask me to leave / threaten me with the police / arrest me, so I quickly looked for a way in.
The first option wasn’t really one – the smelly, dark boiler room of the semi-basement, but I wasn’t ready for that, not even close. Luckily I found an opening the size of 1/3 of a door, barely enough for a big guy like me, but a great gift given that the rest of the ground floor was shut tight. Seconds later I found myself in front of the reception, the only light coming from the hole in the entrance door. I took a couple of shots and moved on to the staircase, lit from the not nailed-up upper floors. About 20 minutes into my adventure I started to calm down a little bit, which wasn’t exactly easy as I was exploring a friggin mental hospital all by myself! Nevertheless I headed into the dark again, to have a look at the rest of the ground floor. The second of three patient rooms had a special surprise for me – on a rack I found a dozen comic books lined up, accompanied by plushies of Stitch and Sergeant Keroro / Sgt. Frog as well as all kinds of plastic figurines. Japanese urbexers… In other countries people steal and vandalize, in this part of the world they add cutesy stuff. The upper floors turned out to be well-lit and mostly empty – a wheelchair here, some beds there, but nothing too exciting. I kinda liked the massive concrete hallway that exuded strength and hopelessness at the same time. There was only this way to get in or out… and I am sure back in the days it was very well guarded. Upon reaching the top floor with its caged roof I finally felt relieved. I was done taking photos and ten minutes later, after filming the walkthrough, I would be out of there, finally relaxing on my way home. Even the possibility of people waiting outside the fences didn’t scare me much anymore – I had seen everything I wanted to see, took pictures of everything that looked interesting to me. So I took the video and…
… realized that the staircase lead down to the semi-basement; an area. Where it was sparsely lit at best, most areas were actually pitch-black. Where the solitary cells were… with solid metal doors on one side and almost floor to ceiling iron grids on the other. Where the mistreatment most likely happened… to helpless victims, mental patients in need of the care of others. Oh, didn’t I mention why the hospital was closed? Word on the street is that the Japanese Mental Hospital closed in summer of 2001 due to financial fraud and human rights violations against the inpatients! Up to 80 unexplained deaths over the years… Did I really want to go down there?
Of course I didn’t! I was exhausted enough already, I didn’t need that kind of excitement. I am not even into urbex for any kind of excitement, I do it for the tranquil atmosphere and the unique aesthetics most places have… and what’s more unique than a wheelchair in front of the rusty bars of a dimly-lit solitary cell at an abandoned mental hospital, once accused of mistreating patients? Right! Friggin nothing – so down the stairs I went! I hope you’ll enjoy the photos and the video, because I guess I aged about three months spending 20 minutes in the semi-basement… 😉

BTW: Not only is this the 300th article on Abandoned Kansai, today marks the 5th anniversary of the first exploration I ever published. What started as a small blog read by family and friends has turned into a CNN featured resource read in 205 countries and territories. Thanks to everyone for the continuous support!

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