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Archive for the ‘Urbex’ Category

Sapporo Dreamland (Teine Olympic Amusement Park)

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Sapporo, Travel, Urbex on 2025/01/13| 7 Comments »

The demolition of Nara Dreamland in late 2016 / early 2017 was devastating, especially for explorers living in Kansai. Since then I explored several other abandoned theme parks, usually to leave disappointed. But now it’s time to introduce you to the Teine Olympic Amusement Park – or as I like to call it: Sapporo Dreamland!

To make one thing clear: Sapporo Dreamland has nothing to do with Nara Dreamland or its actual sister park, the 2002 closed and 2003 demolished Yokohama Dreamland. The term is just snappier and more memorable than the rather clunky official name Teine Olympic Amusement Park. And as much as I hate revealing too much about locations, this one is so big and so unique, you could probably find it via GoogleLens or some smartass on Reddit anyway. Needless to say that I also wouldn’t be able to write anything about the park’s history, little as is known anyway. So… let’s get to it.

I first went to Mount Teine in 2012, when I arrived in Sapporo a day earlier than my co-explorer for a *Haikyo in Hokkaido* road trip – to kill time I went to check out the *Mt. Teine Ski Lift* and *The Olympic Ruins Of Sapporo 1972* solo. On my way to the latter I actually must have seen the iconic blue Ferris wheel of the already abandoned Mount Teine Olympic Amusement Park, but I guess I was so focused on the task at hand that I didn’t pay attention to it. Or maybe I thought it was still active. Who knows? In any case, more than a decade ago I wrote freely about the previously mentioned locations and apparently neither me nor anybody else was like: But what else is nearby? Some time in the second half of the 2010s I heard that the bobsleigh goal of the Olympic Ruins was demolished in early 2017, so I had a look at Mount Teine again and made a note of that strange blurry blob of unmarked something nearby – and forgot about it again… until I saw some amazing photos of an abandoned theme park posted by a friend on Twitter. Now, I could have gone down the easy path and asked for the location, but I seriously HATE IT when strangers do that to me, so I hardly ever do it to my friends; maybe a handful of times in 15 years. Finding locations is part of the urbex experience, and exploring a location earned is so much more fulfilling than just going there like it was a tourist attraction on GoogleMaps. So I had a closer look at my map of unexplored potential abandoned places… and to my surprise the photos fit exactly to the former blurry blob of unmarked something, which was now displayed in much higher resolution! The goddamn thing had been right in front of my eyes for more than half a decade!

Now, Hokkaido isn’t really in day trip range from Kansai (though technically it is…), so it took me a while to get back up there, just in time before Covid hit. Not that it really mattered, because unlike most countries, there were hardly any travel restriction within Japan – getting in or out was a nightmare, but early 2020 till late 2022 was the golden age of domestic tourism in Japan. It was AWESOME! *I even wrote an article about it back in 2022.* (The only negative experience I made during that time was getting denied entry to the Pear Museum in Kurashiki early during the pandemic, long before the vaccine, as they restricted access to Tottori prefecture residents.) Anyway, a total of 7 years passed between my first and my second visit to Mount Teine… but it was really worth the wait as the abandoned Teine Olympic Amusement Park turned out to be Nara Dreamland 2. Maybe even better than Nara Dreamland 2, thanks to the park’s most iconic ride – a gigantic blue Ferris wheel at Plaza II!

At the time of being closed for good after the 2009 season, the entry fee to Sapporo Dreamland was 2500 Yen (an extra 300 Yen around Golden Week!). Due to cold weather at “best” and tons of snow at “worst” the park was only open from Golden Week till late September / early October, which is a very short season to make money. (Ski season on the same mountain is usually from late November / early December till late April, but you had to add a few more weeks to make the rides winter-proof / ready for operation.) It surely didn’t help that even during that time, the park was only open on Saturdays, Sundays, and national holidays – with the exception of summer school holidays, when the Teine Olympic Amusement Park was open every day. The place also had a reputation for being rather run-down and having occasional accidents, so it was probably good that they shut it down before something really bad happened, like at *Expoland*, where a student died due to a rollercoaster accident.

Speaking of rollercoasters – the park had two of them, though neither was modern, like the ones you might know from USJ or Fuji-Q Highland. In total there were 26 attractions, the latest being an area called Exciting Dinosaur Land (Wakuwaku Kyōryū Rando), constructed in 2004 – two or three dozen dinosaurs on about 500 square meters (sorry, I have no idea what’s that in Fahrenheit…) with some of them being parts of rides or slides. The dinosaur playground was located right between Plaza I and Plaza II, the two main areas of Teine Olympic Amusement Park, which were connected by a short path through the surrounding forest. The origins of the park date back to 1966, when Sapporo won the bid for the Olympic Games – six years before the actual event. The city was actually one of the few that really benefited from the Games as it managed to make a profit and also opened the first section of its newly built subway system, now consisting of three lines. Hence the nostalgia and bids for future games, despite the fact that those most likely will turn into a disaster, similar to Osaka and the Expo (1970 / 2025).

The first time I explored Sapporo Dreamland was back in 2019 on a rather unpleasant spring day – not only can you see patches of snow on some photos, but the weather was a bit windy and constantly changing between foggy, drizzly, and overcast. All the photos in the gallery below are from that visit, which took me about 2.5 hours – admittedly a bit rushed, but while I was in the Dinosaur Land, I got an excitement boost when seeing somebody driving around in a car, which brought back terrible memories from when I first explored Nara Dreamland almost a decade prior. Fortunately I was able to hide in the fog, but as soon as the car was gone I moved on to Plaza I, where I took only a few quick shots before leaving. The atmosphere there was mind-blowing though, especially when exploring solo and not knowing exactly what to expect. It is absolutely beyond me, why this location is not more popular and all over the internet. Even among Japanese urbexers it’s not even close to being Top 20 in my guesstimation, probably not even Top 50, despite being rather easily accessible. Nara Dreamland on the other hand was all over the web back in the mid-2010s, a few years after I started writing about it. I met more tourists at Nara Dreamland than Sapporo Dreamland most likely had explorers in total. Let’s see if that changes after this article. I kept my mouth shut for almost six years, but I wanted to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of Abandoned Kansai with a spectacular location – and on this day 15 years ago I published my (partly failed) exploration of the *Mount Atago Cable Car*, the first real article. Who would have thought that 15 years later I would still be exploring and writing about it? My first exploration of Sapporo Dreamland wasn’t my last, of course. Since then I’ve been back twice – once on a sunny late spring afternoon and once on a rainy autumn day. So if one or more of the international urbex tourists picks up on Sapporo Dreamland later this year, I’ll be ready with another article… and another article. And then I have another large, abandoned amusement park on hold – one I haven’t seen anywhere on any urbex site, not even Japanese ones. Not to mention all the other spectacular places I’ve been exploring. I kept quiet about Sapporo Dreamland for more than five years… Imagine what and how many other locations you don’t know about yet! 15 years into it and the best is still to come!

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Love Hotel Tiara

Posted in Abandoned, Japan, Love Hotel, Photography, Sex, Travel, Urbex on 2024/12/24| 2 Comments »

Love Hotel. Tiara. Snow. Abandoned. Vandalized. Yada, yada, yada…
Merry XXX-Mas everyone!
*More abandoned love hotels.*

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Rainbow Pool, Showa Kinen National Park

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Dark Tourism, Haikyo, Kanto, Photography, Tokyo, Urbex on 2024/12/11| 2 Comments »

Tourism to Japan is at an all-time high, so I guess it’s time for another urbex location for tourists. Enjoy a walk in the park and check out this abandoned water wonderland by simply looking over / through fences!

I’ve talked about the risks of urban exploration plenty of times in the past – and all those nuisance streamers and urbex tourists from overseas don’t make the whole thing easier for us locals, who just want to enjoy something fun to do in our spare time. Life in Japan is tough enough…
A couple of years ago I created a *Special “Urbex for Tourists”* to point out places where people can enjoy the aesthetics and atmosphere of abandonment without all the pesky dangers. Places like *Ikeshima*, *Tomogashima*, and *Okunoshima*. For today’s location though you don’t have to take a boat to a shima… pardon… island! You don’t even have to leave Tokyo. The now abandoned Rainbow Pool sits right there for you to enjoy in Showa Memorial Park, next to Nishi-Tachikawa Station in the outskirts of Tokyo. All you gotta do is get there, pay up (450 Yen entrance fee!) and enjoy.

I guess it’s this Matryoshka doll system of organization that makes the Rainbow Pool not really viable as a typical abandoned place. When the park is open, there are so many people present even on an overcast weekday, that there is basically no chance you would be able to jump a fence and explore the place without getting caught. When the park is closed, you would have to break into an active location, most likely while it’s still or already dark, and then you would have to jump a fence to explore the Rainbow Pool – with the risk of triggering god knows what kind of alarms or running into security / regular employees doing whatever they are paid to do in the park during off-hours. There are many much easier to explore water parks, which is probably why I’ve never seen the Rainbow Park on regular urbex sites.
So, what else is there to say about this place? You can walk along the fenced Rainbow Pool area (up until summer 2023 it cost an additional access fee, so of course it was always separated from the main park) and enjoy the abandoned looks of it – maybe take some photos over / through the fence. It’s not a real exploration and of course it’s impossible to get any really interesting shots that way, but it literally is a relaxing walk in the park, so why not? Not all explorations are enjoyable or spectacular or exciting – and overall it was still an above average experience, especially in combination with the autumn leaves at the time. So, yeah, have a look yourself, if you are in the area, and support a local park with your 450 Yen. And if you would like to know more about abandoned places for tourists, *check out this article*. 🙂

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Non-Urbex: Katsuura Marine Park Underwater Observation Tower

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kanto, Museum, Non-Urbex, Photography, Roadside Attraction, Travel, Underwater Observation Tower, Urbex on 2024/11/27| 8 Comments »

In spring I visited the *Ashizuri Underwater Aquarium* on Shikoku and it blew my mind. One of the greatest day trips ever. When all of a sudden something occurred to me that I never thought of before: What if… there are similar structures in Japan? I did some research… and here we go: The Katsuura Marine Park Underwater Observation Tower in Chiba prefecture, a fun day trip from Tokyo!

The Katsuura Marine Park Underwater Observation Tower is located in walking distance of Ubara Station, about two hours by train (or car…) from Tokyo Station – an area popular with surfers even in November, but not exactly a destination for tourists from overseas… or any other tourists. I have been in the area before about a decade ago to check out some abandoned places, but of course at the time I didn’t know about B-Spots like this hidden gem.
Arriving at Ubara Station on an unexpectedly sunny Saturday morning in autumn I was surprised that I was the only person to get off the train. Not the only non-Asian person, that happens a lot at places I go to – the only person in total! The Japanese countryside is dying, that’s no secret, but come on! The only person on their way to a lovely seaside town with a beach, cliffs, a museum and an underwater aquarium? And then people wonder why train lines and bus stops get abandoned constantly, accelerating the death of rural areas. And that’s something you can’t blame on overseas tourists alone – they follow the beaten Instagram path promoted by the JNTO. Japanese people need to go out there! It’s bad enough that they stop living in smaller towns… at least support them and the declining public transport system by heading out there instead of hiding from fresh air and human interactions in anonymous housing blocks, surrounded by millions of people, yet not speaking a single word all weekend!
Where was I? Oh, yeah, the lovely Japanese countryside, Chiba coastline, to be more specific. The Katsuura Marine Park was created in June of 1974 and consists of the underwater observation tower, a restaurant, a museum and several other facilities as well as some of the surrounding nature. The tower was opened on November 1st 1980, almost a decade after the one in Kochi. Its total height is 24.4 meters – the above sea level entrance and viewing platform is about 8 meters above water, the underwater main area with 24 windows is about 8 meters below sea level. Which leaves… 8 meters for the structure on the platform? Seems a bit much, maybe the numbers don’t really add up. Details, I guess. Fact is: The entrance fee is 980 Yen, slightly more expensive than the Kochi one – and the bridge to the tower is a bit more scary as it is longer and maybe a bit more rusty. A small viewing platform on the way is even roped off currently as the railings have rusted away! Visually I found the Kochi tower quite a bit more appealing, though an accidentally underexposed shot made the Chiba one look like from a post-apocalyptic world – it would perfectly fit the Apple TV+ show Silo. The concept of both towers is the same though: You have to walk down a staircase to the bottom of the sea to observe a variety of fish in their natural habitat, the Katsuura one though features small cushioned rest areas on the way up and on the way down. No photos of the underwater platform as the underwater aquarium was surprisingly crowded, despite my rant earlier. I guess Tokyo people have more cars than I thought. And more kids. Tons of kids, actually. Or maybe they were all Chiba countryside locals who desperately need a car, because like I said: public transport in Japan is dying, despite what the “L@@K AT THE HOKURIKU-SHINKANSEN!!!” propaganda is trying to sell.
To make up for it, I added a photo of an abandoned boat I found on the way to the marine park… and a few more of what looked like the hideout of a 1980s action movie villain. The concrete structure is just off the coast in the ocean, connected by a bridge similar to the one leading to the tower. It’s not marked as anything on the map, but it might have been used as a facility / headquarter during the construction of the underwater aquarium. In any case, it looked really cool, but to my surprise wasn’t abandoned. On the third photo you can see a white car – and when I was heading back to land, I saw some guys handling oxygen tanks, so maybe it’s a diving center now?
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this… and if you did, please check out the *Ashizuri Underwater Aquarium* again for comparison.

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Japanese Alps Country Club

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Golf, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Sports, Travel, Urbex on 2024/10/30| 2 Comments »

You’d think that (almost) flat land in the mountainous center of Japan is so rare and valuable that every bit of it is used for housing and farming… but I guess there is always enough space for yet another country club!

Abandoned country clubs / *golf courses* are among the trickiest places to explore. They tend to consist of large areas of well-kept, rather flat ground, which means for the first few years of abandonment they tend to not look very abandoned as it takes some time for nature to take over – and usually real estate companies are rather quick to snatch up the land and sell it to some solar farm. I’ve been to several dozen closed / abandoned places like that all over Japan – 60% of the time they have been fenced off and turned into something useful (the Japanese government loves to play the a$$hole and officially sticks with nuclear power in one of the most earthquake and tsunami prone areas of the world, but in reality there are gigantic solar parks everywhere from Okinawa to Hokkaido!), but 30% of the golf courses still looked too new. The hedges were still in shape, the holes still recognizable, the club house still inaccessible. Maybe 10% were actually fun to explore, the remaining 90% not so much… a mixed bag at best, but often just a waste of time.

The Japanese Alps Country Club was definitely in the latter group of 90%, but within that group among the better locations. Pretty much all buildings on the premises had already been demolished, but the construction of the solar park hadn’t begun yet – machinery and some material was already there though. So I had a look around, enjoyed the beautiful views on this gorgeous spring day during sakura season, took some photos… and even found a few (inaccessible) bungalows on a slope, probably for guest golfers on vacation from far away. A relaxed exploration of a slightly disappointing location, nevertheless not a waste of time at all. Being in the middle of nowhere in Japan on a sunny day is always a win in my book.
And if you want to see an abandoned country club with golf karts (on a rainy day) I recommend checking out the *Countryside Golf Course*. It’s been a while since I published that one…

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Fern Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2024/09/10| 5 Comments »

“Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day. You learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play. If you got a hunger for what you see, you’ll take it eventually. You can have anything you want, but you better not take it from me.”
And people say hotel explorations are not exciting…

Okay, one of those people is me, but the Fern Hotel was really quite interesting! Not because of the plethora of plaques at the entrance, not because of the dull rooms… and especially not because of the rundown baths. 95% of the place was just another smelly, run of the mill abandoned hotel. But all it takes is one special room and a forgettable location becomes special. In this case it was literally ferns growing in the hallway between some party rooms! I guess the metal thieves left a window open, the carpet got drenched repeatedly during rainy season(s), mould and moss started to grow… and then bigger plants followed. A few years later I arrived in late spring / early summer and found a little jungle inside this otherwise totally average abandoned hotel. Okay, the rusty scale looked kinda cool, too. And they had the program of a Japanese adult movie channel from January 2000. Don’t worry, no sexy photos included, not even with the usual mosaic. Other than that… not much. But the fern area was really cool – so please enjoy the photo gallery!

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Japanese Work Bus

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Transportation, Travel, Urbex on 2024/08/28| 7 Comments »

Three months ago I posted an *abandoned blue bus* – today it’s a white, yellow, orange, and red one… but with completely different interior! 🙂

My apologies, the last few months have been hot, humid, and extremely busy. For a while it looked like as if I could go back to posting at least biweekly again, now I’m rushing to get one done before the month ends. Once more another quick one because of it, but I hope that I’ll be able to publish some meatier yet vegan friendly locations soon.
For now there we have another bus on the side of the road. I almost walked by it, but then I looked down a dirt road leading up a slope and saw this fine specimen parked there, partly overgrown already. Upon approach I sunk ankle deep into the slightly swampy ground. Fortunately it was only late spring on a cloudy day, not summer already, or the situation most likely would have been a lot worse. Nevertheless not really a fun experience wearing new sneakers. (I was on vacation and didn’t really gear up with boots and protectors…)
It looks like the bus belonged to a (now defunct) construction company, so I guess this one was used to transport employees to work sites. Not much to say about it. Standard interior, just a nice little roadside find. Nobody around, decent decay – less than half an hour total. Enjoy!

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Olympic Ruins Of Japan

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Nagano, Olympia, Photography, Sports, Travel, Urbex on 2024/07/24| 2 Comments »

A few days from now the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris will begin. A spectacle that costs about €9 billion – and probably will leave some abandoned places behind… like in Japan!

Japan’s history as a host of the Olympic Games dates back to 1964, when Tokyo was home of the Summer Games. Sapporo 1972 and Nagano 1998 followed with Winter Games, before the disastrous Tokyo Summer Games 2020 were held in 2021. Sapporo (who had won the bid for 1940, but couldn’t follow through for obvious reasons) remembers the 1972 games so fondly that there was a large campaign to get the games in 2030 – an effort that became rather unpopular quickly in the aftermath of Tokyo 2020. 2034 is still in talks, but extremely unlikely… Some politicians seem to cling to it, but that’s pretty much it.

Since I avoid Tokyo like the plague (or Corona… still no infection!) I don’t know what the status of their Olympic ruins is, but both Nagano and Sapporo still have some installations left. The Olympic bobsleigh track in Nagano called Spiral is a tourist attraction now (coordinates: 36.71088, 138.1578), the other remaining venues that have been abandoned are mostly forgotten now – some have been demolished after my visit, for example the bobsleigh goal house in Sapporo and that gymnasium used by athletes to change and prepare right before their competitions. I compiled a little gallery with some interesting photos at the end of this blog entry, but here is a list of links to the full articles I’ve written in the past, in case you want to see (and read?) more:
*Sapporo 1972 (1)*
*Sapporo 1972 (2)*
*Nagano 1998 (1)*

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Horror Wolf – My Scariest Urbex Related Experience (So Far)

Posted in Animals, Asia, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Non-Urbex, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2024/07/17| 5 Comments »

A new video in a long time, just weeks after I said to expect no more. But this one is different…

For most of its existence, Abandoned Kansai featured a video or two with every article, in addition to text and photos. They were pretty much always taken at the end, after I’ve explored the respective location and knew it reasonably well – which was kind of necessary since I didn’t edit them at all. As I mentioned before, I initially took them only for my own reference… and to make use of a Sanyo Xacti I originally intended to be my main camera in Japan, but then I picked up urbex as a hobby and the photo quality was kind of sub-par for that hobby, but the videos were pretty good (for the time), so I switched to Nikon for photos and kept the Xacti for videos. Fast forward something like 10 years and the Sanyo died – at first I was upset since I also lost a days’ worth of walkthroughs, including the amazing *Trump Hotel*, but then I was kinda glad that I had an excuse to not take videos anymore.
Fast forward six or seven years. I had forgotten what a pain in the behind those videos were for me and my co-explorers, so I made the stupid mistake of buying a Insta360 X4 at Yodobashi Camera for an upcoming trip to Hokkaido after being instantly fascinated by the camera’s ability to easily take 360° photos and videos – something I quickly regretted. *Please click here if you missed that story…* Long story short: The experience with Insta360 and Yodosucky Camera was so off-putting that I probably lost interest in video for good.

A few days later I was exploring an original find in the outskirts of a rather remote town in Hokkaido, when I heard some ungodly noise in the distance – as if animals were screaming and somebody was yelling. It really kinda freaked me out, but of course I finishing taking photos. If I would have quit because I was afraid a little bit, I wouldn’t have made it past my first explorations back in 2009. Afterwards I continued up a hill, further away from the town, and entered another abandoned building – and again I heard those bloodcurdling screams, this time a bit closer. I once more finished my exploration, trying to stay calm and then… I walked further up the hill, towards the noise. As you do when you are by yourself on a rainy day exploring what are supposed to be abandoned buildings in the outskirts of a rundown town in Hokkaido. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, I walked around a corner of a road, when all of a sudden I saw some fur on a metal construction – and seconds later the screams again! My first thought was: a dog on some torture device! Then some kind of head was turning towards me… and I realized that it was a wolf Halloween mask with flickering eyes. Like something from a haunted house. Now, you have to know that I don’t like Halloween or horror… or violence in general; except for Dead Rising – Frank West covered wars, you know! So this thing freaked me out for the third time, but this time really for real! What the heck was this contraption?!
Well, the sound obviously was pre-recorded and came from a speaker, so at least I wouldn’t have to deal with some animal torturing hillbilly. When the most messed up animatronics I have ever seen finally stopped after 20 or 30 seconds I carefully had a closer look. Upon inspection the setup apparently consisted of a solar panel connected to a battery, connected to the screaming furry fella, with a control unit and two speakers underneath. I was intrigued, but nothing happened for a while…
I quickly set up my photo camera, which I hardly ever use for recording videos, but this was too strange to not record. Initially I came from behind and didn’t know what to expect, but for the pictures and videos I decided to use an angle that shows a bit more. Nothing happened for another 15 minutes. I got closer from the road at the left side, trying to trigger the device. Still nothing. Then a friggin fox walked by on the main road, right in front of it! Still nothing. My camera was mounted on a tripod, set to video – and everything happened super fast, so I only got blurry photos of the second furry fella. Fortunately the fox couldn’t care less about me and I was spared an attack as well as a rabies shot. At this point I was running out of time, and when you have to catch one of four buses per day, you make sure to meet their schedule! So I walked a bit down the “main” road, in front of the damn contraption – and finally it triggered! Repeatedly. With different sound samples. So I adjusted the camera in a way that I could trigger the thing without being seen and… well, enjoy! It might not be that scary on video, but in reality it got me pretty good. Both from a distance as well as approaching it for the first time from behind.
I still don’t know what the Horror Wolf was for though. It was located at a T crossing halfway up a hill amidst abandoned / rundown companies in the outskirts of a rather remote town. The next residential buildings were about half a kilometer away, the town center with the bus stops rather 2 kilometers. The purpose most likely was to scare away bears, but I don’t know for sure.

And now please enjoy the first videos I have published in years… and probably the last ones ever. That stuff in a 360° video would have been so cool, but *the unholy alliance of Insta360 and Yodobashi Camera* had to mess up… 😦

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Hokkaido Sanitation Center

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Hokkaido, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex on 2024/06/27| 4 Comments »

No joy and excitement greater than finding and exploring an abandoned place without prior information. Please join me on a journey to a remote sanitation center in the far north of Japan!

To me, Google Maps is one of the greatest pieces of software ever written. Without it (or something similar) I probably would have never gotten into urban exploration – and Street View is the icing on that amazing cake. I was always fascinated by maps, from child days on, so even before I picked up urban exploration as a hobby in 2009, I liked Google Maps. In 2009 though I fell in love with it. I saw abandoned places popping up here and there on the internet, back then it was kind of an underground hobby and not nearly as mainstream as it is today – so of course I tried to had a look at them on Google Maps. I started creating my own maps dropping pins…
… And then I went out there exploring. At first most parts of the world map were rather blurry, and Street View wasn’t as widely available. The better the maps and SV got, the more I just had a look randomly. At first nearby, the Kansai area. Later all over Japan. Instead of watching TV I’d rather looked at Google Maps for half an hour. When I needed a break for 5 minutes, I checked out a countryside onsen town or a remote stretch of coastline – hoping to find a place that looked abandoned. I actually still do that several times a week. That’s how I found the Hokkaido Sanitation Center. Just a couple of abandoned looking structures in a remote area of Hokkaido, not a single soul nearby – which made it hard to get to, but easy to access. Fortunately the buildings not only looked abandoned, they actually were abandoned! That could have easily turned into a wasted day instead of a wastewater day.

When I explore in Kansai, I’m basically a good weather explorer. Don’t get me wrong, taking pictures in the rain has its own charm, but despite spending a lot of time outdoors, I’m actually not much of an ourdoorsy person. I like the comfort of a comfy couch and comfort food. I also like nature, but I prefer it tamed… or barbecued! So when it looks like a rainy day in Kansai and I have plans to explore (solo), I tend to postpone those plans to the next weekend. A luxury I don’t have on longer trips, because transportation tickets need to be booked and hotels need to be reserved – so then options on potentially rainy days are not “Now” and “Next week”, the options are “Now” and “Maybe never”. And never is such a sorry word, so I tend to explore in the rain. Which is what I did a while ago when I was in Hokkaido and I had to choose between a day of museums and onsen – and a day of exploring two original finds; places I found by chance on Google Maps.
A few modes of transportation after a delicious breakfast I found myself walking up to the Hokkaido Sanitation Center, about two kilometers away from the closest bus stop. Well, at least back then there was a bus stop. Looks like it disappeared since then, like so many others on Hokkaido, which becomes harder and harder to travel to by public transport – and that is really sad, because once you get away from what I call the Silver Route (Otaru, Sapporo, Noboribetsu Onsen, Hakodate), Hokkaido is probably the greatest prefecture of all!
Anyway, I was walking up to the Hokkaido Sanitation Center, nervous as always when approaching an original find, despite not having seen a single soul or car for like 20 minutes. Fortunately it took another 90 minutes and a hike back to civilization for me to see anybody else. There was a rather small fence around the sanitation center, which I guess is a fancy word for water treatment plant, but there were also some additional buildings, so they might have done some testing and stuff there to justify the name. Like I said, access was easy – I never break anything to enter anyway, but this time I didn’t even have to climb over or into something, there was enough space on the side of the main gate to get onto the premises. The hard part was finding the place and getting to it. I took some outdoor shots of various buildings, when the clouds finally opened and it started to rain. Time to find a way inside, which was equally easy as I hit the sweet spot of being there after curious visitors willing to crack open a (roll-up) door, but before vandals and metal thieves – and definitely before other urban explorers as I had never seen the place on other blogs or social media accounts. Therefore my nervousness quickly turning into having the time of my life leisurely exploring a mid-sized unknown abandoned industrial – it was amazing, despite the rain occasionally ruining a shot or two when I was taking more photos as I switched between buildings.
Speaking of unknown: Of course I know the full name of the Hokkaido Sanitation Center, it was written on a plaque next to the gate at the entrance, nevertheless I couldn’t find anything on the internet about its history. My gut tells me it was built post-war and abandoned in the 1980s, though I could be off by 20 years for both the opening and closing date. But who cares? I enjoyed the exploration and I really hope that you will equally enjoy the gallery below!

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