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Nara Dreamland Revisited: Nighttime

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Map, Nara, Night, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/10/03| 21 Comments »

If you are a regular reader of this blog then you know that I have a love-hate relationship with Nara Dreamland. Abandoned amusement parks are quite rare, especially those without any destroyed or sold attractions. Sadly both times I went there I spotted a security guard. Once he spotted me, too – a very, very unpleasant experience. To me the chapter “Nara Dreamland” was closed. I wasn’t able to post pictures taken inside of Dreamland on this blog (since I had to delete the ones I took), but I’ve seen quite a bit of it and that is what is important to me. But when Michael John Grist wrote me a message that he would be in Kansai soon and asked me if I was interested in tackling Nara Dreamland again of course I couldn’t resist. Learning from previous explorations I suggested to meet in Nara late to do a shooting at night and get out of Dreamland before the guard(s) even show up. Mike agreed and so that’s what we did…
We met at JR Nara Station at around 0.30am and made our way to the park. Since I’ve been there twice before I knew exactly where to go and how to get in, but there were some changes since I last came to Dreamland. For example all the “If you see somebody entering Nara Dreamland: Call the police!” signs were replaced by new “If you get caught we’ll fine you 100,000 Yen” signs. Which I thought was interesting in two ways:
1.) It kind of seems like the police in Nara isn’t really interested in trespassers.
2.) Why 100,000 Yen (currently about 900 Euro / 1150 Dollars) and not 50,000 / 200,000 / 1,000,000 Yen? The number seems so random…
Anyways, it would really surprise me if the new signs keep anybody from entering. (“I don’t care about being sued for trespassing, but 1000 bucks scare me back to where I came from!”)
After entering Nara Dreamland the next difference was obvious: If you lift your car over the fence you won’t be able to drive into the park anymore as the road is now blocked by a fence of maybe 50cm height! If you are on foot you just step over it or use the non-blocked pedestrian walkway – which is perfect for all you urban explorers on bikes, motorcycles and unicycles, too! Seriously, WTF? I can understand why you want to keep people from entering Nara Dreamland, but if your effort ends with knee high fences you deserve to be ridiculed! I would have laughed out loud, but I guess my mean spirit was punished right away when a car passed the road under the bridge while we were walking across – in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. Small sins get punished right away…
It was a strange feeling to enter Nara Dreamland that way since last time I was there I was running from a security guard. Shortly after the bridge we came across the merry-go-rounds and finally reached the mirror maze called “Mirror-Puzzle” where the yellfest happened in February. I would like to say that I felt more comfortable the longer we stayed at the park, but I didn’t. Not after one hour, not after two, not till we left. But at least this time I was able to see the whole park. We took at few pictures near the Mirror-Puzzle, passed through the castle and then went on to pay a visit to the park’s main attraction: the gigantic wooden roller-coaster named Aska. From there we went back to the castle and down the main road to the main entrance / train station. After that we returned to the area filled by merry-go-rounds to have a little rest and wait for the sun to come up.
The safety of exploring Nara Dreamland at night came with the price of a way more demanding shooting: Neither Mike nor I had shot any haikyo at night before, so we spent quite a while at each attraction. Basically learning by doing. It wasn’t pitch black dark and the sky was slightly lit in some parts due to light pollution, so most of the pictures turned out to be blurry or terribly lit, but could there be a better place to figure out stuff like that than an abandoned amusement park? The answer is “YES!”, but hey, some things just don’t work out as planned…
Exploring an abandoned amusement park on a warm night in late summer is nothing but an amazing adventure – and I guess it is even more so if you can suppress the uneasy feeling of not being wanted there. I can’t say that I really enjoyed shooting Nara Dreamland at night, but I nevertheless cherish it as an exciting and educational experience.
“Wait a minute!”, you might say at this point. “If you felt uneasy all the time, why did you even wait for the sun to come up?” Well, the answer is simple: Since the sun rises at about 5.30am in Japan even in late September we though we could kill two birds with one stone and do a second round through the park, shooting it under way easier lighting conditions – and that’s what we did. So come back soon and don’t miss the second part of Nara Dreamland Revisited!
(*Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – or subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…
For all your Nara Dreamland needs please have a look at the Nara Dreamland Special. For a look at the area around Nara Dreamland on GoogleMaps, including some fancy icons linking to articles on Abandoned Kansai and videos on YouTube, please *click here*.)

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Location Teaser 2

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Chūbu, Europe, Factory, Gifu, Haikyo, Hospital, Hotel / Ryokan, House, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Luxembourg, Map, Nara, Pripyat, Ukraine, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Zone Of Alienation on 2010/09/28| 4 Comments »

Looking at my urban exploration log I realized that I had a pretty good run lately.

It all started when I met Michael of Gakuranman fame in late July – he was in Kansai and suggested to take on the famous Maya Hotel together. Since I already scouted the surrounding, but never went in, it was a fun exploration of an impressive location; followed by a revisit of the Takada Ranch Ruin. Two weeks later I started my summer vacation to Europe which included a side trip to the Zone of Alienation with its famous cities Chernobyl and Pripyat. Back to Germany I went to Luxembourg for two more explorations with a kindergarden friend of mine.

Soon after I got back to Japan I received an e-mail from Michael John Grist who planned to come to Kansai to tackle my haikyo nemesis, Nara Dreamland. I wanted to meet the guy more than I wanted to avoid the Dreamland, so we went there on a warm late summer night and for the first time I got in and out without spotting security… And finally I went on a little trip myself again to visit the Gakuranman in the Nagoya area to take pictures of the mysterious Doctor’s Shack, one of the few haikyo that are kept a real secret in Japan – even if it appears somewhere on the net or in a book there are barely any hints about its location and I’m really grateful Michael took me there; another awesome exploration, punished with about 30 mosquito bites!

Maya Hotel, Pripyat, Luxembourg, Nara Dreamland and the Doctor’s Shack in a row… it’s hard to do better than that! Now it’s time to write up the stories and show you some really, really interesting pictures!

(You can find all the articles related to Chernobyl and Pripyat by *clicking here* – the picture was taken *here*.)

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Expoland Revisited

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Map, Osaka, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/09/16| 6 Comments »

I’m terribly sorry that it took me a while to publish this article, but I finally finished to write the sequel to the blog entry about Osaka Expoland I announced quite a long time ago.
On my way back from my second trip to Sekigaraha Menard Land I thought it would be a good idea to pay Expoland (エキスポランド) another visit. It had been a couple of months since I explored it for the first time and I just wanted to have a short look again – to find out what happened to the Caribbean Resort and the other remaining buildings. Like with my first trip there I expected it to be a quick stop, maybe even without taking pictures. But again I was wrong…
I rode the Monorail from Minami Ibaraki to Banpaku-Kinen-Koen and pressed my camera against the window to get some elevated shots of the park. Since I accidentally changed the settings of my camera right before I reached Sekigahara Menard Land the pictures turned out to be very blurry and while I was wondering about that I realized that there were people in the park! In a park that was closed down for good more than two years earlier and that was being demolished during my first visit in December of 2009 – what an intriguing surprise! (I’m sorry for the picture quality of this posting again – it wasn’t my day…)
This time the main gate to the park was wide open. On top there was a sign that informed all people passing by about the newly installed Farm Expo. So what they did was cutting off about 20% of the park with typical Japanese site fences, revamped the existing buildings in the area into shops, painted and reopened the restaurant and heaped up some soil to use as a planting area. One of the former water rides was converted into a stable for pigs and halfway between that stable and the organic food stands were a couple of chickens in a cage for children to pet. The former clown house was converted into a farmer’s market, selling all kinds of herbs and produce.
The first time I went to Osaka Expoland the sky was overcast (later it started to rain) and the place was empty except for a few construction workers and a guard – quite a depressing sight. During my second visit the whole area was flooded by warm light and crowded by happy families enjoying a nice spring day. The atmosphere couldn’t have been more different and I was kind of glad that they actually made good use of this really nice location as I thought they would tear down the whole place to build more apartment buildings and a shopping mall. It’s the first time I’ve seen a formerly abandoned place being reconverted and at least in this case it was a really good decision – although it means that I’ll have to go back there one day to find out what the future holds for Osaka Expoland.
Oh, and in case you are wondering what happened to the Caribbean Resort: It wasn’t demolished, but fenced off and therefore not accessible during my second visit in April.
(You can find out where Expoland was by clicking here.)

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Location Teaser

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Europe, Haikyo, Map, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/09/01| 18 Comments »

Recently I’ve been on a trip to Europe and of course I couldn’t resist to do some urban exploration outside of Japan for the first time. This posting is just a teaser, but there will be more pictures soon. Lots of them. Maybe you can guess where I went?

(Or you can find out where the picture was taken by *clicking here*.)

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Nara Dreamland – Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Map, Nara, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/08/20| 8 Comments »

I don’t know why, but people exploring Nara Dreamland seem to be so drawn to the roller-coasters and merry-go-rounds that they totally ignore the not so hidden gem that is dominating the northern part of the Eastern Parking Lot: I’m talking about the building with the strange observation tower. And a strange building it was… A hotel, according to a Japanese hompage. But I found out about that fact weeks after I explored the building as I still was a bit unsure about its purpose.
Although the Nara Dreamland Hotel looks like a fortress (with its broken and boarded-up windows) there are actually at least two ways to get in. Mine was a quite surprising one: Through an unlocked door I closed behind me – a slightly stupid move at first sight, but it might have saved me from getting arrested as I should experience a few hours later.
The first room I entered must have been a meeting room once, followed by a service counter for ice skate rentals and probably other things. Next to it was one of two former main entrances to the building and a quite impressive staircase leading up to the other floors.
Roaming through the three floors I found a strange mix of all kinds of places: Offices, meeting rooms, private rooms, bath rooms, dormitory rooms, small and huge kitchens (several ones actually!), washing rooms, storage rooms, staircases, dark hallways, machinery rooms – a few of them locked, most of them accessible. Probably the most surprising room was a huge auditorium with a stage on the third floor. My most favorite floor of course was the observation tower. The view up there was absolutely stunning – luckily it didn’t paralyze me, because as I was enjoying the great view I saw a security guard on a scooter driving onto the parking lot! I found cover on the stairs leading down, giving me a good look at what was happening: The guard parked in front of the parking garage and went inside for a couples of minutes. After that he got back on his scooter again and drove the 30 meters right towards me to the hotel building. Now ten very, very long minutes began… until I saw the guy again, leaving. Luckily. I’m pretty sure he would have searched the building way more thoroughly if I had left the door on the ground floor open. Luckily he didn’t lock it when he left either, so I escaped with nothing more than a fright. That was in December of 2009 – a couple of weeks later I wasn’t that lucky when I entered the park itself and got caught by the guard only half an hour after I started taking pictures…
The Nara Dreamland Hotel is a massive haikyo that offers lots of diversity. It took me about 3 hours to explore and shoot the building and due to the arrival of the guard I got way more excitement than I was hoping for. As far as hotels go it was definitely one of the most interesting ones, way better than the One Dragon Hotel, the Koga CC House and the Kasagi Tourist Hotel – the lack of history was compensated by the relative absence of vandalism and the amount of items present. I have very, very fond memories of this exploration…
(For all your Nara Dreamland needs please have a look at the Nara Dreamland Special. For a look at the area around Nara Dreamland on GoogleMaps, including some fancy icons linking to articles on Abandoned Kansai and videos on YouTube, please *click here*. *Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

Addendum 2015-07-01:

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Nara Dreamland – Eastern Parking Lot And Parking Garage

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Map, Nara, Transportation, Urbex, Visited in 2009 on 2010/07/27| 8 Comments »

It seems like Nara Dreamland is quite popular lately. The statistics on WordPress indicate that most of the visitors I get from search engines looked for information about Dreamland. Well, since the once so vivid memories of a crazy Japanese dude yelling like a madman and threatening me with calling the police to get me arrested slowly fades I guess it’s about time to give people what they want: Two more postings about the Dreamland with leftover pictures I took in December. I still wouldn’t recommend going there, and I doubt that I ever will again, but should already taken pictures been wasted?

This posting will be all about the Eastern Parking Lot and the Parking Garage, the next one will show some interior shots of the building with the observation tower.

The Eastern Parking Lot is easy to find as it is part of the main entrance – most of the people entering Nara Dreamland when it was still open passed through here. There are two ways to enter the area and both involve just stepping over a rope; no fence, no gate, no nothing; but a guard showing up once in a while on a scooter. Coming from the east you’ll see the former pay booths for the parking lot, with the phones and stools still in place. The main entrance is now right in front of you and to your right there is a white building with shutters down (it seems like it was closed down even before the rest of the park was, judging by the pictures I saw on the net) and a the Parking Garage – opposite of that building complex are a small building with windows, I guess it was a souvenir shop once, and a huge building that will be the topic of the next blog entry…

The Parking Garage is 4 floors high (including the ground floor) and the different floors are sealed by massive shutters. Next to the (locked) gaterkeeper’s office is a defunct elevator and next to that is a staircase without a door. Going up there you’ll realize that all the doors to the floors are locked – but to my total surprise the last door at the top isn’t. Behind it you’ll find a small room with some machinery and a great view on the top of the Parking Garage.

Overall the Eastern Parking Lot and the Parking Garage are not that spectacular – but writing about them offers me a good opportunity to post some more pictures and it gives me a great lead-in for the next posting that will deal with the exploration of the former hotel and its observation tower. And phew… that is quite an amazing haikyo on its own!
(For all your Nara Dreamland needs please have a look at the Nara Dreamland Special. For a look at the area around Nara Dreamland on GoogleMaps, including some fancy icons linking to articles on Abandoned Kansai and videos on YouTube, please *click here*.)

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Expoland

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Demolished, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Map, Osaka, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2009 on 2010/06/14| 20 Comments »

It seems like abandoned amusement parks are not only my favorite locations, but people reading this blog are obviously fascinated by them, too – so today I’ll present you one that hasn’t shown up on the internet so far; neither Japanese nor English speaking. Expoland in Osaka.
Expoland (エキスポランド) covered an area of about 20 hectares and was opened in 1970 next to the fairground of the “Expo ’70“. Planned as a temporary installment it was extremely popular and thrived to be one of the most popular Japanese amusement parks for more than 30 years – the park actually re-opened on 1972-03-15 since it was closed after the Expo ’70 ended. Expoland made the news big time on May 5th of 2007 when a 19 year old student from Shiga prefecture died in an accident involving the Fujin Raijin II rollercoaster: One of the ride’s vehicles derailed due to a broken axle that wasn’t replaced in 15 years. After a series of safety inspections Expoland opened again but was closed on 2007-12-09 due to the lack of customers – 14 months later, on 2009-02-09, it was announced that the park was closed for good.
Later that year my interest in abandoned places started and when I talked to friends about it a colleague told me what happened at Expoland and that the park was closed down, but not dismantled due to the owner’s lack of money. Sadly the information about the financial trouble was wrong as I found out by chance a few weeks later when I saw a picture on the English homepage of a Japanese newspaper that showed how they were tearing down the huge ferris wheel.
I went to Expoland right away on the next weekend on my way to an illumination event in Kyoto, a cold and kind of rainy day in December, just to scout the place from the outside. Since Expoland was closed down rather recently there was no easy way in. The spiked fence around the whole area was still intact and of course there were no holes or open gates. Quite the opposite: Since the dismantling was still in progress the area was actually kind of busy with a few construction workers walking around even on a Saturday. After I circled the whole park once I saw two guys with a ladder, taking pictures over the fence. I talked to them for a bit, but they made it clear that there was no legal way in. On my way to the monorail station I realized that I was walking across a delivery entrance, so I made my way down there to check it out – and found it open for the construction workers to get in and out. The guard’s office was obviously still in use, but there was nobody there. So I entered Expoland, asking loudly if somebody was there to catch somebody’s attention – but again no reaction.
I made my way through the western and southern parts of the park. A stage and some buildings, including rest rooms, were still standing, but all rides were already dismantled. In the southwestern part I found the only big attraction still left: A waterland called “Caribbean Resort”. From there I went back to the delivery entrance and left the park. It was one of my first explorations, so I was high on adrenaline and torn apart by a decision: Leaving with what I got – or going back in to explore the rest of the park, risking getting caught? Well, I seized the day and went back in. To the main entrance, past a children’s playhouse and a restaurant, the former location of a water ride and up to where all the merry-go-rounds and the big ferris wheel were. I saw some construction workers in the distance, but I don’t think they saw me. I finished a circle counterclockwise to the east and north, past the old locomotive and to the playhouse. When I went back to the delivery entrance with its huge spiked gate my heart stopped for a second: It was almost dark, the gate was closed and the light in the guard’s office was on. I walked towards the gate to open it myself when the guard came out and addressed me in Japanese. To be honest, at that point I thought I was screwed as there was no way to escape. But to my surprise the guy was extremely nice, opened the gate to let me out and wished me a nice evening (at least I think he said something like that… Osaka dialect…).
Going to Expoland is one of my favorite urbex memories so far as it was a wonderful, exciting, positive experience from the beginning till the end. Or what I thought was the end. Because when I went back there a couple of months later to find out what happened to “Caribbean Resort” and the rest of the buildings I was extremely surprised to see what actually happened to Expoland.
But that’s a story for another time…
You can find out where Expoland was by clicking here.
(Since this article is quite popular: If you don’t want to miss the latest postings 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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‘Hitler’ Surgical Hospital

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Demolished, Haikyo, Hospital, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Map, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/06/02| 5 Comments »

Yes, no joke – one of the most (in)famous buildings in Amagasaki, Hyogo, is called the ‘Hitler’ Surgical Hospital! Well, I guess “was” is the more correct term as they started demolishing the thing in late May of 2010.
I passed by the ‘Hitler’ hospital several times on my way to the only Costco in Kansai, but I never paid much attention to it other than taking a few quick pictures to have proof of this extreme form of ignorance and insensibility – why in the world would anybody name a hospital after the maybe most hated person in human history? (Well, it was the ヒトラ外科病院, not the ヒトラー外科病院 – but although the character indicating a long vowel was missing it is highly unlikely that the naming was a coincidence, especially since you only find the dictator and the hospital when you look for ヒトラ on the internet…)
I actually don’t even know how long the place was really abandoned. In March they still had a (quite run-down looking) sign outside on the main street – and that was gone in April. It was in April, too, that I passed the clinic after shooting a haikyo when it was almost dark outside and there were no lights in the building – but since I carried a lot of groceries and it was on a weekend day anyways I didn’t pay a lot of attention to that fact. Now the hospital with its departments for stomach and intestines, circulatory, surgery, orthopedics, neurosurgery, radiology, and rehabilitation is gone. And I wonder if anybody is really sad about it. (Except for me for the fact that I never made it inside, leaving this one of those unfulfilling “outside haikyo” – I really wish I’d taken more pictures when I had the chance, but I never took my camera when I went grocery shopping at a place where the smallest bag of potato chips weighs 1kg…)
2010-06-04 addendum: Due to the explanation given by Thomas I slightly changed a sentence and put the “Hitler” in apostrophies as I guess we will never find out what the people deciding the name thought when they put up the signs onto the top of the building.
(You can find out where the ‘Hitler’ Surgical Hospital was by clicking here.)

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Nara Dreamland

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Map, Nara, Urbex, Visited in 2009 on 2010/02/10| 10 Comments »

(Most search engines referring to this blog usually end up up here, although the main article about Nara Dreamland is considered the *Nara Dreamland Special* by now. For a look at the area around Nara Dreamland on GoogleMaps, including some fancy icons linking to articles on Abandoned Kansai and videos on YouTube, please *click here*.)

Initially I planned to do a three part series about the Nara Dreamland without giving away too much about its location since it’s considered something like the last holy haikyo cow. But due to events that may or may not be related to a recent blog post I decided to not do that. I’ve heard that the owner(s) of Nara Dreamland don’t want to have pictures taken by trespassers a.k.a. urban explorers to avoid attention on the internet. Something I totally understand and basically respect. But respect is a mutual thing and that’s why this blog entry will be a bit different than usual. Nara Dreamland is really one of a kind – the place as well as this blog post. (Don’t expect something similar here too soon…)

First of all – here is where you can find Nara Dreamland:
34° 42′ 0″ N, 135° 49′ 27″ E
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=34.70021,135.824168&spn=0.004587,0.009645&t=h&z=17&msid=206399389614348219908.00049a6abf8e42dabb0b0

But what is Nara Dreamland? Some would describe it as an extremely cheap copy of Disneyland. More or less successful for the first years of its existence it was annihilated by Universal Studios Japan in Osaka and closed in 2006. It seems like people hated the place and considered it abandoned even before it actually was – these guys say “it’s an ugly, disgusting, abandoned looking theme park ” and even call it “a total dump”:
http://www.themeparkreview.com/japan2004/nara1.htm

Since it closed down Nara Dreamland actually became more and more popular – as an abandoned place on the internet. Since I would never enter this huge abandoned and apparently untouched amusement park I can only show you what other people found when they went there:
http://tw.silk.to/am/dreamland/dreamland__20060610/index.php (Oops, this set of pictures was taken when the park was still open – but who can see the difference anyways…?)
(If this material was created by illegally entering Nara Dreamland I totally distance myself from it as they obviously disrespect the owner’s wishes! But I guess those people asked for permission in advance…)

If you want to go to Nara Dreamland please go ahead. But be aware that people say that the security there is tight. The whole park is surrounded by fences, most of them with nasty spikes and rusty barbed wire. There are talks about guards patrolling the area and there are motion detectors yelling automatic messages at you – scared me half to death when I was walking along a public street (!) around the northern part of the park, just minding my own business. I don’t know if those installations are inside the park, too, since it is so obvious that people are not wanted there… now even less than when the park was still open for business.
Oh, and at the eastern parking lot there are the main entrance and several buildings. The area has no fences, only some ropes preventing people from entering. Since it’s still private property of course I didn’t cross the ropes, but the northern building looks interesting and like a place worth checking out. Especially the observation tower part is very tempting and must offer a great view. I would never enter the building since the owner doesn’t want to draw attention to it. And by it I mean Nara Dreamland in Nara city, Nara prefecture, Japan.

To bring this joyful entry to an end I’ll present you some pictures I’ve taken back in December – all of them were taken from public roads; there was no trespassing or any other illegal activities involved! Enjoy… And if you go to Nara Dreamland, the most fascinating abandoned place in Japan, remember one thing: It’s all about respect!

(I went back to Nara Dreamland after this posting, so for all your Nara Dreamland needs please have a look at the Nara Dreamland Special – including night shots and the hardly ever seen Nara Dreamland Hotel. And since this article is quite popular, especially with first time visitors: 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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