All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum – and many, many more! Plus: North Korea Special – 2 trips, 16 days / 14 nights! As seen on CNN…
A couple of months ago I wrote an article about the *Utopia Lift* near *Shidaka Utopia*. Well, about the upper terminus… but of course I also took photos of the lower terminus, which is often overlooked by other explorers – it’s easier to reach, but harder to find, since the area is much more overgrown than its counterpart up the hill.
So you already know the history of the lift… and the history of the nearby amusement park. What’s left to say? Not much. Looking back, it was one of the best days of solo explorations ever. Four rather rare locations (including an amusement park), countryside, spring, hiking, beautiful weather, a wild fox on the kart track below – it barely ever gets better than that! So please enjoy the photos and the video below…
Japan is a mountainous country and therefore abandoned ropeways and cable cars are not that unusual – abandoned chairlifts are surprisingly rare though. One of the few examples is the Utopia Lift that once connected a mountain ridge accessible by the *Beppu Ropeway* with the *Shidaka Utopia* amusement park – both of them abandoned, too. (Judging by the latest satellite photos, the Utopia took a few demolition hits since my visit, but it’s hard to say for sure how much of it is left these days without going there…)
After my exploration of the *Shidaka Utopia* on a bright, hot, sunny spring day I hesitantly left the abandoned theme park to head for the mountains in search of the Beppu Ropeway and the upper terminus of the Utopia Lift. Back in 2012 the satellite photos of that area were rather outdated and blurry, so I had a tough time figuring out in advance how to climb the mountains of Oita to get to where I hoped to go. All I knew for sure was that it wouldn’t be easy as nature was already in full swing – both flora and fauna. It turned out that my chosen path was way too long as I unknowingly added about an hour of walking up and down a mountain slope to my route; a shortcut I only found on my way back. But hey, at least I didn’t have to go to the gym that night… or the following one. But sooner or later my hike finally ended when I saw a rusty tower and a single lift chair of the abandoned chairlift in front of me – I guess this rather strenuous hike is one of the reasons why the Utopia Lift isn’t exactly a favorite amongst urban explorers. Another one is the fact that there is not that much to see. A couple of towers, a handful of chairlifts, the massive return bullwheel overgrown in the forest closing in as well as a small office and an even smaller plastic lavatory. But I genuinely enjoyed the vandalism free decay of the chairlift as well as the atmosphere on the mountain ridge on this wonderful spring day. It would have been a lot easier to get up there and to take photos in winter, but the green of the surrounding flora against the clear blue of the sky was almost intoxicatingly beautiful. Probably not a place you should go to all by yourself, but I very much enjoyed being up there alone. I know the photos are a bit repetitive, but I often get e-mails asking to publish more photos with each article – in this case there are not more photos, but probably the most per square meter of explored location, so I hope you’ll enjoy the set…
When I first researched abandoned places in Japan back in 2009 the Bungo-Mori Railyard in Kyushu was one of THE locations. Everybody knew it, everybody went there, everybody got in and out with some interesting shots. I on the other hand never was much interested. Kyushu? That was way too far away! I was about to call my blog Abandoned Kansai anyway, because that was the area I planned to explore: Kansai. Well, half a year later I went to Kyushu to see locations like *Gunkanjima* and the *Katashima Training School* – and the term Abandoned Kansai became more of a name of origin. Some people actually address me in e-mails with “Dear Kansai”, which is kinda cute. But I still didn’t go to the Bungo-Mori Railyard, deep in the mountains of Oita prefecture. Even when I stayed a night in Oita city I had other places to explore. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I finally had the opportunity to have a look at the Bungo-Mori Railyard… only to find it halfway transformed into a tourist attraction!
Most of the surprisingly small railyard building (opened in 1934 and closed in 1971) close to the Bungo-Mori Station (opened in 1929) was cleaned out, new fences were put up, so were lights to illuminate the building at night. A dozen workers were swarming the area to remove remaining tracks and to build a new road leading up to the railyard that once serviced 21 steam trains. And to make things worse, the sun was standing high in the sky and behind the building. It turned out that in 2009, when I did my research, the railyard finally received some money to be preserved, and in 2012 it was added to some national register for cultural properties – the result of a campaign started by a single train enthusiast in 2001! The now developing memorial park already features photo spots indicated by signs and expects to receive some old steam trains soon.
On the one hand, a legendary location like that deserves its own article… though… there was not much left to see. Especially in comparison to the large Railyard Pankow-Heinersdorf I visited past summer in Berlin. I wanted to write about that last location I explored in the capital anyway, so here’s a short article about the tiny tourist railyard in Japan, followed by a longer article about the gigantic railyard in Germany on Tuesday; kind of an appetizer, a snack… another example that everything is smaller in Japan. (Except for the crowds on trains! Gosh, I am getting so tired of the big cities in Japan…)
Life is friggin weird sometimes: Not only is there a rather small city on Kyushu called Usa – it’s also home to several Japanese military ruins from World War 2!
At first sight there was nothing special about this old airplane bunker in the middle of rice fields somewhere in the Japanese countryside on Kyushu. It’s pretty much as rural as it can get and train stations were rather rare in this beautiful area, just a few hundred meters away from the coast.
I got off the train at a station called Buzenzenkoji on a gorgeous spring afternoon and got on again several hours later after dark at another one called Yanagigaura. Stories that the area was bustling with military 70 years prior intrigued me, but reports on the internet said that barely anything was left to see. The stories were about bases and bunkers, often kilometers apart, not visible on GoogleMaps, most of them even destroyed. Information about locations was vague, but what did I have to lose? Walking through the Japanese countryside on a sunny, warm spring afternoon was a treat by itself; always has been, always will be.
When I reached what I hoped would be the quarters of a naval aviation unit… I saw nothing. Nothing but some concrete foundations as well as gardens and fields at the edge of a small town. The Moriyama Emplacement and its moat probably had been levelled decades ago to help growing food for the hungry Japanese post-WW2 population.
So I continued along the road in hope to find the Shiroi Combat Group of the Usa Naval Aviation. I am actually not sure if I really found it, but I definitely found said airplane bunker. It was located right next to a house and it seemed like the owners were still using it – not to protect an airplane, but as a storage. I took a couple of quick photos and a short video before continuing my way as the sun started to set.
This time I was looking for Usa Naval Aviation’s motor workshop a few kilometers northeast on the way to the train station… and I found it after looking for a while in a rather new residential area, surrounded and broken up by fields. The workshop was in miserable condition, nevertheless it looked like it was still used by locals as storage space. I quickly took a handful of photos (most of them against the light…) and barely reached the Yanagigaura train station before it got dark – but not before stopping at a fourth location, a small wooden and completely boarded-up house that looked like it was from the late 19th, early 20th century.
To me this little stroll was barely more than enjoying a relaxing Friday afternoon on my way to some serious explorations (including *Shidaka Utopia*, but if you are into World War 2 history and do some research in advance, I am sure you can find some pretty interesting stuff in the area. To me even the airplane bunker was just an airplane bunker and the main reason this afternoon walk turned into a full article was… because after I returned home I realized that those World War 2 ruins were located in a town called Usa – exactly my kind of humor, I find that extremely funny… 🙂
Abandoned ropeway stations are creepy – and usually they are hard to reach. Now deserted *hotels*, *hospitals*, *amusement parks* or *museums* were originally built to attract or at least serve people conveniently. Ropeway stations, at least the upper termini, were constructed as bridge-heads to otherwise inaccessible or at least hard to reach places – like mountain tops.
The Shidaka Ropeway Upper Terminal was one of those stations in the middle of nowhere with no road access. Other than that, little to nothing is known about it. It seems like it was opened and closed along with the now also abandoned Shidaka Lift to connect Beppu with the *Shidaka Utopia* and Lake Shidaka – the ropeway covering the Beppu side, the lift covering the Shidaka side, but nobody seems to know for sure, though 1984 and 1998 are years I’ve heard for opening and closing respectively.
After exploring the already mentioned Shidaka Utopia on a wonderful yet hot spring day in 2012, I tightened my hiking boots and made my way up the mountain to have a look at the upper terminus of the Shidaka Ropeway (not to be confused with the still active Beppu Ropeway leading up Mount Tsurumi, which is still a popular tourist attraction). The unnecessarily long path I took lead me along a steep slope up and down the mountain for a few hundred meters in height difference, and finally reaching the upper terminus of the Shidaka Lift felt like heaven. Hiking on unpopulated routes all by yourself is always a risk, even more so in Japan with its nasty wildlife in late spring, summer and early autumn, so knowing that I was on the right track was a big relief. I took a break and some photos up there before looking for the old path that was connecting the lift with the ropeway station. Stones on the ground were a good indication, but after a couple of meters the way was completely overgrown, so I had to fight through thick vegetation… until I finally reached the ropeway station a few minutes later, all sweaty and scratched up.
The view from the station down at Beppu Bay was absolutely gorgeous and well worth the strenuous hike. To my surprise the cables connecting the upper and the lower terminus were still there, a gondola crashed into one of the two holding bays. At the same time the station was in rather bad condition after almost 15 years without any maintenance, a rusty metal and brittle concrete construction, built on a steep slope – me being all by myself I was very careful watching my steps.
After about 45 minutes it was already time to leave as I had to catch a bus back to the city and didn’t know exactly how long the lower terminus of the Shidaka Lift would keep me busy; a story for later this year. While the Shidaka Ropeway Upper Terminus wasn’t a huge and spectacular location, it was a very fulfilling one. Finding out about it and locating it wasn’t easy, getting up that mountain much less so. As much as I like explorations with friends by car, they are quite a different experience than going to the middle of nowhere all by yourself. So when I took a final look down at Beppu, it felt like an achievement, something that I really earned…
The Shidaka Utopia was a well-kept secret for many years – until about three or four years ago, when explorers gave away its full name and with it its exact location. I visited this often overlooked abandoned amusement park in spring of 2012, but kept it to myself until now. What better time to present it on Abandoned Kansai than right after the little April Fools’ joke involving *Nara Dreamland*?
Shidaka Utopia started business in 1968 in competition to the nearby Rakutenchi, one of Japan’s oldest existing amusement parks, opened in 1929! 35 years later it closed its doors due to the usual lack of customers. Sadly there is not much known about the park, probably because it’s a little bit off the beaten track. The next train station is more than 10 kilometers away and Kyushu in general is not exactly a super popular tourist destination, though I have to say that I love Japan’s third largest island as I had some great times there!
20 years ago it was a lot easier to get to the Shidaka Utopia as there was a gondola / lift combination leading right to its entrance, but now you have to take a bus that runs about five times a day to this thinly populated mountainous area.
Upon arrival I checked out the Utopia’s entrance (more or less thoroughly barricaded, including some kind of locked door…) and had a look down at the park’s former go kart track – where a fox was patrolling what I think he thought was his. I had seen my share of Japanese wildlife over the years (monkey, boars, spiders, snakes, maybe a bear, not sure about that one…), but the fox was a first. Sadly I wasn’t only completely taken by surprise, I also had my ultra wide-angle lens mounted on my camera, so by the time I was able to take a picture, it was a pretty bad one. But still a photo of a wild fox! At a place I was about to explore…
A couple of minutes later I figured out a way to get in and the fox was out of sight, so what the heck! I didn’t travel 500 kilometers to be stopped by a small dog with red fur and big ears!
Instead I was stopped by two mid-aged Japanese dudes about an hour into my exploration. They were definitely neither security nor urban explorers, but made it pretty clear that I should better leave – with a certain authority, as if they were in a position to actually be in charge there. I politely asked them to let me finish taking photos of the collapsed wooden maze and although I am pretty sure they had no idea what I said, they granted my wish and continued to walk towards the huge building that once was a restaurant / gift shop / rest house, making gestures that lead me to the conclusion that they might have had plans with the property. I on the other hand had no interest in the big building at all, neither short term nor long term, as I had seen photos of it before; and it looked like the typical empty and vandalized abandoned Japanese restaurant / gift shop / rest house that you can find by the dozen in the countryside… just bigger. Anyway, I continued as if our conversation never happened and when I heard them coming back, I hid in what I would call the rest room area. And there I found THEM, the two most awesome rest room signs ever created. Probably the two most awesome signs ever created overall! I took pictures of them, so you can look at them yourself, but what made them so awesome was the Japanese writing on them. The male version said “オチンチンのあるひと“ and even with my limited command of Japanese I instantly understood what that meant: „(for) people with a penis”. And the female version of course said “オチンチンのないひと“ – „(for) people without a penis”! Bathroom signs… at an amusement park! In public! Only in Japan…
It turned out though that those two signs were the absolute highlights of the exploration. A good decade after being abandoned, the Shidaka Utopia had suffered from the forces of nature, was partly demolished, severely vandalized and in great parts overgrown even in spring. What I loved about it though were the countless items left behind. The roller skates, the kiddy rides, the gum display, the handwritten signs – wherever I let my eyes wander, I had my feet follow. There were so many small things to explore and to discover that I totally forgot that it was basically a pretty rundown place. But it was big and it was abandoned and it was an amusement park and it was a gorgeous spring day in the mountains and it was in Japan, so it was awesome!
After two and a half hours I left Shidaka Utopia to get some lunch and to check out a few other locations in the area, before I returned in the afternoon to have a look at the fox hideout a.k.a. go kart track, where I found more items: a fire distinguisher on wheels, Dunlop tires, racing helmets, a Japanese Mercedes Benz 300E ad – in the end I had to hurry back to the bus stop to catch the last ride back to civilization, just before the sun was setting.
The whole day in the Oita countryside will have a special place in my heart – but it’s the bathroom signs that will stick out with their glorious epicness for all eternity! (Epicness is a word, right? If it isn’t it should be!)
Abandoned Kansai 