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Archive for the ‘Kansai’ Category

Kyoto Countryside School

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Kyoto, Photography, School, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/09/10| 24 Comments »

Schools are probably the most common abandoned places in Japan. Rare in populated areas, they can be found by the dozen in the countryside. In all of Japan there must be hundreds, nevertheless I only wrote about two of them so far (the *F# Elementary School* and the *North Korean School in Gifu*). The main reason for that is that until last year I did almost all of my explorations by using public transportation – and the vast majority of those abandoned schools are in the middle of nowhere, often part of (almost) deserted villages. By now I’ve been to about eight or ten *haikyo* schools (a.k.a. haikou), though most of them were either boarded up, under security supervision or in really bad condition.
The Kyoto Countryside School on the other hand turned out to be a hidden gem – and to keep it that way I gave it this rather generic name…

When my buddy Dan and I drove up to the Kyoto Countryside School in a stunningly beautiful picture book village in the middle of the mountains I kind of had a bad feeling. The school itself was in rather good condition and the grass in front of it was about 10 to 15 centimeters high – higher than usual, but not “abandoned for 20 years” high; implying that somebody was still taking care of the school and its side-buildings. But we were lucky… While the front entrance and all the windows were locked, the back entrance was open; and so was the kitchen building.
Sadly I don’t know much about the history of the school, only that it was closed 22 years prior to our visit – which was hard to believe as pretty much all rooms, despite being almost empty, looked like they were just closed for the summer. I am actually pretty sure that the school building is still used every once in a while, probably for some village celebrations or stuff like that.
Visiting the Kyoto Countryside School was part of a one day urbex trip in July; something I tend to avoid, because Japanese summers are nasty – hot, humid and full of insects as well as other animals you don’t want to run into. Luckily the school was in almost pristine condition, one of the cleanest places I have ever explored; bug free! But it was a typical summer day, just past high noon, and being in the mountains helped surprisingly little.
A sweaty, yet interesting exploration – opening that door was like stepping into the past, and in that regard it reminded me of the *Old Higashi-Aoyama Station* I wrote about last week. Most rooms were empty, except for the secretariat… and things on the walls. Photos, relics of art classes, info posters, mirrors. One room has a handwritten banner, showing Japanese number units. 10.000 = man, 100.000.000 = oku, and so on. The longest number was a 1 with 88 zeros, 4 kanji reading muryoutaisuu – I’m pretty sure 99.999% of the Japanese population haven’t heard of that number. But finds like that made this exploration so much fun. If you just looked through the windows you probably would have thought “Boooooring!”, but once inside the place revealed dozens of little things that caught me eye; my favorite part being the gorgeous wooden hallway, perfectly lit at that time of the day.
Surprisingly interesting was the most western part of the building, separated by a now locked door, but accessible from the outside: a small storage room full of left behind school books and the school’s toilet – with song sheets above the tiny pissoirs and old electric wiring along the wooden ceiling, probably added years after the school was built…

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* and *follow this blog on Twitter* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

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Alpen Rose Ski Resort

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, House, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Ski, Sports, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/08/13| 13 Comments »

Abandoned ski resorts are everywhere in Japan! I never specifically wanted to go to one, nevertheless I ended up at about half a dozen of them on the way to other places; one of them being the Alpen Rose Ski Resort.

The Alpen Rose Ski Resort is (or rather: was) a nursery slope in the middle of a busy skiing area in northern Hyogo prefecture. It opened in 1965 under a different name and apparently without a lift. In 1970 a lift was built, extended to the summit in 1971. In 1978 the ski resort was renamed to Alpen Rose, before it was closed in March 2000 or some time in 2001, depending on the source. (Since an abandoned vending machine still has “collectible” Star Wars Episode 1: Phantom Menace Pepsi Cola cans on display, the 2000 date is more likely, as the movie was released in Japan on July 10th 1999.)

After 13 years of abandonment and with the lower part of the ski lift gone, the Alpen Rose Ski Resort became one of those *haikyo* perfect for a break on the way to other places. After an hour or two in a car it’s nice to stretch your legs and take photos for a couple of minutes – in that case you don’t need a spectacular location that keeps you busy for several hours, just some dilapidated building with a couple of items and a landscape easy on the eyes.
Before entering the lodge I had a look at the surroundings – a little shack near the end of the former slope and a rather big foundation made of solid concrete; most likely the lower station of the now demolished lift. Not really much to see.
The lodge on the other hand was pretty nice, despite being partly collapsed already – and I guess the rest will follow soon, given that the building was almost completely constructed on pillars; especially the handful of guest rooms on the southern side. Partly covered by a crashed projecting roof and now exposed to Mother Nature were dozens of skis and skiing boots, right next to a Coke machine in decent condition. Next to it on the veranda was the already mentioned Pepsi machine and quite a few other items, like a Technics amplifier and a Panasonic hi-fi system – nothing fancy, but probably still working. The price list inside the lodge displayed rather steep, touristy prices. 350 Yen for a Coke and 800 Yen for curry rice would be normal prices today, but we are talking 13 years ago… Also definitely worth mentioning were the two snowmobiles right at the entrance, getting rusty and dusty.

The Alpen Rose Ski Resort was exactly what I hoped it would be – a nice break on a long car ride to the Sea of Japan. Nothing spectacular, but then again, not all of them can be like the *Abandoned Dynamite Mine* or the *Japanese Sex Museum*…

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

I planned to publish a video with this article, but Youtube seems to be a bit bitchy again on this computer – I will upload it most likely on August 26th.

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Asahi Sports Center

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Sports, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2013/07/30| 20 Comments »

Asahi beer is popular all over the world, the Asahi Shimbun is a famous Japanese newspaper and Asahi TV is a somewhat known TV station – but the Asahi Sports Center nobody seems to know. Or seemed to know at the time my buddy Dan and I explored the place in October 2012. (If you google the term you will find tons of fitness clubs in Germany and Japan, despite the fact that I use the real name of the place here.)

Japanese summers are hot, humid, full of insects… and they drag on forever, especially in the Kansai region. While back home in Germany friends and family start to complain about grey days and having to wear windbreakers, I spend most late autumn days wearing T-shirts – and risking sunburns. Last year October was no different when Dan and I were approaching the Asahi Sports Center somewhere in the Japanese mountains. Despite wearing a T-shirt I was sweating like a hog, the vegetation still lush, green and thick. Before going to the sports center I only had seen a handful of bad photos on a Japanese blog, the satellite view on GoogleMaps basically useless due to its blurriness. With only a vague idea of what to expect the sheer size of the Asahi Sports Center took us by surprise, making it an all-time favorite at the time of its exploration.

After paying some serious amount of money for highway fees and driving for half an hour through tiniest towns and past forgotten fields we finally reached the Asahi Sports Center – being kilometers away from the next living soul we just parked the car in front of the first building we saw and headed in. It seemed like this was some kind of service center / administrative building. The kitchen on the ground floor was half unrigged, half ripped apart, the restrooms were dark and gloomy, vandalism everywhere; not exactly a warm welcome. The first floor, too, had not been spared by vandals and mould, but at least there we found some flyers and posters including maps, giving us an idea how big the sports center really was – the answer: about 450 by 200 meters. Pretty friggin big!
Two things on the map caught our eyes immediately: the huge swimming pool and the tennis courts. To our misfortune the combination of a drawn map (including artistic freedom…) and rampant nature didn’t make it easy to navigate, so it took a while until we found our way south via several flights of steps and an overpass – across a now completely overgrown kart track!

It was actually this outdoor area that made the Asahi Sports Center so spectacular. The service center was vandalized, but the sports area was just abandoned and overgrown. This part looked like people just didn’t show up anymore and nature took over again – natural decay at its best.
You should think that an abandoned tennis court wouldn’t be very interesting. The ones I saw on *Okunoshima* and near an abandoned retirement home in Germany (yet to come…) were actually quite dull places, but these courts here… amazing! They were located down a slope, lower than the visitor center, and the fences were almost completely overgrown, while the courts including the nets were… well… withered and rusted, but overall in decent condition. Somebody dragged the rusty umpire chairs away, but other than that everything looked eerily normal. The atmosphere was just wonderful, with the sun shining and birds singing; a perfect place to go to for reading a book without getting disturbed.
The huge pool west of the tennis courts was even spookier, thanks to a couple of little buildings surrounding the place, most vandalized and / or overgrown. A perfect place to shoot a horror movie on a grey hazy day… The dark green water looked like you could dump a body there without it ever being seen again once it sank down half a meter or so – a strong contrast to the white painted edge surrounding the creatively shaped pool. Just in sight of the pool we found about half a dozen wooden huts the sports center called Swiss Chalets. (The first video shows a walking tour of both the chalets and the pool.)
Shimmering through the profuse vegetation were some metal constructions, most likely part of the amusement park like rides visible on the posters and tickets at the visitor center. Sadly there was no way to get through, the undergrowth was just still too thick.

Dan and I went back up to the main road and followed it for a while. There we found another set of bungalows and some other buildings. Sadly they were completely vandalized and I had no motivation to take any photos there after enjoying the gorgeous sports area – but I kept the video camera rolling while I was going through the buildings for the first time. Usually I do the walking tours after I have seen everything, so this is a rare opportunity to explore live with me. To see what I saw when I actually saw it for the first time. After about 3 hours on the premises I didn’t expect any trouble anymore, exploring a building for the first time nevertheless is an exciting experience, even if the building is far from being spectacular!
In the neighborhood we also found the so-called convention center – basically a party space with an open fireplace on the ground floor and some rooms with tons of bunk beds upstairs. The Christmas party photos I found at the visitor center were clearly taken here.

Last but not least we followed a road down the mountain to what once was the goal of a summer ski slope – but this area was also completely overgrown, making it rather likely that I will revisit the sports center again one winter; before it starts to snow, but after the vegetation is weakened… 🙂

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

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Daieikaku – The Deathtrap Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Osaka, Photography, Spa / Onsen, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2013/04/23| 34 Comments »

Urban exploration is a dangerous hobby. How dangerous it really is I found out at the Daieikaku, a rather big abandoned ryokan south of Osaka. I was literally and figuratively one step away from my demise…

The Daieigaku was the first location Damon and I went to together back in 2010. Later we continued to explore the *Gion Love Hotel*, the Ferris wheel *Igosu 108*, the *K-1 Pachinko Parlor*, the *Tsuchikura Mine* as well as the *Kasuga Mine A* and *Kasuga Mine B* – but first the Daieikaku, a hotel that turned out to be quite hard to get to.
Back then I had done all my explorations using trains, but the Daieikaku was too far away from the closest station to walk to, so we had to take a bus. Which is a hassle in pretty much every country, especially if your command of the local language is… sub-par. Sometimes it’s close to impossible to figure out schedules and stops. When I wanted to get to a place near a university campus in Hokkaido last year it took the local tourist information at JR Sapporo Station 15 minutes to figure out which bus to take – and I knew the name of the bus stop I wanted to go to! Figuring out which bus to take to the Daieikaku wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t the only problem: The Daieikaku was located at a slope on the other side of a river, but the bridge leading to the ryokan was completely overgrown. Even in autumn with weakened flora we weren’t able to get to the other side, especially without being seen by locals and day visitors. So we crossed the river via another bridge, climbed up the slope and got to the back of the Daieikaku at the level of the third floor. Instead of taking some steps down to the ground floor we entered through a smashed in window right where we were. Starting up there was as good as anywhere else we thought…

Big mistake! The first room was one of those tatami party rooms you have in pretty much every hotel in Japan. Thanks to open doors and windows everywhere in the Daieigaku the place was in rather bad condition with leaves all over the place. I went to the side of the building, looking for a staircase. Found it, passed it and opened a door… a restroom. I went inside to have a closer look, but although the floor looked a lot more solid than the one in the tatami room it didn’t feel like it. Halfway into the room I had a very, very bad feeling, so I went back to the hallway, down one floor via the staircase, opened the door to the restroom below the one I just entered and… it was gone! There was no friggin restroom! Only one wall with some urinals hanging mid-air! And the bathroom I was in basically was attached to the rest of the building by its walls. I guess I don’t have to mention that the floors below were gone, too, so if I would have walked further into the restroom two minutes earlier (or probably just would have stayed where I was) there would have been a good chance that I would have crashed through a thin layer of tiles and wood three floors down to my death. After I recovered from that realization I went straight to Damon to warn him about the death trap on the third floor. Luckily he didn’t put himself in danger, so we continued our exploration without further incidents, although we continued to take risks every once in a while – especially Damon, who was exploring the hotel like a honey badger. Through tiny broken windows with shards left, up and down rotting wooden stairs, … Which lead us down to the onsen part of the ryokan, a part of the hotel I probably wouldn’t have gotten to if I would have gone there on my own, especially after that little shock right at the beginning. There we saw some major cracks in the ceiling and the wall, which didn’t exactly help to ease my mind – parts of the Daieigaku already collapsed, so being in the middle of the building with unstable floors above and below wasn’t exactly the place I wanted to be in. But the former lobby didn’t look any better. We first saw it from 2F and looked down – staircases gone, walls caved in… The whole building was in worse than dilapidated condition and I guess every single step could have been our last!

Looking back at the exploration of the Daieikaku I have to say that we were terribly naïve and really lucky. The term “Daieikaku” means big glorious building and it is often used for restaurants serving a charcoal grilled meat dish called yakiniku – and while the ryokan Daieikaku was indeed a big building it was everything but glorious. It was a deathtrap and by far the most dangerous location I have ever explored. It also was rather unspectacular overall, that’s probably the reason why I never wrote about it, almost forgot about. Back then I just did a pre-selection of my photos, deleting only the worst, so I had to go through almost 150 of them to make a final selection for this article – and it actually makes me wanna go back there. Three years ago I shot without a tripod and the Daieikaku was pretty dark in some places, though it was a bright and sunny autumn day. Furthermore several earthquakes hit Kansai since then, including the Tohoku Earthquake that caused the Fukushima Incident and a recent one that struck Awaji Island. Plus Mother Nature had 30 months to do additional damage… Well, we’ll see – if time allows I’ll stop by there again to give you an update on what happened to the Daieikaku. For now I hope you’ll enjoy the photos I took during my visit. I’m sure you are eager to see what the collapsed bathroom looked like… 🙂

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

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Kuroshio Lodge

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2011 on 2013/04/09| 53 Comments »

The Kuroshio Lodge is one of the oldest and most famous abandoned places in Japan – even pioneer *haikyo* blogs who haven’t been updated in years feature this almost completely trashed hotel with the iconic bar; a beautiful photo opportunity thanks to its rusty stools and bright orange and yellow lamps. Nevertheless I struggled for about a year to find out where the Kuroshio Lodge was… and then another six months to find a ride as it is close to impossible to get to the place by public transportation – luckily it was *on the way to Shikoku* for Gianluigi and I, so we made a stop to stretch our legs and to take some photos.
Kuroshio means “black tide” and is also the name of a northeast-flowing ocean current stretching from Taiwan past Japan to the North Pacific Current – hence the nicknames Black Stream and Japanese Current, deriving from the deep blue of its waters and the country it flows by.
It’s pretty safe to say that the Kuroshio Lodge was named after the current – despite the fact that the Kuroshio (current) isn’t visible from where the lodge is located. The lodge on the other hand isn’t visible from the beautiful coastline of Awaji Island. You can get as close as 100 meters (beeline) on a busy street, look up a hill and see nothing but trees. At the same time you have a gorgeous view at the mountains of Awaji Island and the stunning Seto Inland Sea from the rooftop of the lodge… It’s all a matter of location!

At first and third sight the Kuroshio Lodge is a big disappointment. After huffing and puffing up a rather steep mountain road on foot, Gianluigi and I reached the back of the mid-size grey building. After years without maintenance the outside walls looked dirty, but that was nothing in comparison to what we saw when peeking through some open windows – the exposed rooms were filled with rotting vandalized futons and other interior. Not exactly a great start.
In close proximity of the abandoned hotel we found a couple of small houses at the slope; hut-sized, most likely the former living quarters of employees. We entered one of them, but the lighting in there was horrible and neither of us brought a tripod. There was not much to see anyway – I didn’t even bother to take a video.

Back up the slope we finally entered the Kuroshio Lodge – and were positively surprised by the lobby area with its famous turquoise chairs and the bar with its even more famous lamps and stools. You could take 100 interesting photos there and still won’t be bored!
Sadly disappointment stroke again right behind the counter. The kitchen next to the lobby / bar was completely vandalized and rotten, so we made our way up to 2F (first floor in Europe, second in Japan). No wonder that you barely ever see other rooms than the lobby when people post about the Kuroshio Lodge. The whole rest of the place was either vandalized and rotten or completely boring. I took a couple of snapshots here and there (like the lamp and the bath, although they were not really exciting subjects…) and then called it a day, taking the obligatory video on the way back to the lobby.

Since I visited the Kuroshio Lodge almost two years ago I found several Japanese articles about the hotel claiming that the area is overrun by wild dogs from a former dog breeder close to the hotel. They also claim that those dogs were involved in some rituals… whatever that means. Luckily I didn’t run into any mad dogs, crazy cultists or bloodthirsty sadists – although I remember seeing some kind of triangular sign on a metal plate in the boiler room (the one at the beginning of the video below, I just missed to catch the symbol on film… sorry for that, I didn’t think it was on any significance). The whole thing sounds a little bit like an exaggerated version of the usual ghost story surrounding basically every abandoned hotel in Japan. A lot of Japanese people are surprisingly superstitious, so whenever a place is abandoned you get some variation of the “owner committed suicide” story. Stories that are virtually impossible to verify. Nevertheless I thought I better mention the wild dogs. You know, just in case you walk up to the Kuroshio Lodge one day, get surrounded by them and think “Florian never mentioned those damn dogs!”…

To me the Kuroshio Lodge was a rather disappointing location. I loved the entrance area, but the rest of the building gave me a “been there, done that” kind of vibe – which is not what I was hoping for after putting so much time and effort into finding the place. But hey, what can you do? At least the bar and the lobby didn’t fail to deliver. And sometimes one room is all you need to make a visit worthwhile…

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

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Daiwa Pottery / Yamato Ceramics

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Factory, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2011 on 2013/04/03| 24 Comments »

Daiwa Pottery or Yamato Ceramics?
Researching abandoned Japanese places can be a pain. Even if you have a name in kanji (those complicated Japanese characters that the island-dwellers use up to 20.000 different ones of…) doesn’t mean that you know how to pronounce it or do some research with it. In this case I found the name in kanji both on a chimney as well as written across the entrance of the main building – nevertheless I couldn’t find out anything about the company behind those characters; or how to read those characters as kanji can have several readings and meanings. Sure, I found a company of the same name in Osaka, but their logo didn’t match the one on the building I explored. I also found photos by two Japanese explorers, taken around the same time my buddy Gianluigi and I explored the factory – sadly neither of those fellow explorers put some visible effort into researching the history of the place; they just used the kanji they found written to name their pictures…
It got even more confusing at the end of the exploration when I took a photo of a piece of paper taped to the locked office door. Thanks to Gianluigi I know now that the sales team of the company moved to a different location in late 2006 / early 2007 – but on that sheet the name of the company was given as Daito, in katakana (those less complicated Japanese characters mainly used for foreign terms and to make terms stand out). So I did some research on the internet… At first without success, but then I found a Japanese page selling roof tiles, presenting some made by Daito. Full of excitement I sent the link to Gianluigi – who told me that I missed the top part of the page where it says that Daito went bankrupt.
So I guess the company started out as Daiwa Pottery / Yamato Ceramics, changed their name to Daito (maybe due to pressure from the Osaka company of the same name?), moved their sales team 7 years ago and went bust since then… which leaves me with a new abandoned place nobody knows about yet. 🙂
(BTW: The standard Daiwa Pottery / Yamato Ceramics roof tiles were 345mm by 345mm, weighed 3.6kg each and came in the colors Straight Black, Matt Brown, Matt Green, Metallic Black and Caribbean Blue.)

Exploring this abandoned tile factory was ill-starred anyway; mainly because it was only a matter of time until the stars were visible as *we arrived way behind schedule* at around 6 p.m. – sunset in early May in Japan, where complete darkness hits shortly after 7. An hour of twilight was all we got left, so we rushed through the backyard and the storage area below the main building first. By the time we actually entered the unlocked parts of the factory (another factory building was locked, so was the office) it was already too dark to take photos without a tripod – so I left it on the ground, on tables, machinery and whatever seemed to offer space. Exposure times quickly reached 30 seconds, so I hurried to take a flashlight assisted video before we finally ran out of time for good.
Like most last locations of a day the tile factory definitely deserved another hour or two, preferably with better lighting conditions. But well, what can you do? If I ever come to that area again I’ll make sure to revisit the place as it was a lot better than the few decent photos indicate. And I’ll stop by the now closed “new” sales office, maybe I will be able to find out more about the company’s history – or at least its name…

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

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Urbex Trip To Shikoku

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Demolished, Factory, Haikyo, Hospital, Hotel / Ryokan, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Map, Monochrome, Non-Urbex, Photography, Sacred Site, Shikoku, Spa / Onsen, Tokushima, Urbex, Visited in 2011 on 2013/03/26| 13 Comments »

One of my favorite things about urban exploration is travelling. Most of the time I do day trips within Kansai, but every couple of months I go on mini vacations to other regions. *Okinawa*, *Kyushu*, *Hokkaido*, *Shikoku* … and a couple of more that will be revealed in the future.
I lived in Japan for several years before I started to visit abandoned places – and in those first years I barely travelled within Japan. Kansai has plenty of castles, temples and shrines, some of the most famous in all of Japan. More than enough to get templed out, shrined out and castled out, so I didn’t feel the urge to spend hundreds of bucks on train tickets – and then a similar amount on hotels. Only to see more castles, temples and shrines that look similar to what I can see down the street. Abandoned places on the other hand are unique – and some of them are actually worth spending a couple of hundred bucks, at least to me.
The spring of 2011 saw my second overnight trip to Shikoku. *During the first one* my favorite location on Japan’s least populated main island was the spectacular *Tokushima Countryside Clinic*, a small town doctor’s house, barely harmed by vandals and the ravages of time. My friend Gianluigi, an avid photographer for almost two decades, loved the photos I took at the clinic, so I convinced him to go on a road trip – I would show him that wonderfully spooky gem if we would stop on other abandoned places along the way…
If you are a regular reader of Abandoned Kansai you might remember two articles I wrote about really unique haikyo about half a year ago – the abandoned Japanese spa *Shimizu Onsen Center* and the giant Buddha statue / viewing platform *World Peace Giant Kannon*; both of them were actually part of this second trip to Shikoku.
So here is a complete list of all the locations:
Amano Hospital
Daiwa Pottery
Kuroshio Lodge
Shimizu Onsen Center
Tokushima Countryside Clinic Revisited
World Peace Giant Kannon

One of these places has been demolished since I visited it two years ago – you’ll find out soon which one… and then I’ll add it to my *GoogleMap of Demolished Haikyo*.

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

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Toyoko Inn Online Reservation – WTF?

Posted in Aichi, Aquarium, Asia, Chūbu, Japan, Kansai, Mie, Non-Urbex, Photography, Sacred Site, Shiga, Snow, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/03/22| 22 Comments »

I love the Toyoko Inn hotel chain in Japan. Their prices are fair, they are located right next to bigger train and subway stations, they offer free breakfast from 7 till 9.30 and free WiFi / internet 24/7, their staff usually speaks at least a little bit of English, they have a discount and point system for members – and you can make online reservations via their English homepage.

One reason I was hesitating to go on a trip *as mention in the previous blog post* was the fact that I was in-between credit cards for a couple of weeks. (In my experience it’s close to impossible for foreigners to get a credit card in Japan – but I am looking forward to the comments of every expat who got one… I know people who were rejected more than half a dozen times, I tried it once or twice and then got one in Germany…) But you need a credit card to make an online reservation at a Toyoko Inn – or so I thought.
When it was clear that I would spend the first night of my trip in Nagoya I stopped worrying. Last weekend wasn’t a typical time to travel in Japan (unlike *Golden Week*) and Toyoko Inn has six hotels in Nagoya, eight if you count the ones close to the airport – I was sure I would get a room somewhere. So the plan was to show up at one of them and ask the staff to make a reservation for me for the second night, which I planned to spend in Matsusaka – a town famous for its high quality beef, which turned out to be more dead then the cows it is famous for.

Luckily my plan was a good one, so I checked in at the hotel of my choice in Nagoya and asked the staff to call their sister hotel in Matsusaka to get me a reservation for the following night since I didn’t have a credit card. The friendly lady at the counter pointed to the opposite wall across the lobby and asked me to use the internet to make the reservation myself. I repeated that I didn’t have a credit card and therefore couldn’t make the online reservation. The answer was “You don’t need a credit card to make an online reservation.” – so I told her that I needed one when I tried to make one the night before. Since the hotel receptionist insisted that I wouldn’t need a card and was eager to show me that she was right we started the procedure on their English homepage – as usual. Another guest arrived so I filled out the form, scrolled down and… there it was, the section for the credit card information. I left it blank, tried to continue and of course it didn’t work and I got an error message. When the receptionist showed up again she seemed to be very surprised, switched the language settings of the homepage to Japanese and… finished the reservation without having to enter credit card information! She didn’t even have to log out / start the procedure from the beginning, she just switched the language settings and pressed a button to finalize the reservation.

I totally understand that hotels need some kind of security when people make online reservations and that’s the reason I never had a problem entering my credit card information when making an online reservation at a Toyoko Inn, 15 times for trips in 2012 alone. In fact they don’t charge your credit card and you can pay cash upon arrival, it’s just a security measure for no-shows, which I completely understand. Nevertheless I am kind of irritated by the fact that you have to put in your credit card information when you make the reservation in English, but not when you make it in Japanese – to me it implies that Toyoko Inn considers people who prefer to make reservations in Japanese more reliable than people who make reservations in English; which could be considered borderline racist. Again, I understand that (most) online hotel reservations require credit card information. But either it’s a general requirement for Toyoko Inn or not – doing it on the basis of the language chosen on the homepage feels wrong to me, as it means that not all customers are treated equally.

What do you think? „WTF?“ or “WTF!”?

(To end this posting on a lighter note I’ll add some non-urbex photos and videos I took during my three day trip. Inuyama Castle, Tagata Shrine Festival, Mount Gozaisho, Yunoyama Onsen, Toba, Iruka Island, Ise Shrine, … If anybody is familiar with dolphins please have a look at the video and let me know what you think – to me it looks like the poor creature was desperate to get away as it repeated the same motion at the “prison gates” to the ocean over and over again; I didn’t watch any shows on the island and didn’t spend any money there – Iruka Island (iruka = dolphin) was an optional stop on a harbor cruise I took in Toba.)

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Misato Tennis Club Lodge

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiking, House, Japan, Kansai, Mie, Photography, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/03/19| 20 Comments »

One of the trends during the Japanese Asset Price Bubble of 1986 to 1991 was building company retreats – on top of mountains with stunning views, in old onsen towns, along the coast. Regular trips for team building in addition to the weekly drinking nights were a given anyway, so why not go all in and build a weekend house with the company logo on it? It surely was a lot more prestigious than sending the staff off to a ryokan or a hotel. As soon as a company had a couple of hundred employees it also had a more or less big and luxurious house somewhere; and not only companies – universities and private high schools, too. Some of those buildings were small wooden huts for 6 to 8 people, others were kind of company hotels with (part-time) staff, taking care of chores like cooking, cleaning and gardening. Most of them were for class trips, department vacations and team building events – others could be booked like a hotel with internal company credit.
As we all know the real estate bubble burst and the Japanese economy began to struggle. It actually still does, probably more than ever since World War 2. Over the past 10 to 15 years a lot of those relaxation retreats became too expensive and were just abandoned; because the company went bankrupt or because it couldn’t afford the running expenses anymore and wasn’t able to sell the property.

In 2012 I visited about 100 abandoned places in Japan and Germany and I had quite a slow start into 2013 – the weather wasn’t exactly great and I felt a bit exhausted. Last Thursday I had to make a decision whether to go on a (non-urbex) trip for three days as I wanted to see a shrine festival near Nagoya, but I still felt tired and worn out by one of those colds that get you in Japan every couple of weeks in winter, since most companies don’t have sick days and therefore people drag themselves to the office instead of taking a paid day off. It was on that Thursday morning when I found two extremely motivating comments by Nikki praising the last two photo sets I published – and while I appreciate every comment (especially the positive ones! :)) it was the timing of those two that gave me the final push to see Inuyama Castle, attend the Tagata Shrine Festival, take the gondola up Mount Gozaisho, do a boat trip from Toba to Iruka Island and finally pay a visit to the famous Ise Grand Shrine. Although I knew that there were abandoned places near all of those locations I didn’t do much preparation as I wanted to experience Japan again the same way I did when I fell in love with it – as a tourist, doing touristy things.

While I was walking along a countryside road on one of those three days, minding my own business, thinking about this and that, I saw a house with an open door from the corner of my eye, MISATO.TENNIS.CLUB written in neon green letters above it. If the door would have been closed I probably would have passed by as the building was in good condition and there was nothing unusual about it. But an open door and neon green letters… who knows?
So I turned around and had a closer look. While I was entering I was trying to remember simple phrases in Japanese, like “Excuse me, do you know where can I buy something to drink?”, just in case I would run into somebody – but nobody was there. From the outside the building looked like a normal single-family house, but the entrance area and the name above the door made it pretty clear that it was one of those company vacation facilities.
Since I have never seen the Misato Tennis Club Lodge anywhere on the internet I tried to be as careful as possible. Original finds are always especially exciting to explore, but this one was in exceptional condition – no graffiti, no vandalism, barely any signs that the place was really abandoned. The saddest thing about this lodge was a dead bird I found in the hallway of the upper floor. Other than that it was a clean place with lots of stuff left behind – like the model of a boat on the counter at the entrance, lots of plates near the kitchen and plenty of furniture. With a couple of cleaning products you could make that place ready for occupancy within a day! (I guess that’s what the Misato Tennis Club is thinking, too, as I found a completely faded sign with a phone number outside…)

I had been to similar places before (although I haven’t written about them yet), so I didn’t take a lot of photos – especially since I didn’t bring my tripod and the lighting conditions inside the building weren’t always great. But it turned out that the lodge was full of lines and fascinating details. Well, at least fascinating to me. If you want to see what the place looked like in general I recommend to watch the video – the photo set mostly shows those details I was strangely attracted to; in that regard the lodge reminded me of the *Takarazuka Macadam Industrial Plant*. All of the photos I took were taken freehand within 30 minutes. And while not all of them turned out the way I hoped others still put a smile on my face. So much that I had to write about the place right away, although it really wasn’t that spectacular. But it was an original find in great condition, a rare combination nowadays, where you have more urbex blogs than abandoned places…
The downside of an original find is that it’s close to impossible to find any information about it. The Misato Tennis Club Lodge could have been abandoned a year ago, maybe five; maybe it just wasn’t used during winter and somebody forgot to close the door when he had a look at what to fix for the new season? Some places in Japan go to shit in a heartbeat, others look barely touched after 30 years. In this case one to three years kind of sound reasonable, the remote location being the reason why it was spared by vandals. (There actually is a Misato Tennis Club in driving distance of the lodge – and like I said, their phone number can be found on a sign outside. They have locations in Yokkaichi and Suzuka, and about a dozen trainers; including head coach Robert “Bobie” Angelo, a Davis Cup player from the Philippines.)

I always try to be as respectful as possible when exploring an abandoned place, but I think this time I didn’t even leave footprints… I actually wiped off my shoes on the doormat before entering! Like all exceptional original finds the Misato Tennis Club Lodge will forever have a special place in my heart and I really hope it will find a new owner before it falls victims to vandals or the forces of nature.

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Kasagi Hotel Revisited

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Urbex, Visited in 2011 on 2013/02/09| 11 Comments »

Usually I write a full-blown article when revisiting a location, sometimes weeks or years later. I did that in the past with *Sekigahara Menard Land* and *Sekigahara Menard Land Revisited*, *Exploland* and *Expoland Revisited* and of course *Doggy Land* and *Doggy Land Revisited* – and I already know that there will be more articles like that in the future. When I revisited the *Kasagi Hotel* almost two years after I fully explored it, the whole thing ended quickly; hence just a short update with a couple of photos. I wasn’t even able to take a video…

Revisiting the Kasagi Hotel was to round off a day of explorations with two friends from England, Adam and Klara. The sun was already setting when we arrived by car, so we hurried towards the entrance… only to find the barricade completely reconstructed. And that wasn’t all: The thing was plastered with warning signs! Not only did they warn you that the place was secured by cameras now (usually a hoax…), but they also announced that 16 people have been arrested by the police at the Kasagi Hotel on October 10th 2011! And that’s… unusual. You get “No trespassing!” and “Call the police when you see something suspicious!” signs everywhere, but announcements of arrests I had only seen on the internet to keep people from exploring the abandoned German themed park Glucks Kingdom (or Glücks-Königreich, kingdom of fortune, as the name really was…).

Like I said, the sun was already setting anyway, so we just had a quick look from the street along the hotel. I’m sure there would have been ways to get in, but since we were running out of time and cameras / silent alarms were a possibility, we decided not to risk getting caught and called it a day. 16 people arrested… Jeebus, that’s quite a number for such a rundown place! Cute drawing though…

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