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Archive for the ‘Museum’ Category

North Korea Revisited: Epilog

Posted in Airport, Amusement Park, Animals, Asia, Beijing, China, Chongjin, Dandong, DPRK, Food, Hiking, Hoeryong, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kaesong, Korea, Kyongsong, Map, Military, Monument, Mount Chilbo, Museum, Nampo, Night, Non-Urbex, North Hamgyong, North Korea, Photography, Pyongyang, Rason, Restaurant, Russia, School, Store, Transportation, Travel, Video, Visited in 2013, Yanji, Zombies on 2014/02/21| 6 Comments »

“What kind of place did I just leave that entering China feels like gaining freedom?!”
That’s what I was thinking upon leaving North Korea for the second time – because leaving the second time definitely felt different.

When I crossed the border at Dandong a few months prior I felt a bit wistful. Something was dragging me back instantly, I was mesmerized by my experiences. Dandong felt very surreal, like a completely different world. And although I wasn’t 100% serious that I would visit the DPRK again when I promised to do so to my Pyongyang guides, I somehow had a feeling that it wasn’t totally out of question.
When I was leaving North Korea for the second time I was actually glad to get out of there. The trip had been way too interesting to be considered a bad one, but this time was much more intense, I witnessed and found out things that would take me much longer to process than the lifetime worth of experiences I made in Pyongyang.

After Pyongyang I started writing right away. I went there ignorant on purpose, I wanted to enjoy the show and embrace the deception – which is so not me as I hate being lied to, but I figured it would be easier to go with the flow when visiting North Korea. (It’s definitely tough going against it when living in Japan…)
After the Northeastern Adventure I took a lot more time, hoping that I would be able to use it to process and structure my thoughts – to make sense of what I saw, heard, tasted, smelled, felt. In hindsight probably not a good idea as I don’t think it helped much, but I started to forget details. Details that weren’t essential, but details nonetheless. At least it gave me the confidence to write everything as I remembered it, because after my return to Japan (and seeing how messed up in its own way this country here is) it took me less than a week until the urge to go back rose. I wasn’t lying awake night after night trying to find a way to “go back to the island”, but North Korea is a decent size country that is opening up to tourism more and more, which is great for the half dozen travel agencies offering trips, because they can lure customers back easily. “You’ve been to Pyongyang, Kaesong, North Hamgyong and Rason, but… XYZ is open now – and you can be part of the first tourist group to get there!” And that is one of the selling points of North Korea, to boldly go where hardly any man has gone before.

Do I want to go back to North Korea? Heck yeah! I’m a sucker for remote and unusual places that offer photo opportunities, that’s what this blog is all about! Of course I would love to go back to North Korea, despite the fact that I was really angry (and happy to leave!) last time.
Will I go back to North Korea? Most likely not. Not under the current regime.
Why? Because I have the ability to remember. I remember Robocop and how he treated that boy at the market in Rason, I remember how I felt being ratted out by that old woman in Rason, I remember looking at GoogleMaps, realizing how close we came to some of the death camps – which hopefully will be remembered as a stain on the history of humankind once this ridiculous regime dissolves and all Koreans enjoy (relative) freedom.

There are some voices out there on the internet who are convinced that North Korea can be opened little by little if more and more tourists visit the country – sadly most of those voices are actually either fooled Pyongyang tourists or western tour guides to the DPRK. And I am not sure what to think of the idea. North Korea is so full of contradictions, yet the system survived for so long – can a couple of thousand tourists driven around in busses with tinted windows really make a difference? After thousands of tourists before didn’t make a difference?
When visiting Pyongyang you kind of get the image that the DPRK is a misunderstood country which is struggling to survive and doesn’t want no harm to nobody in the world; but that’s the microcosm Pyongyang, where only the elite is allowed to live and where resources from all over the country get concentrated. In North Hamgyong and even in the comparatively rich Rason I felt transported 20 or 30 years back in time – and I started to wonder why North Korea even allows those tourist tours, because like so many things in the country, the tours don’t really make sense. I don’t think it’s about the money, because there are not nearly enough tourists to the DPRK to justify the effort. In Pyongyang I can see it being about changing foreigners’ minds. The regime will never win over the western media, but they can create positive word of mouth. But why allowing western tourists to North Hamgyong and Rason? Korean is not the most common language in the world, but there are always one or two people in each group who are able to speak it – and if not, people know people who know the language. Sure, while at the clothing factory in Rason I didn’t know that one of the slogans on a pillar said “Ideology First”, but it didn’t matter, because I knew a few days later, so congratulations to the factory management, you fooled me for a couple of days! But that didn’t keep me from telling a couple of thousand readers that, while you seem to treat your workers well, you also bombard them with propaganda music and propaganda slogans – and that you use “Made in China” labels. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg as you know, since I mentioned all the little things in the previous eight articles.
So why is North Korea allowing foreign tourists in the country, when it fails to deceive them and continues to indoctrinate its citizens. When things like the electric fence are continuously brought up (or maybe even revealed) by tourists? Why allowing small scale foreign aid that doesn’t get mass media attention, when Juche, Korea’s autarky, is the state’s ideology and most important goal?
The answer is: I don’t know. North Korea is full of contradictions, almost everything there is tied to a contradiction. The more you know about North Korea, the less it makes sense. And I’ve spend a lot of time in 2013 talking about North Korea and actually being there…

That being said I am very glad that I did those two trips. I made a lifetime worth of experiences, good and bad, met some extraordinary people (also good and bad…), saw and did things I wouldn’t have thought of in my wildest dreams. First I went there during the political crisis of 2013 and then again just weeks before Merrill Newman was arrested and Kim Jong-un had his uncle executed – and in-between I could understand very well why some friends and my whole family were worried about my security.
If you are interested in visiting North Korea, I hope my two travel reports were helpful to you. If you are just interesting in North Korea, I hope I was able to show you a different, a neutral side of what it is like to be a tourist there. And if you are mostly interested in urban exploration, I hope you enjoyed both series nonetheless – thanks for sticking with Abandoned Kansai, I promise I will make it up to you on Tuesday with a mind-blowingly amazing deserted hotel! (There will be two or three more articles about North Korea in the future, but none of them will put my urbex articles on hold for weeks…)
Since I came back from my second trip I’ve been asked a lot of times where I will go next, by both friends and strangers. Where can I go next after I went to North Korea? For a while I didn’t have an answer, I was considering Siberia or Alaska, but now I can tell you what the main event this year will be: I will go back home to Germany for almost three weeks (a.k.a. annual leave) to celebrate the wedding of one of my best friends – and I can’t wait to do so!

(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. *Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)

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New HDR Photos

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Chugoku, Chūbu, Gifu, Haikyo, HDR, Hiking, Japan, Kansai, Mie, Museum, Nara, New Zealand, Okayama, Photography, School, Taxidermy, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Visited in 2011, Visited in 2012, Yamaguchi on 2013/09/21| 2 Comments »

All of the photos I publish with articles on Abandoned Kansai are without any form of enhancing post-production – I don’t even crop them; they either look good or they don’t. Every once in a while I like to play with an HDR tool or two. I wouldn’t call those photos enhanced or improved, I would barely call them photos anymore. That’s why I created a sub-page for them in the background. Today I added ten more of those little artworks to that page. *Please click here to have a look!*

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North Korea – Dandong, China

Posted in Asia, China, Dandong, DPRK, Korea, Map, Museum, Night, Non-Urbex, North Korea, Photography, Visited in 2013 on 2013/07/19| 9 Comments »

Although I am living in Japan for almost seven years by now I had never been to any other Asian country before this trip – mainly because you don’t get many paid vacation days and no sick days in Japan (i.e. if you get sick, you have to take paid vacation days), so I always went back home to Germany to visit family and friends. When I planned the trip to the DPRK I had to go through Beijing both ways – and when I saw that Koryo Tours offered a layover in Dandong I sacrificed another paid vacation day (sorry, family and friends!) that will shorten my summer trip this year even further. But 23 hours on a train didn’t sound too tempting and I guess I will never have another chance to go to Dandong, so I jumped on the opportunity… and it was a good decision!

While I basically hated every second in Beijing, my 24 hours in Dandong were really enjoyable. We were seven people from Koryo Tours staying there, Patrick and Juliette from my group, four from the other group. Fresh blood, new stories – and a culture shock!
Dandong and North Korea have pretty much nothing in common, that was clear upon arrival. We met our local guide and checked in at the hotel – free WiFi, yay! After more than a week without internet I quickly scanned through almost 200 e-mails (most of them blog related!) and sent a quick one to my sister to let her know that I was okay and had a great time in the DPRK. We only had 1.5 hours till dinner, so I hurried a bit and went across the street to the waterfront as our hotel was right next to the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge and the tourist attraction “Broken Bridge”. The Broken Bridge was already closed and the waterfront looked too big for the 30 minutes I had left, so I went back to the hotel to sort and read more e-mails.
When I met my fellow travelers in the lobby it turned out that I was the only one who had left the hotel so far – the others said they didn’t dare to do so without permission; and I am pretty sure hardly any of them was joking…
Dinner at the nearby restaurant was a feast. The food in the DPRK was really good, but even after a week it started to become a bit repetitive (no complaint, especially given the situation, I am just saying as it is!) – having Chinese for dinner was… surreal. The flavors were so different, so much more intense. (The Snickers I had for dessert must have been the sweetest food item I ever ate after being mostly off sugar for 8 days…) Also surreal was the amount of food they brought to the table. We were eight people in total, but I think you could have fed 30 with what was brought to us. A shame considering that people are malnourished just half a kilometer away!
It’s amazing how quickly you adapt to situations, which is another reason why I was happy to get off the train immediately after leaving the DPRK – because China hits you like a hammer after a week in North Korea. Not just the food and the freedom of movement. Everything! While in Korea everything seemed normal. The lack of cars, the low noise level, that it is mostly dark once the sun was gone, that we were told to stay in the hotel… friggin everything, you just adapt to embrace the culture you want to experience. 500 meters down the road – BOOM! A buzzing megacity; gluttony and profligacy everywhere! The strange part was: Dandong is pretty similar to big Japanese cities regarding traffic, noise, lights, food, consumerism, so I should have been used to that. But it really hit me like a hammer, an unexpected culture shock.
After dinner we had a walk along the waterfront, huge apartment buildings lit up like Christmas trees. I didn’t have a tripod and still was able to take decent pictures. Candy town. And on the other side of the Yalu river? Not a single sound, barely any lights, low buildings in the dark. The next day I took a photo from the middle of the river while on a boat tour – left China, right DPRK. The countries could have hardly looked more different.

The second day in Dandong was full of touristy stuff. First we went to a reconstructed part of the Chinese Wall, once upon a time continuing on the now Korean side of the Yalu river. Since I didn’t have time to visit the wall near Beijing this was actually a very nice treat – and a very surreal one, since that part of the wall was right next to the border. Not only were there tons of bilingual warning signs (Chinese and English, obviously), but I was also able to take pictures of the Chinese Wall and North Korea at the same time! I had no idea that it was possible…
Why were there no signs in Korean, you ask? Because, and this is a dirty little secret nobody wants to talk about, Koreans don’t dare to cross the border here; at least not permanently. The reason for that is the fact they would be easily spotted by Chinese doing so – and the Chinese government not only sends defectors back to the DPRK, they also pay their own people to rat out fugitives! Yes, while every North Korean who made it to South Korea or the States is celebrated, the same people are everything but welcome in China. To a point that average Chinese people have them deported for money, very aware that caught defectors won’t have an easy life back in the DPRK… Morality is luxury.

Next stop of the tour was the „Museum of War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea“ or just simply the Korean War Museum, one of the most interesting places I have ever been to. As you know, history is written by the victors – in this case you had two victors (or none…), and we all know what the Americans are telling us. So it was extremely interesting to hear the Chinese side, a side that was presented with a surprisingly high amount of signs in English; given that Dandong only has a small airport, it’s not exactly a destination for Western tourists. Most of the texts were biased obviously, resulting in sentences stating that the Chinese and Koreans “overcame all the difficulties with incomparable heroism and inexhaustible wisdom and smashed the “strangling warfare” by the U.S. Army”. Stuff like that sounds hilarious to western socialized people, often not realizing that lies can be easily hidden with the help of pretended objectivity. To me the most interesting aspect brought up by the communist side was the aspect of biological warfare. A small section of the museum is dedicated to those allegations brought up by China, the Soviet Union and the DPRK, while the whole topic is denounced by the US government and its allies. The shocking thing about those accusations is that they make sense! When I wrote about the *Rabbit Island Okunoshima* a while ago I mentioned one of the most despicable human beings that ever lived, a Japanese military surgeon named Shiro Ishii. Ishii was the head of Unit 731, a Japanese research group that developed biological weapons in top secret Chinese facilities during World War 2 – by testing them on humans, including vivisections of infected victims! (I mentioned them, because Unit 731 related people also tested poison gas produced on Okunoshima.) Instead of executing Ishii as a war criminal, the Americans granted him immunity in exchange for the data he gained during the human experimentation – MacArthur knew about that plan in 1947 and it was concluded in 1948. In addition to their own biological weapons program in Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Americans now had the Japanese material. But that’s not all! While Ishii’s daughter says that her father spent the rest of his natural life in Japan, Richard Drayton, a senior lecturer in history at Cambridge University, claims that Ishii actually „came to Maryland to advise on bio-weapons”. Just for your information: The Korean War lasted from 1950 to 1953, the allegations are from the year 1952… Ishii died a converted Christian in 1959.
(Another surprising realization I had at the museum is DPRK related. You know how Western media are making fun of Kim Jong-un being a bit chubby and having a terrible haircut? Well, I was walking around, looking at things, when I saw that really old photo on the wall – of a guy that looked like Kim Jong-un; slightly chubby, unconventional haircut. It was Kim Il-sung, his grandfather. Kim Jong-un looks like Kim Il-sung around the time of the Korean War! Now it all makes sense, because given the personal cult in the DPRK of course that’s not a coincidence…)

Last but not least we went back to the waterfront and did a little cruise on the Yalu river that separates China and the DPRK. A few western tourists are claiming that they’ve visited North Korea after taking that 45 minute long boat tour – according to our guide they haven’t as the river is actually considered no man’s land…
The boat tour started just south of the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge (constructed when the whole area was occupied by Japan) and the Broken Bridge (built between 1909 and 1911) and first gave a good look at the bridges while heading north. Both bridges were repeatedly attacked and damaged by the United States during the Korean War and at first both of them were repaired, but then the communist side focused on repairing the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, leaving the Broken Bridge first a ruin and now a historical tourist attraction. Today the Friendship Bridge is one of the few ways to enter the DPRK by automobile or train. After passing the bridges it was bizarre to see gigantic apartment buildings on the Chinese side… and basically nothing on the other. Then we turned around, passed the two bridges again and got closer to the Korean side; pretty close actually… There we could see how the low tide left some old, rusty Korean ships on the shore and how workers loaded coal via small cranes. While the people around us were all excited about getting a glimpse at North Korea I wasn’t able to share that excitement. I actually felt bad, knowing how much Pyongyang needed that coal, wondering if the appointed train would actually make it there to keep one of the two coal power stations running. None of us had goose-bumps looking at “the Evil Empire” as if it was a tiger at a zoo more than a century ago. We had seen more than the waterfront, we had talked to the people; it was surreal looking back, while the Chinese tourists probably were judging the whole country by what they saw there and then, talking about each other instead of with each other. I think all of us Westerners felt a bit desperate and frustrated while on that boat – having enjoyed eight days in the DPRK we finally realized how far away from the global community the country really is; not only ideologically, but also economically…

(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. 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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North Korea – Other Locations

Posted in Asia, DPRK, House, Kaesong, Korea, Map, Museum, Non-Urbex, North Korea, Photography, Pyongyang, Travel, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/07/15| Leave a Comment »

When I planned this series of articles about my trip to North Korea I realized quickly that I wouldn’t be able to dedicate each and every location its own article – there were just too many places I’ve visited. So I tried to limit myself to the most important ones, the most entertaining ones, the most impressive ones… and overall I did a decent job, I think. Some places I had to leave out because there was just not enough information about them, at others I wasn’t allowed to take photos or just didn’t have the time to do so. So here are a couple of locations I left out, but are actually worth mentioning…

Mangyongdae is one of the 19 districts of Pyongyang and considered Kim Il-sung’s birthplace by the North Korean authorities. We went there to see what was presented as the house where Kim Il-sung spent the first years of his life, before his family fled to Manchuria to escape the Japanese occupiers. The mini open-air museum was very popular among locals, but none of the foreign tourists seem to be much impressed, even when we heard the story that the family couldn’t afford a proper storage contained and had to buy a misformed cheap one still on display…

Kim Il-sung Square (completed in August 1954, 75000 m2) we saw several times, for example during the *Fun Run* and from the balcony at the *Grand People’s Study House*, but on day 2 we went there on purpose to go to the Foreign Language Book Store (where I didn’t take photos) and to the Ryongwang Coffee Shop. It was raining while we were there, but that didn’t keep locals from practicing for the Arirang Mass Games.

The Ryongwang Coffee Shop was kind of a fill-in since the rain prevented us from going up the *Juche Tower* for about an hour. Since I am not a coffee drinker I had to get a kick otherwise – luckily right next door was an import food store that had sausages and a hazelnut chocolate spread from Germany. I was tempted to buy some since it was actually cheaper than in Japan; where that kind of stuff usually isn’t even available. Two other things I liked were the Chelsea foosball table and the Sacher Kaffee sign at the wall. We also found out how buying stuff in the DPRK works: You go to the counter where you want to buy something (at a store, at a coffee shop, …) and say what you want. Then the clerk writes down the items and their prices. This piece of paper you take to another counter to pay and get the invoice stamped. Having a proof of pay you can go back to the first clerk where you get what you bought. In smaller shops those two counters might be ones, but goods and money are always handled by two different clerks.

The Paradise Department Store was a weird experience, because when we arrived the whole building was completely dark and only a handful of locals were having a look around. The place was stuffed with all kinds of goods, just like a real department store, but to us it seemed more like a show. Even more so since the clerks instantly asked us to stop taking photos once we started. Just as we were about to leave, the whole building came back to life – show or not, the place suffered from a blackout, which explained the lack of customers and the tenseness of the employees. Sadly nobody told us while we were exploring the building on our own, so everybody assumed it was a terrible show put up for us. Jumping to conclusions based on observations, not a good thing… (It was quite an expensive department store, BTW, located somewhere in the area where all the foreign embassies are.)

The National Gifts Exhibition House a.k.a. Pyongyang National Gift Palace was… something special. This building stores all the gifts Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un received from Koreans all over the world. From the most trivial things (I’ve heard a story that a British delegation once brought a souvenir plate they got for a couple of bucks in the streets of London) to the most amazing and original artwork you can imagine. And they really display anything, for example a Power Mac G4 and disks of some really old versions of Adobe Photoshop (5.0 IIRC). My absolutely favorite item though was a piece of art, probably the most amazing painting I have ever seen in my life. Do you know about *Larry Elmore*? Larry Elmore is one of the most famous fantasy artists, immortal thanks to his legendary artwork that is forever connected with the Dungeons & Dragons pen and paper role-playing games and the Dragonlance novels. Kim Jong-il on the other hand is famous and legendary for hand-taming tigers. (And holes-in-one when playing golf!) Now imagine Kim Jong-il sitting in the saddle of a pony sized tamed tiger wearing an ancient Korean armor on top of a snow covered Mount Baekdu – painted in Larry Elmore’s style! Mind-blowing, absolutely mind-blowing! I would pay good money for a print. Or a T-shirt. Or the opportunity to see it again. Sadly photography is strictly prohibited in the National Gift Palace and of course there is no way to get a look at it otherwise, like in a brochure or something like that.

The Museum of Metro Construction was one of those museums in Pyongyang that had quite a misleading name. Of course it was kind of about the construction of the *Pyongyang Metro*, but mainly it was about Kim Il-sung and his contributions to the metro construction. What he decided, when he visited the construction site, which ways he went in and out… Of course we saw some of the used machinery, too, but in the end it was mainly about the Dear Leader. Sadly photography was only permitted in one or two rooms, so there is not much I can show you – hence the place’s appearance in this article…

At the Mansudae Grand Monument Memorial on the other hand I took quite a few photos, but just not enough to justify a separate article. The memorial consists of several elements, the most important ones are bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, both 20 meters tall. They stand in front of a mural depicting Mount Baekdu, 13 meters high and 70 meters wide, and are flanked by two memorials – “Anti-Japanese Revolutionary Struggle” and “Socialist Revolution and Socialist Construction”, both up to 22.5 meters tall and 50 meters long, with statues being 5 meters tall. Quite impressive!

A lot less impressive was the Kangso Mineral Water Factory we visited after the *Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm* on the way to *Kaesong* via Pyongyang. I actually forgot my photo camera in the bus, so I only took a few snapshots with my video camera, but there was not much to see anyway. The water factory was a ROK/DPRK joint venture, but when the relationship between both countries went south during Lee Myung-bak’s presidency (2008-2013) the South Korean market was closed and the water factory… well, it wasn’t bottling water while we were there. Coincidence or not: I didn’t miss much, you didn’t miss much – but the water drinking bears were cute, so please check out the photo I took of those statues…

Next on the itinerary that day was the Arch of Reunification, a memorial at the beginning of the Reunification Highway a couple of kilometers outside of Pyongyang. The arch was built in 2001 to commemorate past Korean reunification proposals by Kim Il-sung and consists of two Korean women in traditional dresses, both leaning forward to hold up a sphere depicting the map of a reunited Korea. During the Sunshine Policy (1998-2008) the reunification was planned to happen in three steps: increased cooperation, nation unification with two autonomous governments, creation of a central national government – sadly those plans fell through, despite the fact that the increased cooperation part worked quite well for a while…

The final stop before reaching Kaesong was at the Pakyon Falls, one of three famous waterfalls in the DPRK. Located in the middle of nowhere about 25 kilometers north of Kaesong the falls connect the 8-meter-wide Pakyon Pool with the 37 meters lower Komo Pond. Sadly we arrived at dusk, so there were no local tourists around and we didn’t have time to climb up to have a look at the pool. Nevertheless a beautiful place indeed, with lots of characters carved into the rock forming the 8-meter-wide pool – sadly nobody asked about their meaning…

And with that you’ve seen pretty much all the places I have seen while in the DPRK. There were a handful of locations where I didn’t take photos at all (for example at the Paradise Microbrewery in Pyongyang), but those places weren’t spectacular anyway.

(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. 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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North Korea – Panmunjom / Joint Security Area

Posted in Asia, DPRK, Kaesong, Korea, Map, Military, Monument, Museum, Non-Urbex, North Korea, Photography, Travel, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/07/10| 2 Comments »

There is no frozen banana stand in the DMZ, dear Arrested Development fans! Which isn’t really a surprise, given that it’s not exactly easy to get bananas in the DPRK. Or chocolate. Or nuts. Or a freezer. Or a reliable source of electricity…
Nevertheless I kept my eyes peeled after watching the show’s final episode (of season 3…) for the gazillionth time – at the *Minsok Hotel* on a media player the night before going to the North Korean side of the DMZ / JSA.

I decided to not bore you with too many facts about the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), especially after I dropped way too many numbers and Korean terms in the previous article – there are plenty of ways to educated yourself about the Korean war and its end, and you probably know the basics anyway. Instead I would like to talk about how it is to visit the DMZ when in the DPRK.

First of all: People who say that they’ve visited the DMZ most of the time actually visited a very tiny part called Joint Security Area (JSA), the only portion of the Demilitarized Zone where soldiers from both Koreas get close to each other and don’t stand 4 kilometers apart – to the best of my knowledge tourists can only visit one other part of the DMZ: A lookout where you are supposed to see the Korean Wall. “The Korean Wall?” you ask? Yes, the Korean Wall. More about that topic next time!
I’ve never been to the southern side of the JSA, but I’ve heard it’s not exactly a relaxed trip. You have to sign a waiver (since there is a theoretical chance that you might be injured or killed…), groups are split by languages (sometimes prohibiting couples of different nationalities to go together), you have to apply several days in advance (some nationalities have to go through a background check), there is a dress code, you are not allowed to do certain things (like pointing at DPRK soldiers) and overall it seems to be quite a rushed experience.
Going to the northern side of the DMZ / JSA is actually quite laid-back. We went through a background check before entering the DPRK, none of us brought offensive clothes, no matter what nationality all of us spoke English, 80% of the previous locations were a rushed experience anyway and our guides knew we would behave properly without reminding us – and signing a waiver was not necessary. It felt like just another place to see, to my surprise without any photography limitations. Even usually off-limit motives like military personnel were no problem at all. Heck, our local guide in the rank of daewi, Captain, patiently posed for photos with everybody who was interested in having one.

Visiting the JSA from the northern side started a couple of kilometers northwest, pretty much at a distance where the DMZ technically begins. There everybody had to leave the bus at a military checkpoint for checks unspecified to us. The procedure took about 20 minutes – and to keep people busy there was a decent gift shop and a separate restroom building. When the buses were ready to continue the waiting groups got a little lecture about the history of the DMZ in front of a huge painted map. Meanwhile the buses actually drove about one hundred meters past a checkpoint and everybody had to pass through an opening in a wall next to the road (rows of two, like in school!) before boarding the bus again. (No metal detectors or being padded down involved…)
About 1.5 kilometers down the road was the first of two stops, a neatly gardened area with a building where the armistice was negotiated and the building where it was signed, now housing the North Korea Peace Museum. Located in the former village of Panmunjom, the buildings were specifically constructed to house the negotiations and the signing of the Korean War Armistice Agreement.
The second stop was the actual Joint Security Area, which most people visit from the southern side. First we visited a monument dedicated to Kim Il-sung reading and signing a document about Korea’s reunification on 1994-7-7, the day before his death. The signature plate is 7.7 meters wide, the whole monument 9.4 meters; and of course it is richly ornamented with Kimilsungias, an orchid named after guess who. From there we went to the Panmungak, the building for visitors on the northern side of the JSA, to take some photos and… that was it. There was barely any activity on the southern side and since it was a quiet sunny morning, the whole visit felt quite peaceful and slightly surreal.

People always seem to be so excited about visiting the JSA, especially those who step into North Korea for half a minute in one of the blue conference buildings on the border between North and South Korea, but after having spent six and a half days in the DPRK the experience was rather underwhelming; nothing in comparison to standing in front of *Chernobyl’s Reactor #4* or *having lunch with North Korean locals*. No disrespect to the incredible importance this place has in history, but to me the first stop was much more interesting than the second one…

(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. 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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North Korea – Kaesong Koryo Museum

Posted in Asia, DPRK, Kaesong, Korea, Map, Museum, Non-Urbex, North Korea, Photography, Travel, Visited in 2013 on 2013/07/09| 4 Comments »

The Koryo Museum in Kaesong was without the shadow of a doubt the historical and cultural highlight of my trip to North Korea.
As I mentioned before, Koryo was a kingdom on the Korean peninsula from 918 to 1392; the modern term Korea derives from that name. With modern day Kaesong (then Songdo, later Gaegyeong) being the capital for most of its existence (919-1232 and 1270-1392), it’s not really a surprise that a museum about Koryo is located in Kaesong.
The current day Koryo Museum is located at the Songgyungwan Academy since 1987 and houses more than 1000 artifacts from the Koryo period – and of course the academy itself has a very long history that dates back… to the Koryo kingdom. It started as the Taemyon Palace in the early 11th century and later became first an imperial guesthouse and then the Bureau for Confucian Doctrines. In 1089 it started to house the highest educational institution of the kingdom (for the children of state officials), the Gukjagam. In the early 14th century it was renamed Songgyungwan Academy and burned to the ground during the Imjin War in 1592, when Japanese troops failed to conquer Korea. The Songgyungwan Academy was rebuilt in 1602, so going to the Koryo Museum is impressive for the fact alone that you usually don’t have the opportunity to visit museums in buildings more than 400 years old…
Except for the missing English labeling (compensated for by a local and one of our regular guides) the Koryo Museum totally lived up to international standards, not only exhibiting countless artifacts, but also presenting plenty of photos, models and recreated places like a tomb. I’ve been to quite a few museums in my lifetime and this was definitely one of the better ones!

Even better than the museum itself was the gift shop in front / outside of the museum. Gift shops in the DPRK are more or less the same, but this one was amazing! It offered a huge selection of stamps (to collect and for use to send postcards to all countries but South Korea), a decent selection of art, quite a few different T-shirts, local ginseng products as well as… propaganda postcards and mini-posters! Most gift shops only sell photo postcards, but this one had about 40 different painted propaganda motives – anti-American, anti-Japanese, pro-education, pro-industry, pro-reunification; about a dozen of them available as mini-posters, slightly larger than DINA4. Luckily Sarah told us ahead of time, so I bought all the postcards I’ve sent to family and friends there, plus a few spare ones; but not nearly enough.
I actually regret only one thing about my trip to North Korea – not buying more stuff at that gift shop!

(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. 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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Japanese Sex Museum Revisited

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, Japan, Museum, NSFW, Photography, Sex, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2013/05/08| 10 Comments »

I visited the *Japanese Sex Museum* for the first time in March of 2012 – it was not only a very unique exploration, it was also a very long one, me spending about 4 hours in the pitch-black exhibition rooms.
About 2 months later *I went to Kyushu and failed miserably* when I was unable to find a hotel room due to Japan’s wanderlust during Golden Week. I can be quite persistent, so I went back down south a week or two later to explore the northern Kyushu locations I was eager to visit for quite a while. This time everything went according to plan, so my tour ended in Yamaguchi prefecture with half a day to spare. So I jumped on a train and went back to the Japanese Sex Museum.
A ton of people watched the walking tour video I shot there, but while the feedback was generally positive, some viewers thought that it was way too short, being only 6 minutes long. Open for constructive criticism my idea was to go back to the museum, shoot a longer video and maybe take some additional photos. In and out in an hour, two tops – I had been there just recently, how much could have changed in less than 2 months? Well… I left after four hours to catch my last train back to Osaka!

Interestingly enough not a lot changed. The place looked almost the same, except for one minor difference – somebody opened two doors, emergency exits, allowing not only some foliage to enter, but also a few rays of light. Not much, but enough to use natural light with the help of a tripod and long exposure times for almost every single photo. During my first visit I had to illuminate about 80% of the photos manually and individually with a flashlight since it was completely dark in most of the rooms. On my second visit the process was almost as time-consuming as before, but the photos looked completely different, even when I took pictures of the same objects. And so one hour turned into two turned into three turned into four…

This is actually more or less a photo and video update since I already wrote about the sex museum’s history in my previous article – and since nothing happened while I revisited the place, here is the new material for your viewing pleasure without further ado. Enjoy!

(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*…)

Addendum 2014-07-11: According to a friend of mine the museum has been demolished a while ago – R.I.P.!

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Shikoku New Zealand Village

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Animals, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kagawa, Museum, New Zealand, Photography, Race Track, Restaurant, Shikoku, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2013/02/19| 35 Comments »

Japan is a linguistically and culturally extremely homogenous country. Of its 127 million inhabitants about 98.5% are ethnic Japanese, 0.5% are Korean and 0.4 are Chinese – leaving a whopping 0.6% others; including yours truly. Those 0.6% “others” include about 210.000 Filipinos, mostly of Japanese descent, and 210.000 Brazilians, also mostly of Japanese descent – which means that only about 0.3% of Japan’s population are neither Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino-Japanese nor Brazilian-Japanese.
I’m sure you’ve heard the term gaijin before (外 gai = outside, 人 jin = person), a short version of the term gaikokujin (外国gaikoku = foreign country, 人 jin = person). People are still arguing if it’s pejorative term, but personally I don’t like it very much, because it’s such a simple term, pushing everybody who is not Japanese to the outside – which is a precarious thing in a country where a group is still so much more important than an individual.

Integration?

Becoming a foreigner in Japan is actually an achievement by itself. Japan isn’t eager to let many people in and therefore the requirements to get a long-term visa are rather high – usually you have to have either a Bachelor’s degree or several years of work experience; in both cases an employer has to vouch for you. Other possibilities are investor visas or some kind of artist visa, but there quite a bit of cash is involved; and so is with the spousal visa… 😉
Once in the country the Japanese government couldn’t care less about you as long as you renew your visa when it expires and pay your taxes – and those are usually handled by the company you work for anyway. While there are long and public discussions about integration in European countries there is zip in Japan. Language classes and tests? Bah, humbug! On the other hand you shouldn’t expect anybody to be able to speak English anywhere, despite the huge English school industry in Japan; especially at the immigration office, where you can address the staff in English as much as you want – they’ll always reply in Japanese, even though most of the time they obviously understood what you’ve said…
But Japan in general isn’t set up for integration, probably because of the educational system. You have your childhood friends, you have your high school friends, you have your university friends and you have your work friends – usually four different groups that keep you busy for the rest of your life; with no need to make additional friends at any point; or many opportunities for that matter, like community colleges or sports clubs, both extremely popular in Germany, especially after moving to a new area. (With the result that many foreigners in Japan stick with each other, too – I don’t think I know any foreigner here who has more Japanese than foreign friends; and by that I mean friends, not Facebook acquaintances…)

Xenophobia?

With that few foreigners in the country and that strong of a national identity I am still not sure if Japan is an above average racist country or not. People are definitely more polite in general than let’s say in my home country Germany (sorry guys, but certain things really are better in Zipangu…), especially in everyday service situations like shopping, but I experienced some of the weirdest behavior here, probably because hardly any Japanese school kid has foreign co-pupils, while I went to school with people of Italian, Austrian, Indian, Pakistani, Turkish, Japanese, British, Polish and Bavarian descent – and because the average Japanese person doesn’t think that you can understand what they say.
Sometimes they most likely mean no evil (like that one time when I had a dinner date with a Japanese girl at an Indian restaurant and all of a sudden all the tables around us talked about their oversea vacations, their foreign alibi friends and how great it would be to be able to be fluent in English…), sometimes I’m not sure (remember me *not getting a hotel room after the clerk found out that I’m a foreigner*?) – and sometimes they actually do mean harm. For example that young Japanese couple and their two friends who have beaten a Nepali restaurant owner to death in January 2012; one of them were quoted afterwards “I thought the foreigner had shoved me, so I got angry and kicked him many times.” (Note the use of “foreigner”? I’m sure it was “gaijin” in the original… Not “the man”, or “the Nepali” – “the foreigner”…)

Discrimination

It’s just a completely different mindset regarding foreigners and discrimination in general – and most people don’t even question it, because to them it’s normal. Like most countries Japan has a long history of discrimination. It even went through a time when a social class system with all its downsides was officially established; during the Edo period (1603 to 1868). Back then the burakumin (a.k.a. eta, “an abundance of filth”) were the outcasts and usually connected to jobs dealing with public sanitation or death (butchers, tanners, …), but when the class system was abolished the discrimination didn’t end. More than 100 years later, in 1975, there was a huge scandal when an anti-discrimination organization found out that a company in Osaka sold copies of a handwritten 330-page book listing names and locations of former burakumin settlements. Companies bought that book to compare the listed locations with the addresses of applicants – to prevent them from hiring descendants of burakumin; some famous firms like Daihatsu, Honda, Nissan and Toyota were among those companies… Two generations later the issue finally is no more, instead the average Japanese “discriminist“ focuses on foreigners – and I am so tired of and annoyed by comments about “those dog eating Koreans” or “those Chinese comfort women who try to screw the Japanese state”… (“Comfort women” is a Japanese euphemism for the sex slaves of the Imperial Japanese military in World War 2. While some (Japanese) historians like Ikuhiko Hata claim that there were 20.000 volunteer prostitutes, others found that up to 400.000 women were hired under false pretenses or even kidnapped into “comfort stations” all over Asia; but even the “few” volunteers made a bad choice as about 75% of the comfort women died during the war due to mistreatment and diseases. Shinzo Abe, the current Japanese prime minister, claimed during his first term in 2007 that the Japanese military didn’t keep sex slaves during WW2, although the government admitted to the fact in 1993 after decades of denial!)

New Zealand Village

Despite their share of xenophobia the average Japanese seems to love to travel and is actually interested in experiencing foreign countries; especially non-Asian countries… They barely ever jump all in, backpacking all by themselves – more like group vacations with Japanese speaking travel guides. Or an even safer version: themed parks in Japan! Recently I wrote a vastly popular article about the *Chinese themed park Tenkaen*, but in spring I was able to visit the rather unknown *New Zealand Farm in Hiroshima* and the *New Zealand Village in Yamaguchi*. Even less known, and after more than a thousand words of introduction we finally get to it, is the Shikoku New Zealand Village. It was actually the first of the three I visited, but due to certain circumstances I never got to write about it. (If you missed the articles about the other two New Zealand parks I recommend reading them first for background information…)
I don’t remember how I found out about the Shikoku New Zealand Village, but I’m sure it wasn’t an urbex article, because to the best of my knowledge till that very day nobody has ever written about the place. I remember seeing a photo of the entrance to the parking lot though, with heavy machinery in the background. That was on a Thursday – worried that the place was in the process of being demolished I went there two days later, despite the facts that the weather forecast wasn’t favorable and it took me about 4 hours to get there. And except for the photo and the name I didn’t know anything about the park – not what it was, not when it was closed, not if there was security, not how to get in. You know, the risky kind of exploration…
I saw the first surprise when walking up to the parking lot – there was a rather big house right next to it, with wet laundry in the garden. The parking lot was blocked by barricades, entering via a muddy road to the side was difficult due to rusty barbed wire and lots of vegetation. After getting a decent grasp of the situation I decided to jump the blockade at the parking lot and walk right in, my heart pounding like mad. At the time I had more than 150 explorations under my belt, nevertheless I was and still am nervous exploring new and unchartered territory. As soon as I entered the place I heard motor noises… Not a big car motor, probably some gardening tool? Well, after a couple of seconds I realized that it was a model aircraft – and as soon as one landed another one started for almost all of the two and a half hours I spent at the Shikoku New Zealand Village.
Now that you’ve already seen the Tenkaen and the other two New Zealand villages the Shikoku one might not seem that exciting or spectacular, but to me it was the first themed park I ever visited, and I was all by myself, so to me it was extremely adventurous. Cautiously I progressed – first the sheep race track and the archery station, then a barn I wasn’t able to enter. From there I reached a bike race track before I walked back to the main street leading to the Oakland House; basically a restaurant and a souvenir shop. When I walked around the corner I stumbled across surprise number 2: the road in front of me was gone – a landslide washed it away! Now that’s something you don’t see every day… The rest of the park was less spectacular though. Two more barns, a long slide on a slope, a pond, a bakery and a BBQ area.
What was absolutely fantastic about the Shikoku New Zealand Village was the almost complete lack of vandalism. No broken windows, no kicked in doors, no graffiti. Sure, I wasn’t able to enter all the buildings, but that didn’t matter to me, because nothing was bolted up or destroyed – unlike at *Nara Dreamland* for example. Natural decay at its best…

(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*…)

Addendum 2016-01-13: A while after my first exploration of the Shikoku New Zealand Village I revisited this awesome location. *Here is what happened since then.*

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Tenkaen – Japan’s Lost China Theme Park

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, House, Japan, Museum, Photography, Restaurant, Sacred Site, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2012/12/17| 50 Comments »

The Tenkaen, literally Flower Garden of Heaven (but also known as China Park of Heaven), was probably the biggest location *Michael* and I visited on our *haikyo trip to Hokkaido*. Opened in 1992 and closed in 1999 this deserted China themed park now is longer abandoned than it was in business – and it showed…

Japan and China have a long common history full of complications – and the recent election of the Japanese House of Representatives most likely won’t change the situation, especially regarding the Senkaku Islands. Nevertheless Japanese people seem to love themed parks that are not necessarily theme parks. Unlike famous theme parks like Disneyland or Universal Studios the dozens of themed parks all over Japan don’t have fast and expensive rides. They really are just themed parks that offer a more or less authentic look at the theme they chose – usually other countries like Germany (Doitsu no Mura Kronenberg), Spain (Spain Mura / Parque Espana), the Netherlands (Huis Ten Bosch) or New Zealand (Tohoku New Zealand Mura). Most of them were build during the real estate bubble in the late 1980s/90s and a lot of them were already closed (like the *Hiroshima New Zealand Farm* and the *Yamaguchi New Zealand Village*) or even leveled.

The Tenkaen is not much different in that regard. Opened in 1992 as one of four big theme(d) parks in Noboribetsu (the other being the Noboribetsu Bear Park (opened in 1958), the Noboribetsu Marine Park Nixe (opened in 1990), and the Noboribetsu Date Jidaimura – a Edo era themed park opened in 1992), the Tenkaen was modeled after a garden court from the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912) and in addition included a 5-storey pagoda with a height of 40 meters and a bell donated by China to commemorate 20 years of rather friendly diplomatic relations. Sadly the Tenkaen didn’t last nearly as long, probably due the steep entrance fee of 1,900 Yen (1,100 Yen for senior citizens and elementary school students). In the first business year (1992/1993) only 270,000 people visited the 40,000 square meter site – and it went only downhill from there. In 1995 the attendance numbers were down to half in comparison to the first record year and in 1998 the opening days were reduced and a winter closing was introduced – on October 31st 1999, only seven and a half years after the grand opening, the Tenkaen was closed for good and now is one of the most famous abandoned places in Hokkaido.

Michael and I arrived at a reasonable time in the morning at the Tenkaen, expecting a rather long day of shooting there, but we had no idea what the layout of the location would really be since this China themed park is located in a rural area where even GoogleMaps isn’t much of a help. The weather was sunny, but nevertheless strangely gloomy, offering lighting conditions I have never seen before at an abandoned place. The whole area was dusted with a thin layer of snow, so we chose our ways carefully not to leave to many visible footprints. After we spent about half an hour at the garden palace area the sun began hiding behind some clouds and we were hit by a snowstorm. The atmosphere changed completely and the photos we took looked like they were taken at a different day. The storm lasted for about half an hour and ended abruptly when the sun came back with a vengeance, melting the freshly fallen snow along with the one we found at our arrival – so much for walking carefully not to leave footprint.

But that wasn’t the last time the weather would change. It seemed like the Tenkaen wanted to live up to its name – there weren’t a lot of flowers, but heaven changed about every 30 minutes, switching between gorgeous sunlight and almost blizzard like snowstorms. Which was great for us *haikyoists*, because whatever part of the Tenkaen we explored, we always had a variety of weather conditions to take pictures of. Altogether we spent 4.5 hours at the Tenkaen, and if it wouldn’t have been for a long list of other locations to be visited on the same day (and the ice cold wind, especially on the higher floors of the pagoda!) we probably would have stayed much longer…

Personally I loved the Tenkaen – it was my kind of abandoned place: in the middle of nowhere, open space, nice weather, interesting location, not that much vandalism, lots of natural decay, unique theme. The two major streets with dozens of cars passing by were a little bit annoying at times, especially when exploring the floors of the pagoda, but overall it was a great experience, not least because of the constantly changing weather conditions. I would love to come back one day in a warmer season of the year, to see some more green and maybe to take some night shots!

(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*…)

Tenkaen

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Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures – Japan’s Second Abandoned Sex Museum

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, House, Japan, Museum, NSFW, Photography, Sex, Taxidermy, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2012/11/27| 30 Comments »

When I wrote about the *Abandoned Japanese Sex Museum* in spring a lot of people seemed to enjoy my article – on Sunday I had the chance to visit the Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures, Japan’s other abandoned sex museum. It wasn’t bigger, but it was less artsy and a lot more explicit! This haikyo gave the term “ruins porn” a way deeper meaning…

“House of hidden treasures” – a Japanese euphemism to describe sex museums. In the 1960s pretty much every of the 47 prefectures in Japan had a sex museum, usually located in a small spa town somewhere in the mountains. Video did not only kill the radio star, it also made pornography widely available and started the decline of many sex museums – the internet finished the job 20 years later. Nowadays there are only a handful of sex museums in Japan (although you can barely call them museums as most of them are bizarre collections of art and what some weird people think art is…) and they are fighting for survival. The Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures (HHOHT) was no exception in that regard. Opened at a time when other sex museums started to close (1980), the HHOHT was equipped with the latest technology of the time (including a huge 3D pussy, created by a plastic, a gigantic lens and a mirror), but ran into financial trouble in the new millennium – closing was considered in 2007 (after lowering the entrance fee by 1000 Yen to 1500 Yen), but it seems like it was kept open for business until March of 2010, when thieves stole a Marilyn Monroe wax figure, a female wax figure with a snake around her neck, a belly dance doll and two travelers’ guardian deities. While most other sex museums get rid of their exhibits (by throwing them away or selling them) and then become another parking lot, the Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures became the haikyo Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures – one of two known abandoned sex museums in Japan.

Much to my surprise the HHOHD was quite different from the *Abandoned Japanese Sex Museum* in Japan’s south. Instead of featuring dozens of wooden and stone statues the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures was stuffed with taxidermy animals – most of them copulating: Horses, elks, zebras, boars, lions, monkeys, all kinds of birds… I’ve never seen that many stuffed animals anywhere. And while most of the sculptures at this museum didn’t even seem to be made from real stone, all the taxidermy animals were real and in pretty good condition – if not for the sex part the museum should have been famous for its stuffed animals. But of course there was so much more to see: paintings, drawings, animatronics, a shooting game called “French Ponpon” (5 shots with a gun: 100 Yen), a huge vibrating penis to sit on, sculptures, shrines (dedicated to birth or equipped with penis shaped statues), and wax figures in a bizarre forest scene – starring a big red demon (with a surprisingly small dick) and a naked woman, being watched by horny, peeping or even mating animals. The most strange thing though was found on the basement floor – it appeared to be another shooting game. This time participants had to shoot “water” from a huge golden penis at a naked female doll. I’m sure when the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures was still in business it was all fun and games, but this time there was a victim. My haikyo buddy *Michael Gakuran* wanted to have a closer look at the naked woman and stepped into what seemed to be a concrete pool – except that the surface wasn’t concrete, but gypsum floating on top of the still intact pool; resulting in a mild shock and lots of wet clothes. In hindsight the water in the shooting game must have been colored white for a more “realistic” approach; a closer look at the female doll confirmed that assumption. (Luckily Michael’s equipment wasn’t damaged thanks to a water-proof camera!) Instead of going back to the car and changing clothes Michael dried himself and his stuff up as good as possible and continued shooting for 45 minutes with one bare foot! What a trooper, especially since the place was literally freezing cold. Most of the rooms had dripping water, and on the lower floor the water froze to icicles or drops on the ground! It was so cold I could see my own breath and after a while my fingers started to hurt – I can only imagine how Michael must have felt; who even refused to leave right away when we both heard some noise from the upper floor, followed by footsteps – because he hadn’t shot a pitch black room in the back yet…

The Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasure was a massive location and a real photography challenge thanks to lots of dark areas, massive amounts of glass and really weird setups; not challenging but weird BTW was the sukiyaki and ramen restaurant above the museum – I left that part out completely as it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the sex museum itself. All in all Michael and I spent almost 5 hours at the HHOHT – more time than at any other place before except for the *Nakagusuku Hotel* in *Okinawa*. And it was well worth it – I barely ever shot as many interesting and unique photos before. I also recommend watching the walking tour I shot as it shows the setup of the museum much better than I could describe it with words and photos. Speaking of which – here they are…

(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*…)

Addendum 2014-07-11: According friends of mine the museum has been severely vandalized since I visited it – R.I.P.!
Addendum 2015-08-18: I revisited the sex museum in late 2014 and wrote an article about it – Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures Revisited (The Rape And Death Of An Abandoned Sex Museum)

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