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Archive for the ‘Shiga’ Category

Taga Mine

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Mine, Shiga, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2010/07/07| 6 Comments »

I felt a bit like John Rambo at the beginning of First Blood when I was walking through the mountainous countryside of Shiga prefecture, kilometers away from the next train station or bus stop. But only in that way that I was completely out of place, expecting some xenophobic misanthropic cop to pick me up and drive me to the city limits (where another xenophobic misanthropic cop would pick me up to bring me to the other end of the city limits, where… this repeats until I would have been back to Osaka) – luckily the only police car I saw ignored me…

This April day started with an uncomfortable decision: Being halfway through a cold with general weariness and a serious cough I felt a little bit under the weather, I had no plans for weekend and my haikyo buddy was busy – on the other hand I just spent 5 days in an artifically lit office and this was the last sunny day before another period of rain. The choice was between staying at home and watching a sunny day passing by or going for a haikyo all by myself (which I enjoy less and less since I’m more and more aware of the dangers involved) or going on a hike – which I did the weekend before.
I decided to do a hybrid of the last two options. A while ago I marked a spot on my very personal haikyo map that I labeled “Taga Mine”. The problem with that was, that the name given by the (online) map creators was completely different and that there was another Taga Mine that is still active till this very day (and usually only active mines are marked on online maps like GoogleMaps and Mapfan anyways). So in the end I was hoping for a nice hike to find out if the marked spot is the active or the abandoned Taga Mine; or if there was anything at all. The only hint I had about the abandoned Taga Mine was a Japanese video on Youtube, which could have been mislabelled – so my trip was a long shot.

A few minutes after I left the country road to walk up the mountain I found the T crossing where I should walk to the right. Sadly it turned out to be a dead end with heavy machinery. So I gave up hope finding the abandoned Taga Mine and continued to the left, expecting either to find an active mine or nothing at all, switching into hiking mode. After a while I found another T crossing and I continued to the right. I kept walking and I reached an unimposing forest road to the right again. I don’t know why, but I left the paved road and followed it for a while, dragging my coughing self up that mountain – you can’t imagine the joy I felt when I reached an open rusty gate in front of a stone pit!
The excitement calmed down quickly when all I found was a rusty shack and a concrete room at one side of the slope – was this really the Taga Mine or just something else? Getting closer I saw that there was a machine in the ground that was obviously used to crush the rocks from the stone pit. At that moment I heard some twigs cracking. Would there be security at a remote and long abandoned place like that? I coughed a bit louder than usual, but I got no response. Maybe a fellow haikyoist? Well, I minded my own business taking pictures and after I was finished I heard the cracking twigs again, so I went towards the direction where I assumed the sound was coming from – that’s when I found the main remains of the mine with a huge conveyor belt and several other buildings, built very closely to the steep slope. I heard some noises as if somebody was walking across corrugated iron and when I got closer and looked down I saw lots of it lying on the ground in front of the mine – by nobody was there.
Not really feeling well thanks to the mix of fatigue and adrenaline rush I slid down the mountain a little bit to reach the main part of the mine. The ground was covered with metal, concrete and tons of leaves from many, many autumns. It was hard to tell if the next step would be solid earth or something else. I got closer to the buildings and then something happened that really, really scared me: I heard two animals fighting on the ground behind me, must have been pretty close to where I stood, maybe 100 meters away. At that point I looked at the ground and realized that there was wild boar feces everywhere all across the mine. I’m not a wildlife expert, but I know what a boar sounds like – and I know that you don’t want to run into one in spring, especially when exploring a seriously rotten mine at a steep slope all by yourself.
I continued my explorations, but I could feel how both my fatigue and the adrenaline rush got stronger by the minute, trying to make my way through the concrete and metal structure while taking pictures, expecting a wild angry animal at any second. To be honest, at that point I didn’t enjoy the haikyo at all and I only realized when I was looking at the pictures from the safety of my home how great of a location the Taga Mine was (and still is until it collapses – which I guess will be relatively soon…). That’s when I also found out that it took me a whopping 2 hours to take pictures, although the place wasn’t that big and I felt like I was hurrying; man, was I in a hurry…

Looking back at the adventure I consider it one of the dumbest and at the same time most exciting things I’ve ever done. Yes, I worked hard all week, I wanted to take some haikyo pictures (for the first time in three weeks) and I wanted to be in nature enjoying this beautiful spring day – but being sick and exploring a hillside rotten mine in the middle of nowhere on your own is pretty much the urban exploration definition of stupidity. If you are ever happy enough to find the abandoned Taga Mine and not the active one make sure that the weather conditions are perfect, that your gear is top notch and that you have at least one person at your side. As much as I like my pictures of the Taga Mine… this is the first place I’ve been to that I consider a deathtrap and I highly recommend to stay away from it if you don’t know exactly what you are doing. I definitely learned my lesson from that trip!

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Koga CC House

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Shiga, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2009 on 2010/02/07| 2 Comments »

After I finished shooting at the Koga Family Land I walked back along the street that surrounded the Koga Country Club at the eastern side. I knew from a Japanese map I found on the internet that there must have been another haikyo nearby, some kind of club / guest / employee house. Unfortunately the person who marked the map missed the spot, so I had to look around for quite a while – but in the end I was rewarded with a haikyo I only saw a small picture of beforehand since it is widely ignored by the usual crowd visiting Family Land.
Although I spent almost an hour taking pictures and videos at the place I’m still not 100% sure what the building was used for exactly. Right at the (open) entrance were dozens of shoes lockers and a vending machine. From there I went to a private bed room (maybe the quarter of a caretaker?), a staircase to the second floor, another small antechamber with doors to five (hotel style) rooms, a washing / rest room – and to the left I found a dining room and a kitchen. Going up the stairs there was a pretty big open space, some kind of lounge for the people staying there, now completely empty. To the left was a hallway with about 10 rooms, to the right two more rooms (one of them locked) and another washing / rest room. From the lounge you could go outside on a terrace – now filled with lots and lots of furniture.
Overall it was an average haikyo, I guess. But I nevertheless liked it since the building wasn’t vandalized at all and in decent condition – and since it’s very close to the mostly demolished Family Land the combo is definitely worth a visit. I just still wonder why there was an open package of instant noodles next to a porn video in one room…
(Addendum 2012-02-06: I just added the video walking tour – I never intended to publish it, so please don’t get your expectations too high. This was one of the first videos I ever took…)

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Koga Family Land

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Demolished, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Shiga, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2009 on 2010/01/23| 10 Comments »

Koga Family Land (thanks to weird transcription of the original Japanese also known as Kouga Family Rand) in Shiga has the reputation of being one of the most impressive and most documented abandoned places in Japan. Well, I guess it’s more correct to say it had that reputation, because of after more than 20 years of quiet decay this once so strangely beautiful place was torn down and ripped apart towards the end of 2008 – there are claims that the owners were worried about the dangers to people visiting the place, but I think they were more worried about the golfers having to deal with people walking on their private property along a street passing by several holes. Yes, the golfers. Koga Family Land is located in the southern part of a country club, surrounded by mountains from all other sides – the only way to get there (without sliding down some hill as described later…) is by passing through the same entrance the pink polo shirts wearing men in their best years are using. No problem while the park was open, big problem now.

So after I hiked along a country road for a few kilometers I reached the country club and walked along the street surrounding the golf course to get to Koga Family Land – or what I hoped was left of it. After about five minutes a friendly young man in a golf kart asked me to leave: Private property. Although my knowledge of Japanese is little of course I understood what he wanted. And even pretending not to, claiming in English that I’m just a hiker that lost his way, didn’t help. He insisted on me leaving. So I went back to the country road and followed it for a few kilometers in hope I could find some kind of back entrance to the KFL – without success. On my way back I heard some golfers and saw a steep slope and a little river separating me from the country club. Well, if you don’t let me in using the front, I have to use the side.

So after a fun but slightly dangerous slide down and finding a ford through the river (okay, it was a small river…) I was finally back on the property of the country club. After hiding from the golfers for quite a while I was like “Screw it!” and walked right across the golf courses – since I lost orientation and only assumed where the remains of the park could be I had to take measures into my own hands. The result was quite a few disturbed faces clearly displaying one question: “Who the f* is that f*ing foreigner and what the f* is he doing here?!” To my surprise no security people showed up and it seemed like the golfers were way too scared of me to approach me. After about 15 minutes I disappeared along an asphalted way to the south – I finally found some signs of the park. Or at least I thought so.

It took me another half an hour to find actual remains of Koga Family Land as the rumors on the internet proved to be right: It was almost completely destroyed. At first I only found some moorings and small piles of garbage (one with the seat of a merry-go-round) – and a confusing maze of ways. No signs, no buildings, no rides. Just nature taking back an area that once was an amusement park. Luckily two of the park’s buildings were not made of the light materials usually used in Japan – they were made of concrete and I guess therefore too expensive to be torn down. And who would come to see two buildings when you know that there was a whole park once? Well… I would!

Sadly enough exploring those two buildings was not nearly as exciting as finding them.
The first one I saw (and entered) was a souvenir shop, the price lists still on the wall. Filled with all kinds of signs from the golf course and the former theme park it was in pretty bad shape – especially the cafe part of it, where the wallpapers were molding and falling off the walls.
The second building seemed to be a restaurant once with quite a big dining room / photo exhibition hall on the first floor and a pretty stuffed second floor – including a kitchen, all kind of furniture, rotting blankets and pictures painted by kids.
What I love about abandoned places is finding elements of daily life, so I was very happy to take pictures of an empty soda bottle. It’s the little things that make certain visits worth!

After leaving the second building I strolled around in the area with high hopes to find more remains of park, but I was diappointed. So I went back to street surrounding the country club I was hiking along for five minutes some hours ago. This time no guy in a golf cart showed up to give me a ride to the main street. Which turned out to be very good for me as I stumbled across another abandoned building on my way out – belonging to the country club and way more interesting than the KFL buildings. But that, dear reader, is a story for another time…

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