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Archive for the ‘Kyoto’ Category

“Kyoto Waterland”

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Kyoto, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/08/08| 4 Comments »

Stumbling across “new” (to the internet) haikyo is always a special pleasure.
In mid-May, right after Golden Week, I was walking around Kyoto to find an abandoned art museum (which I found and will write about in the weeks to come) when a big waterslide caught my eye. I got closer and, to my surprise, found the place abandoned. Since it was the sixth haikyo I went to in just eight days I was pretty exhausted and not at all in the mood to enter the place, although I think it is possible to do so without taking too much effort. Instead I circled it and took some nice pictures from the outside.
“Waterland” wasn’t that big, only the pretty decent water slide and three pools, but it nevertheless looked like a nice place to hang out at on a hot, humid summer day – judging by the disgusting water colors it seems the place was closed down quite a while ago and nobody even took an effort to leave it in a clean state. On the bright side: At least from the distance there weren’t any signs of vandalism, making it a place worth going back to. So don’t be surprised to see “Kyoto Waterland Revisited” in a few months…

(For people who prefer to have a look at the pictures in sequence: Please click here!)

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Mt. Atago Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiking, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Kyoto, Urbex, Visited in 2009 on 2010/01/18| Leave a Comment »

When visiting the Mt. Atago Cable Car you should have a look at the Atago Hotel, too – there’s not much left, but after climbing about 640 meters 20 more won’t kill you.

The Atago Hotel was opened on 1930-07-20, shortly after the cable car, and closed down together with it in 1944. Like the top station of the cable car the Atago Hotel is nothing more but a bunch of walls, just in a slightly better condition – but without floors. It seems like the hotel, located at a slope, was built with the entrance at the ground floor and an “open basement”. The ground level is almost completely gone whereas the walls of the basement are still there, or at least some of them are; including openings for windows and doors. If you get to the hotel from the southern side and on a lower level the remaining walls look very massive, almost like an ancient Japanese castle.

Overall the place is quite unspectacular and only worth going there since the cable car station is so close-by. At one side of the hill is kind of a dump with lots of old cans, cups and plates. I’m not sure if everything there is from the time when the hotel was still open or if later visitors left their garbage there, but it’s nevertheless interesting and offers quite a few items worth taking pictures of – if you are into that kind of stuff.

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Mt. Atago Cable Car

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiking, Japan, Kansai, Kyoto, Transportation, Urbex, Visited in 2009, tagged on 2010/01/13| 4 Comments »

My first real *haikyo* is still one of my favorite as it combines a quite unique type of abandoned place with a scenic hike. Wrapping itself around sacred Mt. Atago in Kyoto from south counterclockwise this abandoned cable car track offers breathtaking views, six tunnels and a great leg workout – steps for about an hour as well as two short but quite steep climbing sessions. If you are not in decent shape you might wanna think about visiting this haikyo… When I started to research abandoned places in Japan on the internet I pretty quickly found the Mt. Atago Cable Car since it is, next to the *Mt. Maya Tourist Hotel*, one of the most covered haikyo in Kansai – and one of the most accessible. Instead of taking the pilgrim’s path to Atago Shrine just take the abandoned track right next to it. You can’t miss it! (If you are able to find out where exactly Mt. Atago in Kyoto is…) There even is a great (Japanese) homepage covering the history of the Mt. Atago Cable Car – built in 1929 it was already abandoned in 1944. If you are interested in the background of the places you go to you should have a look, especially at the old pictures from the time the cable car was still used. (If you are not able to read Japanese just click around and c/p the text into a translation homepage. More people than you might think do it that way…) On the way up there are two challenges – the steep incline (most of it concrete steps) and two collapsed tunnels, forcing you to leave the track and climb the hill by holding on to everything nature offers. Both detours have colorful markers giving you hints which way to get up. But while the one around tunnel 3 will bring you directly back to the track, the one around tunnel 5 will lead to a path close to the already mentioned pilgrim’s way. Without spoiling your search back to the track too much: Just go straight ahead, maybe a bit to the east. A small trail will lead you back to the track. After the sixth tunnel you almost made it to the still existing top station. Just a few minutes before that your breathtaking climb will be rewarded by a breathtaking view not visible from the pilgrim’s path – just after a partly collapsed bridge. More than 65 years after giving up this wonderful piece of transportation history, parts of it are in pretty bad shape. Nothing to worry about, but nevertheless worth mentioning. The top station itself is in pretty bad shape, too, but unlike the completely vanished valley station it is still standing. Basically it’s a bunch of outside walls and floors: no machines, no interior, no internal walls. To me it was nevertheless impressive, maybe because it’s a place with a history. A short one, but still a history, an entertaining one actually since this cable car lead directly to a *tourist hotel* and a ski resort – but that is another story…

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