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Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Gamagori City Pool

Posted in Abandoned, Aichi, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Sports, Travel, Urbex on 2019/10/23| 2 Comments »

First only partly abandoned, now under demolition – the unusual story of the Gamagori City Pool.

Recently I don’t have much luck with abandoned water parks / city pools. Pretty much exactly a year ago I went to Tsu in Mie to explore a supposedly abandoned pool and arrived at dawn just to found it to be under demolition. What made that story even more painful is that I had been there before with my buddy Dan, but we didn’t dare to enter as it was already later in the day and we were worried about getting caught due to traffic passing by and a nearby police station.
EXACTLY the same story happened to me last Sunday at Gamagori in Aichi! An abandoned city pool I didn’t dare to enter with Dan around noon, revisited with other friends at dawn, only to find it to be under demolition. Friggin hell! (Strangely enough both revisiting days turned out to be wonderful exploration days as the fallback location were nothing short but spectacular. More about those locations soon. Fortunately they are still insider tips, so I’m in no hurry to reveal them myself…)

The Gamagori City Pool was a public outdoor bath in Gamagori, Aichi, and featured a lap pool, a kiddy pool, a wave bath as well as some kind of lazy river and a couple of water slides. It opened in July 1975 and closed to the public in 2010 after the somewhat rundown facilities started to leak – another reason most likely was Laguna Gamagori, a nearby theme park with a large modern water park that opened a couple of years earlier. But apparently the Gamagori City Pool didn’t fully close – it only did to the public and the “fun parts”. The small building with the changing rooms and the lap pool were somewhat maintained and used by a nearby high school, despite their own pool. But I guess two are better than none…

Unfortunately my exploration of this half-abandoned location fell flat as it was under demolition as of past Sunday – even worse since a large hole in the fence allowed easy access without being seen or heard by the half a dozen students who for whatever reason met at the entrance building at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning… So I took a quick few snapshots for a busy week with little time for an article, which came sooner than expected as you can see. Shoga-fuckin’-nai – there’s nothing one can do about it… *except having another look at the spectacular Indoor Water Park* I explored a while ago!

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Abandoned Japanese Cars

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel on 2019/10/16| 3 Comments »

A handful of abandoned cars somewhere in Japan. I’m sure Gred Cz will like those photos… and can probably identify all car models.

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Mixed Bag Golf Club

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Golf, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Sports, Travel, Urbex on 2019/10/08| 1 Comment »

A last minute exploration of a once thriving country club that offered a little bit of everything: abandonment, demolition, and solar park.

I’ve written about quite a few abandoned / closed golf courses in the past, and they basically all have the same problem: They get turned into solar parks quickly! Surprisingly quickly, considering that publicly Abe and his monkey bunch clings to nuclear power like a tick to a dog – but when you drive around Japan or just look at it via GoogleMaps you’ll quickly realize that solar power is HUGE in Japan, although hardly anybody talks about it. One reason: You have plenty of golf courses all over the country and a declining amount of players for quite some time, so more and more of those clubs close. Now, a meticulously taken care of country club takes years to look abandoned after it closes – and usually somebody takes this flat, scrub-free land and turns it into a solar park before you can even figure out what happened. So whenever I try to explore a countryside golf club usually one of two things happen:
1. The whole area still looks pristine – no photos, because the buildings are inaccessible and everything else looks not abandoned.
2. The whole area is fenced off and a solar park has either been built or set up – no photos, because nothing is abandoned.

Now, the Mixed Bag Golf Club (you get it?) was a bit different. First of all the road leading up to the former club house wasn’t fenced off, but the whole damn thing didn’t look promising when I saw that the golf course part already had been turned into a solar park. Unfortunately it was quite difficult to get a good look at it, because the club house was also already demolished – unlike at the *Solar Park Golf Club*, where the roof of the otherwise locked club house offered great views at the gigantic solar park. But also unlike unlike at said park, there were some other remains at the Mixed Bag Golf Club, for example some abandoned golf carts in not so good condition. And the remains of a driving range – the building was gone, but the poles holding the nets were still there. Combine all of that with a beautiful sunset and nothing better to do as time was running out and voilà, here you have the Mixed Bag Golf Club…

Beggars can’t be choosers and sometimes you gotta play the hand you are dealt, and this location, this article is a prime example for that. Was it as good as the *Countryside Golf Course*? Not nearly! But better than nothing, isn’t it? See you next week! Hopefully…

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Onsen Hotel In The Mountains

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2019/10/01| 4 Comments »

A small onsen hotel hidden in the mountains, the entry area almost completely overgrown – a neat little find and a great way to end a day of exciting explorations!

On paper this small abandoned onsen hotel in the mountains was barely worth visiting. It only had about a dozen rooms, it was build from wood on a super steep slope (making it a potential deathtrap), it was a long drive from anything else and there was nothing about it that screamed “explore me!” – which actually made it surprisingly attractive. Since the construction used a lot of wood, the hotel and therefore this exploration felt very warm and comfy – the welcoming “handmade soba” creating expectations that wouldn’t be fulfilled anymore. The entrance hall was surprisingly high and narrow, the reception desk tugged in a corner opposite the kitchen. Behind: A party room and some guest room. To the other side: A rotenburo on the same level and two gender separated bath overlooking the mountains in the back – surprisingly spectacular views, no doubt about that. Hardly any signs of natural decay, only a little bit of vandalism. The guest rooms and even the baths were in overall good condition, though the wooden floors felt a bit soft and squeaky here and there, which was quite uncomfortable in the “above the slope” parts.

Overall a relaxed exploration of a nice little hotel I would have loved to stayed at when it was still open – I’m sure the handmade soba was delicious!

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Japanese Glasses Company

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Factory, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2019/09/17| 3 Comments »

This internationally active, award winning Japanese glasses company featured several interesting offices and meeting rooms, two large floors of manufacturing / repairing space – and a goddamn cat!

Approaching this unremarkable and rather well maintained building in the industrial suburbs of a mid-sized Japanese town, it became pretty quickly apparent that this exploration could turn out much more difficult than anticipated. Except for a damaged gate and some unkept plants, there was only one sign that this building wasn’t in use anymore – and it was literally a sign, put up by a realtor… which meant that depending how old this sign was, the building technically wasn’t abandoned.
Due to several active companies in the neighborhood it was out of question to try the front door – unfortunately the potential back entrance / delivery bay was in sight from the road AND a next door trucking company, which was surprisingly busy at the time of my visit, considering that it was a Saturday. But you don’t drive for hours on a day off and then get scared off by technicalities like that, so my friend Shota and I rushed to the back and took cover in the shade of what probably was the outdoor part of the company’s ventilation system. It was a hot spring day (and unfortunately not a hot spring day – those are so much more relaxing, especially in winter!) and pretty much every living creature was looking for a cool spot. Something we didn’t consider when we climbed up the loading bay (no steps or ladders…) to get inside the building though what looked like a pried open and slightly overgrown backdoor. All of sudden one of the most bloodcurdling scream I’ve ever heard and some furry thing sprinting at thunder speed between Shota and I, almost giving me a heart attack! A goddamn cat was lying in the shadow unnoticed, feeling the urge to run away instead of staying cool by keeping cool. Friggin hell, I’m getting too old for this shit!
Fortunately the back door was indeed open, so after making sure that nobody was alert by the little ruckus, we slipped through an opening and got inside.

The abandoned Japanese Glasses Company turned out to be a large building with a lot of empty space. Award winning in the early 90s (including at least two Good Design Awards of the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization / Japan Institute of Design Promotion) and bankrupt 20 years later, financial disaster apparently didn’t strike by surprise – almost all rooms were empty, which was especially disappointing in the case of the large production / repair spaces. Even the offices and meeting rooms were mostly empty. A couple of display cases here, some boxes with a few documents there… and three safes by three different manufacturers: Crown, Naiki, and Waco. Navigating some of the rooms wasn’t exactly easy as we could have been easily spotted from the outside through some large – and the possibility that a real estate agent could have shown up at any moment wasn’t a nerve-calmer either. My favorite part of this location was the office of the company’s president – thick carpet flooring, two heavy desks (one for work, one for small meetings), wooden wall paneling; and a large world with Japan in the center. Ah, the 80s… when Japan reached for world dominance once more, only to be stopped last second again… and without nukes this time though.

From an objective point of view the abandoned Japanese Glasses Company was a slightly above average exploration at best. Too much empty space, not a very good risk/reward rate, quite a long drive to get there. Nevertheless I liked the location quite a bit. I had never seen pictures of the location before (or since…), so it felt like a real exploration. Abandoned glasses companies are probably quite rare and the left behind stuff in the upper offices was interesting indeed – especially that large map. I knew they existed and I’ve seen them before on pictures, nevertheless it was quite thought-provoking to actually stand in front of one in an abandoned office that was in use for several decades. It’s always a pleasure to question your own views, in my case Eurocentric ones.

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Apartment Building Construction Ruin

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kanto, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2019/09/11| 1 Comment »

Somewhere in the Tokyo burbs you can find this overgrown apartment building construction ruin…

On the way back from an amazing road trip to Tohoku my buddy *Hamish* and I made a last overnight stop in the suburbs of Tokyo – which can mean pretty much anything as the big bad city stretches forever and a day in all directions. Heck, this one was so far out, it wasn’t even in Tokyo prefecture anymore. But traffic around Tokyo can be a pain, especially after a long weekend, so we decided to stay close, but not too close, to cross some average locations of that sheer endless list of abandoned places.

Construction of what was supposed to be a 9-storey apartment complex began in January of 1991, but obviously stopped about three floors in. Probably a bit oversized for that kind of rural area, but basically not a bad location – right next to an elementary school and only 10 minutes on foot away from the closest train station. I guess the real estate bubble created and killed this project… and 25 years later it still sat pretty, yet overgrown at a somewhat busy road surrounded by family homes with gardens and even some fields. The fact that the structure was that overgrown made access impossible at first and the “no tools or weapons” rule we followed kinda backfired – a machete would have been super handy! Instead we had to find an opening in the thick vegetation. Once I spotted something that looked like an animal trail we were golden – easy in, easy out, easy exploration. Solid concrete building, the elevator shafts “secured” by barbed wire. The apartments had no inner walls, windows or doors yet, so there were large, flat concrete spaces available for graffiti people to take advantage of. Which they did. Unfortunately the self-proclaimed artists were neither experienced nor talented, at least not in comparison to the stuff I saw in Germany at the *Ausbesserungswerk in Trier*.

Overall a nice quick and easy exploration – nothing you would want to travel for, but on the way to / from other places it was nice, especially thanks to the vast vegetation. No competition for classics like the *Nakagusuku Hotel* or the gorgeous *Most Beautiful Construction Ruin*.

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Nakagusuku Hotel Under Demolition

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Okinawa, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2019/08/29| 1 Comment »

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the demolition of the legendary Nakagusuku Hotel construction ruin has begun in May of this year and will conclude in March of 2020. The premises are completely fenced in by now and the iconic tower, which offered a fantastic view of the surroundings in pretty much every direction, has already been demolished.

Located in sight of the UNESCO World Hertitage site “Nakagusuku Castle”, the construction of the Nakagusuku Hotel began in the early 1970s under strange and chaotic circumstances and apparently without finished blueprints, resulting in a winding concrete complex with quite a few design problems. It looks like the hotel was only partly finished… and construction ended when the owner was committed to a mental hospital. I attached a couple of photos and a video to the end of this article, but *you can find out more about the hotel’s history by clicking here* – *or if you are more interested in my eight hour long exploration you can click here*.

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Trump Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2019/08/20| 17 Comments »

The abandoned Trump Hotel was as pompous as “The Donald”, as fake as his tan and as forsaken as most of the people who voted him into office…

When entering an abandoned place you always want to be fast and inconspicuous to not gain any attention – and while we didn’t fail as miserably as I did at the *Japanese Mental Hospital*, we had a surprisingly hard time to find a way in, especially considering that some of us had already been there; and if you remember one thing about an abandoned place it’s how you got inside. Apparently somebody was still taking care of the building and so we had to almost fully circumvent it before finding a damaged door through which we could enter on all fours. A couple of rather dark corridors and rooms later we found ourselves in the main dining / entertainment room of the hotel – the luxurious old-fashioned interior of the main areas (not the disappointingly dull room hallways) beared some resemblance to kitschy classics like a Ritz-Carlton; just brighter, introducing some (but not too much!) lightness. White columns every couple of meters, large chandeliers and beautiful mirrors on the ceiling, heavy upholstered armchairs, marble floors, painted walls and ceilings in a style I associate with in early modern France / England – but I’m not an art historian, so if somebody knows more about the style of the paintings and the interior, please feel free to leave a comment.
Unfortunately this gigantic abandoned luxury hotel was not the first, but the last location of the day, so we quickly ran out of time – resulting in a highlights tour of the large complex. Next stop: 9th floor. Why? Nobody would tell me. A combination I was not happy about, because of course the elevators didn’t work anymore and pretty much every floor had high ceilings, so the 9th floor here was more like the 12th or 13th floor at a regular hotel. The hidden and not very well-lit staircase got back to the public area with red carpet and more wallpaintings, but also large piles of cable insulations (yep, the place was mostly stripped and therefore vandalized) and pigeon poo – disgusting!
But then the climb all of a sudden was worthwhile. A small staircase lead up half a floor to the left and into the most spectacular shared bath I have ever seen anywhere. Sure, kitschy as an 1980s rom-com, but absolutely fascinating – red and gold interior, painted walls, marble, large, colorful tiles… and in the actual bath a series of large sculptures, Roman / Greek style, reminding me of a quadriga or something like that. So much to see, so much to take photos of… so little time.
And upon closer look everything was fake. The place looked a bit like the standard photo of Trump’s apartment in New York (hence the name Trump Hotel for this location – the moron had nothing to do with the place as far as I know… and it’s really unlikely that he did, of course!), but the gold of course was poorly painted on, not beaten gold; the painting on the other hand weren’t painted, but printed photo wallpapers; the columns weren’t massive stone, but poorly carved plastic veneer; and I’m sure all the tiles and marble weren’t imported, but just cheap “in the style of” fakes. At first look everything was spectacular, at closer look a lot was actually quite poor craftsmanship. And a bit rundown, too. After all the hotel was 65 years old at the time of my visit.
Nevertheless this was an exciting place, so we rushed back down again. Since the whole top floor was one big shared bath, there had to be another one… there always was another one from back when we only had two genders… and it was on the 7th floor of the other hotel tower. No connection on that floor, of course, so we had to go ALL the way DOWN and then ALL the way BACK UP again… *sigh*
The second shared bath (they probably switched between use for men and women on a weekly or maybe even daily basis) was a lot less pompous and included more traditional Japanese elements, like an outdoor bath (rotenburo) and an outdoor stone hot tub with a wooden deck in now rather sad condition. It felt a lot more like a high-class onsen than a Spa World type of place – really, really nice, with spectacular views.
I was ready to call it a day when one of my friends dragged me away from the group and down a series of labyrinth-like stairways and hallways. Our final destination: A lower rooftop pool area between the hotel’s two towers – with two waterslides connecting an upper area with a lower area. Since it was already pretty much dark outside and our other friends were waiting for us, we only had time for a few quick shots, but the detour was definitely worth almost getting lost.

Despite spending a good two hours at the abandoned Trump Hotel, it was one of the most rushed, yet exciting explorations I’ve ever done (maybe with the exception of the *Japanese Mental Hospital*). Like the namesake I chose for the location it was big, fake, somewhat rundown, yet strangely exciting and fascinating in a way that you just can’t look away. At the same time I was glad that we found a way out when we almost got lost after reuniting with the rest of our small group after dark. What a nightmare… just to imagine having to spend four or even eight years there!

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Hospital By The Sea

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hospital, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2016 on 2019/08/06| 4 Comments »

Old Japanese clinics are amongst my favorite abandoned places – and this one was just gorgeous!

Finding abandoned places in Japan is relatively easy as there are so many of them. Go to an average onsen town and you can barely throw a stone without hitting an abandoned hotel. Finding really good abandoned places is difficult in Japan, too – especially countryside hospitals. Before the rise of modern hospitals after World War 2, general practitioners in Japan tended to live in more or less large houses with a more or less large clinic part included. Some were modest accommodations with a small waiting area, a front desk and an examination room at a separate entrance of the house, others were large mansions with several examination and patient rooms, a pharmacy, a study and maybe even a surgery room. A century after being built, most of those countryside clinics of the early 20th century have been demolished, are in rough condition… or are still hidden between regular houses in the countryside – passing by you’ll never know if it’s a (former) hospital or not, sometimes not even if it’s really abandoned or not.

Like the Hospital By The Sea! Located in a small coastal town, surrounded by a still upkept garden, it just looks like an old wooden building in need of a fresh layer of paint. Maybe still inhabited, maybe maintained at minimum to prevent the worst, maybe recently abandoned… Even three years after my exploration I’m still not sure about it. (Well, nobody lived there anymore, so the building was definitely not inhabited anymore!)
The front was carefully locked, but it’s usually easier to find in via the back anyway – and this surprisingly complex structure was no exception. Overall still in decent condition it was a crumbling wall that allowed access… to the private quarters. Right next to what turned out to be my favorite room, the family bath, featuring yellow tiles, a wine-red tub and an unusual ceiling. Beautiful, just beautiful! Various items on the floor, like a soroban, an old microscope and a box with little bottles filled with chemicals lead like a trace through the house to the clinic part. Coming from the back I first ignored the extremely steep stairs to the upper floor and had a look at the former entrance – the usual: front, waiting room, examination room, small pharmacy hidden underneath a staircase. Some chemicals lefts behind, but otherwise fascinatingly clean – a set of X-rays made me wonder whether they were taken at a different place or here… and if here, what happened to the equipment? Probably cleaned out with the rest of the building.
The upper floor was empty, too, but featured some beautiful woodwork – the hallway, the patient rooms… the windows! One of the wooden panels was removed and gave interesting insight on how electricity was wired throughout the house underneath the floor. I’ve never seen anything like it before or after and it was fascinating to see. You can read and listen to things as much as you want, but seeing stuff and making your own conclusions is so much more memorable! Though only from the inside, unfortunately there were also signs of decay – hopefully somebody will step up and restore the Hospital By The Sea before the damage is beyond (reasonable) repair!

Despite being mostly empty, exploring the Hospital By The Sea was just fascinating – a building straight out of a folk museum; just real and without supervision. Nothing I hadn’t seen before (the now vandalized or maybe even gone *Tokushima Countryside Clinic* comes to mind!), but a really beautiful location and a rare opportunity in general!

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Nara Dreamland Unknown, Part III: Parking Lot Game Center

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Demolished, Haikyo, Japan, Nara, Pachinko, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2019/07/02| 1 Comment »

The *Demolition of Nara Dreamland* started almost three years ago, yet there are still some parts of it that are widely unknown to fans of this once amazing abandoned theme park. Today I’ll present another building most explorers walked by, but didn’t get in – the Parking Lot Game Center!

One of the first photos I ever took of Nara Dreamland back in December 2009 showed parts of the eastern parking lot, the parking garage, the ticket booth… and a locked white building with a brown roof. This was before Nara Dreamland became famous on the internet, so it was in very good condition and without any signs of vandalism. Just 14 months later the roller shutters were covered in graffiti, but the unmarked building was still inaccessible.
Fast forward to 2016: 5 years and thousands of urbex tourists later somebody finally took an effort to pry open one of the shutters for about one third – Nara Dreamland had been sold in an auction in late 2015 and the massive amount of scaffolding on the parking lot implied that demolition word would start rather sooner than later; and I guess we all know how much of a motivator running out of time can be! I still didn’t know for sure what the building was exactly, but I think I’ve been told that it was a pachinko parlor that closed several years before Nara Dreamland shut down for good in 2006.
Well, not much of a surprise that it turned out to be a ransacked game center. About 1/3 of the large, dark room was pretty much empty, the rest of it was cluttered with all kinds of equipment – stools, tools, pachinko ball baskets, a statue on a counter… a large counter. The way the stuff was placed was clearly to discourage people who entered through the front from going through all the stuff, kind of a barricade. And whoever did it, was successful in the case of yours truly. After spending half the night and quite a few daytime hours in the park I was tired and exhausted, so I took a few pictures and a quick video… or so I thought. Because unfortunately I couldn’t find any photos of the inside of the Parking Lot Game Center when I dug deep into my archive last weekend. So I guess pictures from the outside, dating from 2009 to 2017, will have to do… and the video, of course!

Finally exploring the inside of the Parking Lot Game Center was exciting and underwhelming at the same time. On the one hand it was little more than a rundown, underequipped pachinko parlor (no signs of the billiard tables advertised on the window signs!), on the other hand I had to wait almost eight years for this moment – and I knew that not a lot of people had seen what I was just seeing. It was a nice, exotic piece of this huge puzzle Nara Dreamland had been. And if you like rare stuff, have a look at *part 1* and *part 2* of this series about places at Nara Dreamland hardly any visitor knew existed.

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Nara Dreamland Game Center in 2009
Nara Dreamland Game Center in 2011

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