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Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Non-Urbex: Busena Marine Park Underwater Observatory

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Animals, Japan, Non-Urbex, Okinawa, Photography, Transportation, Travel, Zoo on 2026/11/12| 1 Comment »

Every other year I feel the urge to get on a plane and fly down to Okinawa – despite the heat and humidity, which is why usually end up going there only every few years, and in January or February, when my fellow Japanese travelers leave Kansai mumbling “It’s cold! It’s cold!” and switch to “It’s hot! It’s hot!” as soon as the plane door opens in Naha; completely ignoring that 5 to 10°C isn’t cold and 17 to 22°C isn’t hot, but Japanese people like to complain, especially about the weather, like everybody else.

Unfortunately there is not that much to see and do in Okinawa, especially after the 5th visit or so within 15 years, though I enjoyed every trip there tremendously. The latest one in January of this year was basically anchored around the Busena Marine Park Underwater Observatory, after I fell in love with those kinds of places when visiting the *Ashizuri Underwater Museum (or as I called it incorrectly: Ashizuri Underwater Aquarium)*.
Like pretty much all of the underwater observatories in Japan, the Busena one is a bit in the sticks, but overall it’s rather easily accessible – just hop onto a bus from Naha, for example Line 20 to Nago Bus Terminal, and get off Busena Resort Mae bus stop – it takes about 2.5 hours and costs 2200. From there it’s just a short walk to the Busena Marine Park, which includes beaches, hotels, the observatory and a glass bottom boat, which can be enjoyed individually or via a combo ticket (1050 Yen for the observatory, 1560 Yen for the boat or 2100 Yen for both). If you start your day early, you probably can continue to the famous Churaumi Aquarium, but I’d rather recommend doing that together with the Tropical Dream Center and the amazing Bise-Fukugi Tree Road. (All destinations are much easier accessible by car, of course, but you can still reasonably do them by public transport.) The glass bottom boat was a bit underwhelming, to be honest – I guess because most fish are not that interesting to look at from above. The underwater observatory on the other hand… absolutely stunning! I’ve been to four of the six places like that in Japan, and of course it was the one with the most beautiful fish, because it’s the only one in Okinawa – the next closest one is about 800 kilometers north! The observatory itself was the most boring so far, just a rather plain white metal tube, connected by a rusting metal bridge, opened in 1970 and therefore already past the “replace or demolish after 50 years” rule of thumb that seems to slowly wipe out Japan’s glorious Showa era.
(Including the previously mentioned *Ashizuri Underwater Museum*, which was closed in spring of this year after 54 years in business, when a routine inspection found that the connecting bridge would need to be renewed, and never opened again after the  Kochi Prefecture Tourism Development Corporation decided that the 500 million Yen renovation wasn’t reasonable – despite having been a Registered Tangible Cultural Property since October 2022. Instead they’ll demolish the bridge and leave the underwater structure as is until a decision about it is made… which can take some time – it’s Japan after all.)
But, yeah, the fish at the Busena observatory – absolutely stunning! I’m not exactly a wildlife expert, but I recognized butterfly fish, surgeonfish and parrotfish as well as Moorish Idols, though I had to look up their English names for the most part. Not much else to tell you, to be honest, so… enjoy the photo gallery and maybe visit the Busena Marine Park Underwater Observatory yourself when in Okinawa – you never know when it might close for good! (Oh, and if you like those kinds of places, also check out the third underwater observatory I’ve written about, the *Katsuura Marine Park Underwater Observation Tower in day trip range of Tokyo*.)

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Hanakura Hospital

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Hospital, Japan, Kagoshima, Kyushu, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2016 on 2026/10/27| 5 Comments »

One of my favorite and exciting explorations turned out to have one of the most tragic background stories – please let me introduce you to the Hanakura Hospital.
When I explore an original find, I tend to do as little research as possible ahead of time to make it a truly original exploration – so when I walked up to the Hanakura Hospital, I knew nothing about it. Not even if it was really abandoned or what its name was. In my head (and my notes), I actually called it Saigo Hospital for years, because in sight of it was the “house” where Saigo Takamori, often called the “last true samurai”, was nursed back to health after a suicide attempt in November 1858.

Anyway, it wasn’t until I did some research for this article that I found out the Saigo Hospital’s real name and why it was abandoned.
In early August of 1993, Kagoshima was plagued by torrential rain for days, reaching its peak on August 6th at 99.8 mm per hour (for a total of more than 400 mm per day and 1000 mm for the week). Just before midnight a mudslide hit the Hanakura Hospital, killing 9 inpatients and 6 local neighbours who were seeking shelter in the massive concrete structure. Several other patients, nurses, and doctors were seriously injured, some permanently. The hospital was immediately shut down due to severe structural damage, the patients moved to other facilities. In 1994 the Hanakura Hospital reopened in a temporary facility, and in 1996 it moved into a brand-new building in Yoshino, in safe distance to the hazardous cliffs. The original structure, now known as the Old Hanakura Hospital, was preserved as a disaster memorial – mainly because access for heavy machinery was difficult and engineering experts were worried that removing the massive building could destabilize the slope and trigger more landslides.

When I arrived at the Hanakura Hospital, I didn’t know any of that background story – but I also don’t see any memorial signs. Would it have prevented me from exploring the place? Probably not. People die at hospitals all the time… and it wasn’t my first catastrophe struck abandoned hospital either – some of you might remember the *Sankei Hospital* in Hokkaido; which was actually properly fenced off and marked as a memorial site, but nobody died during the disaster as it happened much, much, much, much slower. Yet it feels a bit ghoulish in hindsight. Not nearly as bad as the Fukushima disaster zone tourists, but still worse than the average hospital exploration. And they clearly cleaned up the damage done by the mudslide – the building just looked and felt like a regular abandoned hospital. With a gorgeous view. That photo of the hospital with Sakurajima in the background. Stunning. I actually put it on the cover of a photo book I put together years ago for… no particular reason.
Anyway, at first I took only a few outdoor shots since the main building was clearly boarded up and covered in security stickers, so I had no hope of finding a way in. And to be honest, I didn’t, at least not into the main building that was heavily hit by the mudslide – but somebody ripped off the wooden panels covering a window of the upper building. The way there through some kind of trench was hard to find (thanks to overgrowth at its entrance) and the view was blocked by a small residential building, so I saw my opening the very last second, when I already mentally prepared for leaving with just a handful of exterior photos. That upper part actually looked much older than the dominating lower building, probably due to the hospital’s history. It was established as the Sakimoto Hospital Hanakura Branch in 1942 as a general hospital with a focus on treating tuberculosis – a widespread health crisis in post-war Japan, mostly solved by the end of the century (which led to the abandonment of the *Tuberculosis Hospital for Children* in Osaka). In 1962, the hospital introduced a psychiatric ward due to changing public medical demands – followed by no major incidents, except for being restructured and renamed Hanakura Hospital in 1989, until the events of August 6th 1993, known in Japanese as 8.6水害 and 平成5年8月豪雨; 8.6 Flooding / August 1993 Heavy Rain.
The actual exploration of the Hanakura Hospital was quite memorable, despite not being spectacular. It was more of a vibe thing than a blow me away photo op situation. Solo, original find, unknown backstory, sunny day, hospital, beautiful setting, virtually unknown to the internet and other urban explorers. The pictures might not live up to the story and my memories, but they don’t have to – this location was the complete package, at least to me.

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Brutalist Greenhouse

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chūbu, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2026/10/14| 7 Comments »

A small, unknown greenhouse with unknown status, but unusual architecture! The next location will be a big one, so let’s keep it small this time.

I first saw the Brutalist Greenhouse in a Facebook group about… brutalism… or biking… or something like that. Nothing abandonment related. But the hothouse looked abandoned and was described as abandoned, so I did some research and located it as one of the attractions of a public park in central Japan. A bit of a pain to get to from Osucka, but I’m a patient man, so I finally made it there not too long ago – with 50 minutes to explore and take photos until the bus back to civilization, or I would have been stuck there, surrounded by little more than fields, for another 2 or 3 hours.
Unfortunately there is not much to write about this place. According to the interweb, the glasshouse is officially not abandoned, though it looks like it hasn’t been used since at least the beginning of the pandemic. It also hasn’t been cleared out, so a lot of plants inside fell victim to the brutally hot and humid Japanese summers. The backdoor showed some signs of violence, but apparently nobody was serious enough to smash a window or glass door – of the latter you’d have to get past two of them at the entrance, both visibly locked. But all of that didn’t really matter, because I very much enjoyed the design of the greenhouse. It’s just a stunningly beautiful building, sitting quietly and slowly decaying in an active park – a sight for sore eyes on a sunny day. Not every abandoned place can be a hospital or a theme park… and I very much enjoyed this relaxed exploration!

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Shin-Hakodate Golf Club

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Golf, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2026/09/30| 3 Comments »

With up to half a year of snow, Hokkaido isn’t exactly a prime location for country clubs / golf courses – so it’s probably no surprise that you can find quite a few abandoned ones there…

Unlike in America, places in Japan and Germany featuring the term new (shin / neu) are usually close to the original spots, not completely new settlements. Shin-Osaka and Shin-Kobe, two Shinkansen train stations, were built a little bit outside of town, because it was impossible to bulldoze half a city just for some new train tracks. Neu-Ulm is just the Bavarian counterpart of Ulm, which is on the other side of the Danube in Baden-Württemberg – and the older version of Neuschwanstein Castle, Schwanstein Castle, is less than a kilometer away and now known as Hohenschwangau Castle. And that brings us to the Shin-Hakodate Golf Club… which is not in a brand-new settlement called Shin-Hakodate, but also nowhere near Hakodate or Shin-Hakodate Hokuto (the Shinkansen station in the city Hokuto, neighbouring Hakodate). Fact of the matter is, the thing is in Oshamambe and therefore closer to Lake Toya than to Lake Onuma – and with Nakanosawa Station closed for good on March 16th 2024, closer to Oshamambe Station than to any other one (for example Kunnui Station). Why it was called Shin-Hakodate? Nobody knows. But I guess to have uninformed fellas from Hakodate sign up for a membership, despite the one and a half hour long drive. Or maybe to make Oshamambe people feel like they are part of the big city now… (The history of the place is rather short and tragic: Opened in August 1988 as a luxury country club featuring Hokkaido’s first helipad, offering shuttle services and sightseeing flights, sold 15 months later, suspension of business due financial trouble in 1997 after an expansion into a resort failed because of the burst of the economy bubble, officially closed in 2004, kind of abandoned ever since.)
Anyway, lots of geography in the introduction, so let’s get to the exploration! I arrived on foot after taking the train to Nakanosawa Station – not a single soul in sight, neither around the station nor around the golf club. The building itself was in pretty bad condition, which wasn’t really a surprise, after almost 25 years of neglect, the Hokkaido winters, and being located 300 meters away from the coast (salty air!). The remote location definitely attracted more than its fair share of metal thieves and vandals, so plenty of entry and exit points, for both myself as well as the elements – which meant lots of moss and mould, despite excellent ventilation. Personally, I prefer my abandoned places to be in good condition (fewer health hazards, easier to breathe, less smelly), but if decay is your thing, you’ll probably enjoy the photos even more. Next to the club house main building with locker rooms, saunas, and a restaurant were two rather large wooden buildings for overnight guests – and 100 meters down the road an apartment building, probably for employees.
Was the Shin-Hakodate Golf Club worth coming all the way to Hokkaido? Heck no! But for me it was just a stop on the way from Hakodate to Sapporo as I made the trip for a few other places – two of which so spectacular that I haven’t even mentioned them here yet to protect them. And for a stop to stretch your legs it was a pretty good exploration. I have fond memories! Vague, but fond… 🙂

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Pyramid Park

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2026/09/15| 5 Comments »

The first time I saw the Pyramid Park must have been around the beginning of the pandemic on a photo a friend of mine took with a drone – I fell in love with the place instantly, because it looked like an abandoned amusement park wedged between two pyramids carved from mountain peaks somewhere in the Japanese Alps or so; with a chair lift leading up to it, like some weird Machu Picchu theme park in the sky. I avoid asking for locations, even urbex friends I’ve explored with a dozen times, so it took me a while to find it – and it turned out to be in Kansai, in day trip range, actually!

I was super excited, so I invited an acquaintance of mine to come along – they asked me before if they could join me on one of my explorations, and I thought a promising remote location like that would be perfect for a first timer. We agreed on a day and when I updated them where we would go a day or two before the planned day trip, one of the weirdest conversations I ever had developed. It went something like this:
“We’ll take a train from Osaka to X, and then a bus into the mountains.”
“Uhm, that bus… will it take us through Y?”
“Yes, how do you know?”
“Oh, then I can’t come!”
“What?! Why?!”
“Well, I was an English teacher there and quite well known, because I was on local TV. When I moved away a few years ago I said I would stay in touch, but I never did. What if somebody sees me on the bus?”
“Are you kidding me? So what if somebody sees you on the bus?”
“Well, it would probably hurt their feelings, because I didn’t stay in touch and now I came back without telling anybody!”
“So what? Apparently, those people weren’t important enough to you to stay in touch, so why care about their feelings now, after all those years?”
“No, I can’t go…”
I felt a bit taken aback, but then I remembered that this was actually the second time they did that. The first time we planned weeks ahead and the day before we were supposed to go, they canceled, because they forgot that it was their birthday weekend. Not the weekend of their birthday – their birthday weekend. The birthday was on Tuesday and this was the following Saturday! I’ll never understand the obsession a lot of Americans have with their birthdays… Some already talk about their birthday months! Just make it your birthday year and you can have a little party with a little hat and a little cake every single day of your little life! Who’s a good boy/girl? You are! Yes! You are!
So, if you ever wondered why I explore more and more by myself and became reluctant to meet up with strangers to go exploring – it’s people like them. And there’s been quite a few like them over the years. I probably could write an article just about people like them. The dumb excuses I’ve heard… after they contacted me! Some were even worse…

Anyway, the Pyramid Park! Three trains and one bus to the middle of nowhere! And, of course, a breathtaking hike up a mountain…
The Pyramid Park was opened in 1998 as an addition to a town run *leisure facility* already featuring an onsen hotel, a tennis court, a large putter golf course, a dog park, and a restaurant. The park itself was basically a sports facility featuring inline skating, skateboarding, archery, punk shot basketball, and climbing – plus a bouncy dome and several slides; and of course a restaurant plus gift shop. In 2004 a typhoon hit the area and caused severe damage. When that happens, you either read on social media that “only in Japan, which lives in 2050!” the place reopened within days of the time the damage was done (for example the sinkhole in Fukuoka or the bridge to Kansai Airport) – or you’ll never hear about those things again, for example the Hidaka Main Line (partially closed for good), the Tsuragu Line (partially closed for good) or the Meisho Line (partially closed for more than six years). Or this place. Which took an additional hit by bureaucracy in 2005, when the town was absorbed into a bigger city. The new municipality kept the undamaged main facility running, but let the Pyramid Park rot, before closing it permanently in 2011.
A little more than a decade later yours truly finally showed up, huffing and puffing up that darn mountain on a godawful hot and humid September day. You’d think that early autumn in the mountains of Kansai would already be nice, but noooooooo! Maybe in the 1950s, but not anymore!
Unfortunately the place didn’t look nearly as spectacular from the ground as it did from the sky, but overall, it was still a darn good exploration! To this day the place is virtually unknown and rather hard to access, so despite the nearby hot spring, there was basically no vandalism – all natural decay. Wedged between two pyramid sides. In the mountains. Fresh air on a cloudy, humid AF day. What more can you ask for? (Other than reliable people in your life…)

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Miyamoto Musashi: Miyamoto, Okayama / Ganryu-jima

Posted in Chugoku, Japan, Kyushu, Okayama, Photography, Sacred Site, Travel, Yamaguchi on 2026/09/04| 6 Comments »

Musashi Miyamoto was one of the most famous sword fighters in the history of Japan and has been depicted in countless works of art – novels, movies, video games. In real life he fought in famous battles, for example in Sekigahara, and almost equally famous duels, like against Kojiro Sasaki. Later in life he became an artist and writer, penning The Book of Five Rings about strategy and martial arts. Since Musashi Miyamoto is part of pretty much every school curriculum, virtually every person educated in Japan knows about him – and yet even the most significant places of his life are still hidden gems.

I’ve been interested in Japanese history ever since I watched the original Shogun mini-series in the early 80s with my dad. As a teenager I read the book, in my early 20s I traveled to Japan for the first time, later I studied Japanese history at university, and in my late 20s I moved to Japan. I think I had the book Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa as a teenager, though I don’t think I got far into it… I always struggled with Japanese authors. Kenzaburo Oe, Haruki Murakami, even Soseki Natsume – though I love the beginning of “I Am a Cat”, one of the few books I can quote: “Gestatten, ich bin ein Kater! Unbenamst bislang.” (The other language versions I had to look up: “I am a cat; but as yet I have no name.” / “吾輩は猫である。名前はまだ無い。And German sounds so much more poetic than English in this case!)
Anyway, in late autumn of 2025 I decided to finally visit the birthplace of Miyamoto Musashi – which was in day trip range of where I live, meaning it’s in day trip range of about 90% of the overseas tourists visiting Japan; none of them to be seen there even on a gorgeous Saturday with fantastic weather!

Miyamoto, Okayama
Musashi Miyamoto, unlike Shigeru Miyamoto, was (most likely) born in Miyamoto, Okayama prefecture – halfway between Himeji and Tottori, right at the border to Hyogo prefecture; an area usually described as “deep in the mountains of Japan”. The easiest way to get there? By highway bus, despite a train station in nearby Imaoka (which all are part of a city called Mimasaka) named after the most famous guy from the area. Yeah, I had no idea either. Took me 19 years of living in Japan to find out that there is a train station called Miyamoto-Musashi Station! It’s a small one with only about 15 connections in each direction per day, about once an hour in average, hence the highway bus from Himeji – it’s easy, cheap, and doesn’t require several vehicle changes. (As of early September 2026: 10:30, bus stop 11 at Himeji Station, get off at Ohara Inter, 1900 Yen.) Getting back to Himeji, you can either take the bus from Ohara Inter at 16:13 or the 17:20 train from Miyamoto-Musashi Station via Kamigori Station.
I arrived at Ohara Inter to beautiful weather on a gorgeous Saturday in late November. The highway is a bit elevated, so you can see the train station in the foreground and the Miyamoto Musashi Budokan in the back – a large modern multi-purpose venue dedicated to martial arts, designed after a tsuba (sword guard) crafted by Miyamoto Musashi (I was told that on location, Wikipedia claims that a samurai helmet called kabuto was the inspiration, so… who knows?).
Upon arrival in the really, really lovely small town, surrounded by rice fields and dotted with kaki trees, there is so much to see – first there is the train station, which featured several statues, area guides and even some stamps, if that’s your kind of thing. From there I went over to the Budokan, which was surprisingly busy due to a singing contest held by NHK. Interestingly enough, that had no influence on all the other sightseeing spots in town. The Musashi Memorial Park, the Sanomo Shrine, Musashi’s birthplace, the Musashi Shrine, the family grave… all void of people.
There’s a small sightseeing center in the tiny center of the town, so I went there in search of some souvenirs. And they actually had quite a nice collection of non-perishable items like wallets, T-shirts, coasters, … Probably not enough customers for senbei or manju. Which is a shame, because Miyamoto is a super nice small town, absolutely gorgeous. The guy running the shop / tourist center was extremely friendly and closed the place for almost an hour to give me a guided tour of the birthplace area, including the Musashi Shrine; which he apparently does regularly, according to reviews on GoogleMaps. He even opened the Musashi Miyamoto Museum for me, which was closed during Covid and never reopened, so I could have a look.
Overall one of the best day trips ever, doable from pretty much everywhere between Kyoto and Okayama. Unlike Otaru or Hakone, this is really a hidden gem off the beaten tracks!

Ganryu-jima
Ganryu-jima or Ganryujima is a small island in the Kanmon Straight between Honshu and Kyushu. Known at the time as Funa-jima, because it was shaped like a boat, it’s now famous for the duel between Musashi Miyamoto and Kojiro Sasaki – who ran a sword fighting school named Ganryu and apparently used the term as his nom de guerre, hence the new island name. Both Miyamoto and Sasaki were successful and ambitious swordfighters at the time, and rivals from afar – so they had a duel arranged by daimyo Tadaoki Hosokawa on April 13, 1612. The two had never met before, but Miyamoto, being a bit of a prick that he was, arrived hours late to unsettle Ganryu… and to whittle a spare oar into a heavy wooden training sword on the way to the island. Upon arrival Sasaki lost his shit and Miyamoto cracked his head open with the whittled oar. The end. In August 1917 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries started to expand the island from 17k square meters to more than 103k square meters in 1980 for their shipbuilding business. They owned the vast majority of the now uninhibited island until 2003, when they transferred about a third of it to the city of Shimonoseki… so I guess they still own the majority, but now allow visitors to the public park, which has been turned into a tourist attraction and memorial of the famous fight.
Access is rather easy – just take a bus from Shimonoseki Station or Shin-Shimonoseki Station to Karato bus stop, and then a boat from the nearby wharf to Ganryu-jima. There is not much to see or do on the island, so you’ll probably leave after an hour or so, but the Shimonoseki / Moji area is also surprisingly nice, so check out the Kaikyo Yume Tower, the Moji harbor area, and / or walk through the Kanmon Tunnel underneath the straight from Kyushu to Honshu. A really lovely way to spend a day, which I did in March of 2026.

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Kochi Shipyard

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Factory, Haikyo, Japan, Kochi, Photography, Shipyard, Travel, Urbex on 2026/08/12| 10 Comments »

Almost 15 years passed between my first abandoned shipyard in Japan and the second one. That’s a really long time, considering that Japan is an island nation with a huge shipbuilding industry! And those places couldn’t have been more different…

My first solo trip to Kyushu is one I have very fond memories of as it included an exploration of the *Kawaminami Shipyard* as well as a day trip to *Ikeshima*, virtually unknown back then. Now the management of every overseas urbex tourist is sending their “L@@K what I found BY CHANCE” clients there as it is one of the low hanging fruits; you know, like *Kinugawa Onsen* and *Kejonuma Leisure Land* (those photos are from 2014, a few years before it became a tourist attraction…) The Kawaminami Shipyard was a really interesting exploration, despite being one of the more touristy urbex spots of its time. Mainly because it was used to build kaiten during World War 2 – basically the underwater version of kamikaze bombers; one-man suicide torpedoes.

No such reports about the Kochi Shipyard, which dates back to the year 1900. Commercial shipbuilding and repair only. And while the Kawaminami Shipyard went bankrupt for good in 1955, the Kochi Shipyard stopped all activities in spring of 1961 – only to be re-founded in summer of 1961 after being restructured by a company from Kobe. 25 years later, in September 1986, the shipyard closed for good. After about 20 years of decay the staff accommodations were demolished in 2013, followed by most of the factory site in 2018. In spring of 2024 yours truly showed up finally have a look; fashionably later, but better than never…
At first sight, the Kochi Shipyard looked like a dystopian nightmare. The former administrative building was 110 meters long, four storeys high (plus signage on the roof!), and just massive; like an outbuilding of the Ministry of Love from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Including some smaller building attached, the whole thing stretched to about 200 meters in total with only a few access points, all featuring the usual “Do not enter!” signs. Not to mention the concrete wall and the included massive metal floodgates. Part of me was really excited about the look of the place, part of me was devastated that it turned out to be an impregnable fortress.
10 minutes before my bus was scheduled to leave, I decided to have a quick look at the waterfront and maybe get a quick shot of the back of the building, despite the large fence. Towards the end of it, the road leading there was elevated to get over another one of those concrete walls with floodgates… and there it was: A hole in the fence, below street level and therefore out of sight of the main road. All the time I spent on the outskirts of the shipyard, being frustrated that there was no way in – and there it was, the way in! There also was a bit of activity on some of the boats, including a small yacht, so I was hesitant at first, but… it had been a really long time since I’ve explored an abandoned shipyard – and who knows if I would ever get an opportunity again, so I squeezed myself through the hole and past the thorny scrubs.
First I took a few quick shots of the waterfront, but then I quickly went a little bit further inland, away from the boats and the road – towards the main building, which looked a lot less threatening from the back, which probably actually was the front. Unfortunately it was completely locked and untouched by both vandals and metal thieves, so I guess all the signs on the other side fulfilled their purpose. Large abandoned industrial sites like that are rare in Japan, so I progressed slowly and carefully… and finally made it to some kind of large metal workshop, loose parts squeaking in the wind – a constant reminder to be extra careful. It was a windy day, so the sky constantly changed between sunny, cloudy, and light rain. Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful solo exploration. A picture says more than a thousand words, so instead of dragging this out, I’ll leave you to almost 40k words worth of photos. Please enjoy! (And check out the links at the beginning for more seafaring explorations!)

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Forest Playground

Posted in Abandoned, Chugoku, Haikyo, Japan, Okayama, Photography, Roadside Attraction, Travel, Urbex on 2026/07/22| 10 Comments »

Most neighbourhood playgrounds / parks in Japan are a disgrace! Some compacted dirt ground, possibly a small patch of gras, with good fortune a tree or two, maybe a swing and a climbing frame – on the compacted ground, not the gras! In most of Europe they would probably be considered a health hazard and closed for good. Of course there are plenty of good ones, too, usually as part of rest stops or sightseeing spots. But the vast majority of them are shite and not even worth going to for reading a book! Once a fee is charged, they can be downright spectacular though!

The Forest Playground was part of the latter category, though I’m not sure if it was a direct or an indirect fee. I had seen the park on social media once or twice and thought it looked interesting, so whenever I randomly looked at GoogleMaps, I kept looking for what could be an abandoned outdoor playground on a forested slope. The thing is: Japan is a large country that mostly consists of forested slopes. The needle in a haystack comparison is a joke when put next to my chances of finding that playground! But… abandoned places in Japan seem to have the wonderful ability to find me, so after a few sessions on GoogleMaps a small miracle happened and I spotted what looked like a large playground on a forested slope. It was in the outskirts of a resort consisting of a hotel, a dozen holiday houses of various sizes for rent, an indoor sports center, a gateball hall, an athletic field, some tennis courts, a town hall, and three museums – all tied together by a large park. And the best of all: It was in day trip range!
The road leading up to the parking lot of the Forest Playground was blocked off by one of those accordion gates, a really low one, but there was plenty of parking in the vicinity. And most of the playground parking lot was actually covered with tree debris – looked like somebody was cleaning up the surrounding and probably stopped due to Covid. The whole thing was actually much larger than expected (since I’ve only seen a few photos of one small area), so we spent more than 3 hours exploring and documenting the place.
Next stop after the parking lot was the lower playground – a really nice, rather big playground at the bottom of the forested slope. From there were followed a nice path up to the goal of the Adventure Coaster… which wasn’t a (roller) coaster at all, but a dry toboggan run – or Sommerrodelbahn, as we say in German, a summer luge track. Right next to it: A small cable car for those too lazy to walk up the slope to the mountaintop area. Well, mountaintop… The height difference was maybe 60 meters. And we didn’t have a choice anyway, for obvious reasons. So we continued to follow the regular path, sometimes cobbled, sometimes asphalted. Next stop was the event square or rather event area, because nothing there was square – the area was actually a really nice and rather flowy brutalist outdoor… place, apparently for events, and with a nice view down into the “valley”. I love structures like that, so I very much enjoyed that part, despite the brutal humidity and rising heat of an overcast early summer / late rainy season day. Then we finally reached the mountaintop area with the start of the toboggan run, the upper cable car station, a rest house selling snacks at ridiculously low prices by today’s standards (softcream for 200 Yen, kakigori for 300 Yen, chicken pilaf for 400 Yen). Looks like the park was opened in the early 1990s and closed in 2003 – almost 20 years before I took some photos there. Well… some. I actually liked the place so much and it is that rare that I decided to publish a gallery consisting of 75 photos. By far the largest ever in Abandoned Kansai history – but history has shown that nobody cares about second parts and hardly anybody cares about revisits, so I can as well publish them all at once. Which brings us to the final part: The descent along the gigantic climbing contraption on the slope. Hardly ever was I that heartbroken to see something abandoned, because that thing was a work of art! As a kid I would have gone crazy, but even as an adult and despite its condition after 20 years without maintenance, I tremendously enjoyed the careful descent back to the entrance area.
The Forest Playground is without the shadow of a doubt one of my all-time favorite locations. Rare, unique, natural decay, great company, outdoors. It doesn’t get much better than that. Basically the *Viewpoint Playground* on steroids… but in a good way! 🙂


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Upside Down House

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, House, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2026/07/15| 21 Comments »

Let’s do a quick one this time since the last article apparently interested nobody… The number of comments has gone down significantly over the years. Blogs are a dying medium – but 0? That’s rare.
Well, whatever…
The Upside Down House, some strange structure welded onto a truck. Not sure if it was ever moved. Not with the staircase on the side, that’s for sure. The earliest StreetView is from 2013 and it was already abandoned back then. Quirky little thing. Enjoy.

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Ghibli Ryokan

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Showa, Travel, Urbex on 2026/07/01| 2 Comments »

There is probably no cheaper and more desperate cry for attention than slapping the Ghibli label onto something – and yet there have only been a few abandoned places I’ve been to that deserve this label more! 🙂

It was on a cold autumn morning when I found myself deep in the mountains of Shimane after a 5 hour long drive that started in the middle of night. If you would have told me that I was the first Caucasian to ever come through this little town, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I probably also was the second one when I came back almost 10 years later. Strangely enough those are the places where I feel comfortable the most. After almost 20 years in the big city I loathe places like Tokyo and Osucka more than ever, though that feeling caught me pretty quickly after moving to Japan. Unfortunately that’s where the jobs are, especially for foreigners, so the countryside as a place to live will have to wait until retirement… For now rural Japan is for the weekends – and by God, this was as rural as it gets. I actually had no idea where I was exactly until I paid attention to road signs on the way back since a friend was driving, but I was excited to be far away from grey skyscrapers and miserable suit wearers – and a bit disappointed when my friend pointed towards the rundown ryokan behind as. Apparently this was the main attraction of the day. Really? We must have passed about half a million abandoned places in those 5 hours. Did we really have to continue through the night to this one? Well, as it turned out, yes, we really did!
One thing I learned rather early on at the *Deathtrap Hotel* was that you never ever enter an abandoned building on a higher floor – you enter as low as possible, because otherwise you never know what’s underneath your feet. Much like the Deathtrap Hotel, the Ghibli Ryokan was built onto a slope – and my friend headed straight to the top for an easy entrance away from the “main street”. Well, his decisiveness implied that he knew that he was doing – and he learned it the hard way, as I found out later while exploring the building. At first we took pictures of the upper part, but when we made our way down, he told me: “If you want to go to the kitchen there on the lower floor, don’t take the small wooden stairs – go left and then right, and take the staircase that the guests used! The wooden stairs are not good anymore…” “How do you know?” “I crashed through them when I came here first. This is my third visit.” Well, there you have it…
The building itself, despite being pretty rundown, was just awesome to explore, because it wasn’t one of those generic hotels with a main hallway and rooms to the left and the right. It looked like it was expanded at least once, maybe two or three times, and you never knew what to expect behind the next corner… and there were plenty of corners! Probably more corners than rooms. One of which was the home to a large butsudan, a Buddhist altar usually found in private homes. Thinking of it, this might actually have been the private area of the ryokan owner… In any case, it was spectacular, and I’ve never seen anything like it before or after! Also really cool: The lobby and the bar of the ryokan, both Showa AF! Urbex at its best – time travel via natural decay. Well worth driving 5 hours there… and then back again.

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