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Arima Onsen Retreat

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, House, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2016 on 2022/01/12| 1 Comment »

A small location, popular amongst a handful of Japanese explorers for a little while – the Arima Onsen Retreat.

During the Japanese real estate bubble in the late 80s, early 90s it became increasing popular for somewhat successful companies to have a holiday home for employees – everything from simple huts for self-caterers to small resorts with dedicated staff, everything from private trips for two employees and their families to seminar houses for whole teams. Popular areas were somewhat remote mountains with a view… and of course the outskirts of onsen towns. When the bubble collapsed, many of those companies couldn’t afford these houses anymore, and since nobody wanted to buy them, thousands of them were abandoned all over Japan, resulting in countless completely or half abandoned holiday villages. From an urbex point of view most of these places are rather uninteresting as the majority looked like wooden bungalows or regular residential buildings – and most of them were tightly locked, so unless some vandals or burglars broke in, access was rather tough.
One of the few exceptions was the Arima Onsen Retreat, a rather large company vacation houses in, you’ve guessed it, Arima Onsen – one of the oldest and most famous onsen towns in Japan, easily accessible from Kobe (30 minutes), Osaka (60 minutes), and Kyoto (90 minutes). Unfortunately there is not much to say about this exploration as it was basically a mostly empty apartment building – some chandeliers, a drum kit and a mahjong table were among the items left behind.
On one of the walls was a video intercom system I took a photo of, because it was one of the few somewhat interesting things there. Even more interesting: The interphone was manufactured by a company called アイホン or Aiphone… founded decades before Apple in Nagoya. When Apple released their iPhone in Japan, they applied for a trademark, but had to withdraw as their chosen term was confusingly similar to the already registered trademark of Aiphone. Both companies agreed out of court that the iPhone should been known as アイフォーン in katakana writing – and that Airphone should receive 100 million Yen, about 850,000 USD in 2006, for this unbureaucratic solution. In 2015 Aiphone released an intercom system that could be linked to the iPhone…

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Hiking Trail Youth Hostel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiking, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2021/12/07| 1 Comment »

Hiking is kinda of a strange hobby, isn’t it? On the one hand it’s as simple and literally down to earth as it gets. On the other hand it’s something only people with a certain living standard do, because if you can’t afford a car, a bike or even public transportation and you have to walk everywhere you need to go, the last thing on your mind is walking some more when you don’t have to – but this time for fun!
Strangely enough I realized that on my *second trip to North Korea* when we were driving up a mountain overlooking Rason and some people in the group were asking if we could hike the last few kilometers. The guardguide’s response to that was a sincerely surprised “Why the f#ck would anybody want to walk somewhere if it’s not necessary? Are you rich capitalists out of your mind? You consider walking a hobby?!” reaction, just slightly more friendly. Which actually goes along with experiences worldwide – hiking and mountaineering as a hobby was “invented” in the late 18th, early 19th century, at around the same time as motorized transportation, and became really popular after WW2, when common people in rich countries could afford some means of individual transport. Up till then people avoided the unpopulated wilderness as much as they could, aside from the occasional adventurer, poet or monk.
In Japan hiking and mountaineering became more popular from 1964 on, when Kyuya Fukada released his book “100 Famous Japanese Mountains” (日本百名山, Nihon Hyaku-meizan), later creating a boom when young Crown Prince and now Emperor Naruhito used it as a guideline for his own alpinist ambitions. Almost 60 years later Japan is a paradise for hobby hikers and mountaineers with trails and mountains covering everything from easy day trips to months long adventures on one of ten long distance nature trails with a length of up to 4600 kilometers.

The Hiking Trail Youth Hostel was located directly next to one of the most famous footpaths in Japan and opened right in time for the outdoor boom in 1965. Like so many things in Japan it wasn’t built for eternity and closed in 1985, though the upper building lasted till 2002, when earthquake safety regulations forced to shut it down. Being located at the edge of a forest on a slope, the abandoned youth hostel made for a gloomy exploration on a late afternoon – it was the kind of place you expect to find a dead body (which actually happened not too long ago at an abandoned hotel in Miyazaki prefecture!) or to get killed yourself, so I was lucky to have been once again with my friends Dan and Kyoko. Technically it was one of those rundown, vandalized, moldy pieces of “unexplorables”, but the light, though difficult, was beautiful – and some areas offered great photo opportunities, for example the staircase taken back by nature and the tatami room with the classic geisha dolls and the old TV. I don’t think any of us enjoyed exploring the Hiking Trail Youth Hostel, but I walked away with a handful of good photos that elevated the whole set as well with the warm and fuzzy feeling of having explored another abandoned youth hostel – only my second one in total, after the much cleaner *Japanese Youth Hostel* a few years prior.

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JA Training Facility

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, School, Transportation, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2021/12/01| 9 Comments »

Nothing like a spring exploration with friends of a large original find – even if there is an active company right next door…

The Japan Agricultural Cooperatives, commonly known as JA or JA Group, is a coalition of 694 local cooperatives that supports its members with producing, packaging, transporting and marketing agricultural products – if you’ve ever been to any place in Japan that sells local products or driven through the countryside, you’ve most likely seen their logo. They’re basically everywhere and a surprisingly powerful organization for a country not exactly known for its unions.

Since this location was an original find I don’t know much about it. Apparently it existed since the 1970s and was used for about 30 years. It consisted of a large plot of fenced land as well as several structures, including a large boarding school like building with a cafeteria, classrooms, bedrooms, and a pretty big shared bath on a slope, accessible via a bridge from the second floor. Right next to the main building was a huge facility to… test vehicles? I’m not much of a car guy, but there was equipment labeled Speed and Torque – interestingly enough it didn’t look like that vehicles could be repaired there, but there was a rather old fashioned gas pump in the back.
What made this a bit of a challenge were two things: the rather long driveway with a gate at the main road about 500 meters away, and an active company right across the street, with quite a few cars coming and going even on an otherwise lazy Sunday morning. Fortunately the fences weren’t much of a barrier – and due to a medium amount of vandalism neither was access to the buildings. Other people were obviously less worried about creating noise than Dan, Kyoko, and I, so doors were pried open, windows and mirrors were broken, and we even spotted some graffiti. Nothing artsy, just the average scribbling you usually find in Japan.

The weather, my company, the gauge corner of the car facility, and the fact that this was an original find made this exploration an above average one – despite our buzzing neighbor it was a rather relaxed experience that offered some unspectacular yet still interesting photo opportunities. I never had the opportunity to spend a few days at an continuation school to learn something over the span of multiple days which I could have read up on in a few hours, so it was nice to see what such a facility looks like in Japan.

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Clothing School

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Factory, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, School, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2021/09/22| 4 Comments »

Surprise, surprise – this was not your typical wooden abandoned Japanese countryside school…
Old Japanese schools are amazing structures! While most contemporary schools are made from modern materials and pretty much all look the same, the old ones were made from wood and come in all shapes and sizes. The biggest problem of those classics is obviously that they were not made for eternity and maintenance can be very costly (no insulation, damage prone material, …), which is why they are among the first to be closed. Once there is no maintenance it’s only a matter of time until they are damaged beyond repair and either have to be torn down or even collapse on their own. Only a few dozens of them are preserved as museums, restaurants, or art spaces – mainly because they tend to be in the countryside, which makes them even more of a financial risk.
The abandoned Clothing School dates back to the year 1875 and was an elementary school until it’s closure in the early 1980s. During its more than 100 year long history the building was expanded and remodeled several times, making it kind of a hybrid between a wood only and a modern school. After the school was closed it had a second life as an apparel company, which made this exploration so exciting – especially since I explored this place many moons ago and didn’t know much about it at the time. Entering through the back the building looked like a regular abandoned school at first. Then some cardboard boxes with fabric and plastic wrapped shirts caught my eyes. The next room was filled with industrial ironing machines by Naomoto – and down the hallway were several rooms that you usually don’t find in an abandoned school, including a bed room, a living room, a conference room or maybe a room for sales people, a head office for the boss and break room for staff featuring a female mannequin looking out of the window, scaring the living hell out of people not expecting to see it / her there…

I’ve always enjoyed exploring abandoned schools, but this one was truly unique and kind of reminded me of the *Japanese Art School*, which also was home of a business before it was closed for good and eventually got demolished after parts of the building collapsed. A fantastic location I’d revisit in a heartbeat if it wasn’t basically a day trip away from where I live.

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Love Hotel Manure

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Love Hotel, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2018 on 2021/09/08| 2 Comments »

Love stinks… sometimes. So does lovemaking. Especially when you did it at the Love Hotel Manure!

Abandoned love hotels can be hit or miss – exactly 10 years ago I published my first one, the *Love Hotel Gion*. Some of my favorite locations have been examples of those seedy accommodations, but most of them have been vandalized rundown pieces of s#it… Speaking of s#it: The thing that made this deserted countryside hotel so “special” was the pile of manure on the other side of the street. And by that I mean a literal pile of manure, about two storeys high, which really ruined the atmosphere exploring the damn thing – and I’m sure it didn’t help when trying to be “romantic” either. At best the stench was bearable, but when the wind changed… phew, then you needed a real unusual kink to enjoy what you came for to do!

Unfortunately the inside wasn’t really worth dealing with the stinking cloud. I appreciated Miffy in the hallway, the indoor garden swing and the tiny sauna I’d only fit in when used as a torture device, but overall the place was just a vandalized mess, thanks to some metal thieves ripping the interior apart and leaving piles of insulation behind. In and out in a little over an hour, which means that we probably lasted longer than most guests when the place was still open for business! Overall a rather disappointing exploration, nothing in comparison to the *Japanese Castle Love Hotel* or the *Fashion Hotel Love*.

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Tohoku Quarry

Posted in Abandoned, Factory, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Tohoku, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2018 on 2021/08/24| 1 Comment »

Most abandoned quarries are rather dull since they are usually little more than gaping wounds in the side of a mountain – the Tohoku Quarry though still featured a facility to process the stone material… and it was an original find!

About three years ago I did a Tohoku trip with my buddy *Hamish* – lots of countryside roads off the beaten tracks, often without StreetView support; a blessing in disguise, because the only way to check out locations was to actually go there and check out the locations in person. Of course there was a high failure rate, places were still in use or already demolished, but we were also able to explore some great original finds, including this mid-size quarry in the middle of nowhere. Places that are almost impossible to find and only to be explored by the most dedicated urbexers, which is probably one of the reasons why I still haven’t seen this location anywhere else, neither on blogs nor on social media.

The Tohoku Quarry was a beautiful exploration, but not a very eventful one – we drove up to the place and there were no fences or security, just a rope to prevent vehicles from entering (and dumping large amounts of trash, which is a real problem in the Japanese countryside!). The power supply equipment was protected by a large metal cage, nearby were a couple of huts used for storage and as an office / large break room. A large stone processing plant that was able to load trucks was built into the slope; the quarry itself was at the upper end, of course. It was a beautiful sunny autumn day, and we were exploring mostly outdoors, out of sight and out of sound of civilization – exactly my kind of location. Nothing to worry about, just exploring a naturally decaying industrial site. The place kind of reminded me of the *Takarazuka Macadam Industrial Plant* from almost 10 years ago – a classic site that is not accessible anymore, unfortunately.

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Countryside Retirement Home

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video on 2021/08/17| 2 Comments »

About a year ago I saw a suspicious looking building on GoogleMaps. A few weeks later I had the opportunity to check it out – and it was abandoned indeed. Not only that! It was a place I’ve never seen anywhere before (or since!) and it turned out to be a deserted senior citizen home, which are quite rare in this country due to Japan’s aging population.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll (hopefully) never get tired saying it again: There is nothing like spotting a strange building online, confirming in person that it’s abandoned, finding a way in, and exploring it! As fun and comparatively easy as it is to go and see established locations, it’s this true and pure form of exploration that gets me really excited – when I do it myself, but also when it’s documented by others. Sure, *Kejonuma Leisure Land* for example is a fantastic abandoned theme park, but do I really want to see the same shots for the 123456th time on *Facebook* or *Twitter*? No! Show me new places! Show me that you are an explorer, not somebody who can use a search engine – or even worse, who asked somebody for coordinates! Of course it’s impossible to be always first, or even among the first 10, 20, 30 people to explore a location – but Japan is a large country with tons of abandoned places, so everybody with at least a little bit of exploration experience should be able to come up with an original find every once in a while, or at least a somewhat rare place that makes me want to see more instead of thinking “Oh, XYZ again, next please!”…

The Countryside Retirement Home was a rather tough nut to crack. It was a somewhat random find that could have been almost anything, with quite a few active buildings nearby, which made approaching it even harder. From the outside the small complex actually looked still pretty good, only the rather unkept driveway and surrounding greenery were good indications that the building wasn’t used anymore. Unfortunately most of the doors were locked and it was literally the last one that allowed access – and the first thing I saw upon entering was a security camera pointed at me. Daaaaaaamn! Really? After all that sneaking around and rattling at doors I had to look at a friggin security camera? Well, after the first shock was gone I quickly started to smile – not because that’s what you do when caught on camera, but because I realized it wasn’t plugged in. The rest was a surprisingly relaxed exploration of an unknown building that turned out to be an abandoned senior citizens’ home – most likely not a care home though. The rooms looked more or less like regular mini-apartments, the elevators were regular sized and definitely not able to transport nursing beds. The highlight of the building was the breakfast / lunch / dining area with a small library / TV / board game section on the upper floor. While the upper floors were still in surprisingly good condition, it was hard to breathe on the ground floor as it was unbearably moldy, especially in the humid late summer heat. (Whoever broke into the building also emptied a fire extinguisher or two though – friggin’ vandals, boon and bane…)

Overall the Countryside Retirement Home was a great exploration and an overall fantastic experience; an original find, explored with only one friend (who actually deserves credit for finding the unlocked door – or as he put it: “You find places, I get us in!”). While the photo set might not be the most spectacular one, it was still an exciting location, because there are not many opportunities in Japan to explore abandoned senior citizens’ homes…

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Nagano Countryside Clinic

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chūbu, Haikyo, Japan, Nagano, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2014 on 2021/07/07| 6 Comments »

A beautiful pre-war mansion or a large countryside hospital with its own operating room? Well, you deserve both, so here you get both!

About 10 years ago the Nagano Countryside Clinic was THE abandoned hospital in Japan! It was not as secret as *The Doctor’s Shack*, not as far from Tokyo as *The Tokushima Countryside Clinic* and long abandoned before the *Wakayama Hospital*, all of which are urbex classics in Japan now, too – and yet it featured not only the usual array of bottled chemicals and pre-war medicine books you typically find in countryside doctors’ offices, it also had some early versions of modern equipment, though I wouldn’t be able to tell you what was which as I am not in the medical profession myself; but it looked cool, kinda steampunk-ish, stuff I’d actually use as decoration pieces if I’d had the space or the money for them.
Which brings me to a topic that is more and more annoying to me the bigger my social media channels on *Facebook* and *Twitter* grow (please follow for time-exclusive brand-new material – and don’t forget: sharing is caring!) as it’s not just fellow explorers following each other anymore, but more and more people who don’t really know what urbex is about… or happily ignore what it stands for. They just enjoy the photos and sometimes have a completely different set of values, which is perfectly fine… unless they start to rant about how they would totally take home this and that – or even worse: ask me if I took it and whether I’d sell it to them. Which to me is borderline insulting. “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints!”, a motto widely respected amongst explorers worldwide, but especially in Japan; unfortunately less and less apparently, as the number of people trampling through abandoned places with smartphones seems to be on the rise everywhere. Anyway, I am always grateful when the people exploring before me didn’t loot or vandalize, so of course I try to keep everything as I found it – I don’t even like to move things around or to snoop through drawers and boxes. “But when a place is abandoned nobody owns those things anymore and they are just going to waste, so you / I can as well take it!” Uhm, no! Just because a place is rundown and easily accessible doesn’t mean that there is no owner anymore. In Japan the vast majority of abandoned places are actually abandoned, but especially in Europe and the States a ton of “abandoned” places have alarms or even security, so the whole urbex thing is a huge grey area with different legal implications, as I’ve mentioned before – but removing things from a place, especially with the intention to enrich yourself, is a completely different level, both legally and morally! AFAIK in Japan for example even taking bulky waste from the sidewalk is considered theft! If you find money or items with a value of more than 10 euros in Germany you have to try and find the owner (usually by bringing it to the nearest police station) or you are guilty of stealing by finding – and in that case no owner is in sight either. So again, just because there is no apparent owner doesn’t mean that you can take whatever you want! Unfortunately I’m probably preaching to the choir as people interested enough in urbex to read a blog already know and respect that – it’s usually casuals on social media that annoy and sometimes really scare me as I run this blog to entertain people, not to reveal locations or guide looters to new treasures.
Why this rant about stealing now? Because Nagano Countryside Clinic was loaded with potentially valuable items! (I don’t even know for sure, I don’t watch shows like Antiques Roadshow.) Everything from old medical books, medical equipment, and medical devices to private items like letters, furniture and gramophone records. The Historical Village of Hokkaido in Sapporo has a fully restored countryside clinic as one of their exhibition houses, the Kondo Clinic – and the Nagano Countryside Clinic was kind of a rundown version of that hospital. So when you look at the gallery below you’ll see a ton of pre-war items, of which I took none. Not even one of those large, heavy shellac records. Because I’m not a looter and because I wanted to give the explorers following me the same opportunity to enjoy the sight of this extraordinary location in as much of its glory as possible.
And before the people out there with questionable morals start to drool too much, let me give you a quick rundown of the Nagano Countryside Clinic: It was opened in 1910, its owner apparently studied in Berlin and perhaps Freiburg (according to letters on a table), and it was closed around 1980. In the early 2010s it was a popular abandoned place with many names – and rumors of imminent demolition started to spread soon after. In 2014 my buddy *Hamish* and I were in the area due to other locations, so we had a quick look. Much to our surprise the clinic was still standing and accessible, resulting in a 1.5 hour long exploration until it was too dark inside to take photos – and the use of flashlights was too risky as it would have probably alarmed neighbors or people passing by. So we came back the next day, an hour earlier this time, for another go at it; 2.5 hours this time. (Hence some similar photos, but also pictures of the operating room in darkness and well-lit.) After some more years of waiting, construction workers finally showed up at the Nagano Countryside Clinic in 2018 – not demolish, but to renovate / restore the building, probably cleaning it out first. So obviously there still was an owner, proving all those questionable characters wrong who are trying to convince me that looting “abandoned” buildings is a victimless crime. Stop drooling, it’s over – one way or another. Unfortunately this also means that everybody else had to wait a few years longer than necessary for this article. And now just imagine what other locations are waiting in my vault when I had the patience to wait seven years for this spectacular place to be released… 🙂

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Tohoku Water Park

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Tohoku, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2018 on 2021/06/09| 2 Comments »

Half a dozen water slides, several pools and a couple of buildings made the abandoned Tohoku Water Park quite photogenic – and a wonderful exploration overall!

Rainy season started three weeks earlier this year in Japan, so summer already is full swing in parts of the country, making life a living hell, unless you are a real masochist and enjoy hot humid weather. And while your body already screams “Make it stop. Good Lord, make it goddamn stop!” your brain knows very well that it will get worse for at least two more months before it will only slowly be getting better. Four months of hell, that’s Japanese summers in most parts of the country for you – and for the second year in a row there is no way to GTFO and relax with family, friends, and homemade cooking / baking thanks to you know what. One of the few things making this s#!tshow bearable for some people are water parks – of which Japan has surprisingly many. One of the biggest abandoned outdoor water parks is off the beaten tracks in a tiny town in Tohoku, quite a pain to get to from Osucka. Fortunately I had the chance to explore that wonderful location on a trip up north three years ago. At the time the place was only semi-famous and GoogleMaps was rather blurry in that area, so I had to progress carefully, especially since I was flying solo. Exploring without a co-pilot is always more dangerous and more nerve-wrecking, so I probably wasn’t as excited initially as I should have been – first I had to make sure the place was really abandoned and not secured, then I could relax and enjoy the pools and slides; well, not myself, but by taking photos of them.
Built in the late 1970s, the Tohoku Water Park was one of the largest of its kind in Japan – which is a bit mind-boggling, considering the fact that Tohoku isn’t exactly known for its cruel, cruel summers, but instead is mostly covered in snow for half of the year. It was closed in 2010 and is currently owned by the local prefecture, which is kind of bad news, as state owned “abandoned” places tend to be most secured ones. They happily keep the lights (and alarms) on by paying the electricity bill and the police tends to show up more often than average, because, well, they are on the clock anyway, so they can as well have a look around and get some fresh air.
Fortunately there were no alarms (at least I didn’t trigger any…) and I was also spared a run-in with our friends and helpers, so while I was enjoying the exploration more and more I realized that I was quickly running out of time. Two hours was my previously set time limit and I was able to stretch that a little bit by walking back to my mode of transportation a little bit faster. Unfortunately the weather decided to be a bit hazy, causing dazzlingly white skies instead of the clear blue or dramatic cloudy ones I much more prefer. But hey, weather… nothing you can do about it – except for bitching about it in an attempt to make you feel better!

So… The abandoned Tohoku Water Park… A nice one! Large, remote, outdoors, theme parkish – this place ticked plenty of boxes! Another hour so would have been nice, but sometimes you gotta work with what you’ve got. Especially the large twin slide gave the *Hot Spring Water Park* and the *water park at Nara Dreamland* a tough fight for the #3 spot – but I’ve already shot two other abandoned outdoor water parks that I’ve liked even better; and I can’t wait to get them published, too!

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Biohazard Facility

Posted in Abandoned, Factory, Haikyo, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2021/05/25| 15 Comments »

I’ve explored and documented hundreds of abandoned places in Japan, solo and with friends, over the course of more than 10 years – this is this only one that gave me nightmares! (And yes, I mean actual nightmares… for months!)
Japan is a large country with all kinds of weather, from +40°C humid summers to -30°C dry winters with several meters of snow, so depending on where you are when, some abandoned places are only accessible for a few months a year. The Biohazard Facility is accessible all year long, in theory, nevertheless we went there in autumn “because of the unbearable smell in summer”, as a friend told me. The smell? Gosh, how bad could it be? “I brought masks to wear for all of us!” Now, this was about three and a half years ago, at a time when the rest of the world looked with amusement and confusion at those quirky Asians for sometimes wearing masks despite not being in the medical profession – and while used to seeing them being worn, I wasn’t eager to wear one myself, especially while wielding photography equipment for hours in the still hot and humid early autumn weather; sure, technically it wasn’t summer anymore by Japanese standards, but it still kinda was by German standards. At the same time I didn’t want to be rude, so I grabbed one, said Thank You, and put it on – shut up and deal with it, like you do in Japan. My first mask ever and the only one till March 2020, when wearing them became kinda mandatory for obvious reasons. (And phew, was I grateful to have it about half an hour later – lifting it to wipe off some sweat made a big difference as the stench became barely bearable instantly!)

Why? What? Biohazard?!
So, what was The Biohazard Facility? Well, at the time the place was still more or less a secret and people didn’t know much about it, but it turned out that it was a research facility that developed blood tests for dogs – the kennel outside was mostly gone / overgrown, but there were still some cages and transport boxes in the main building. Apparently this was the second facility the company had – and much like the first one it was reportedly closed by the authorities after animal mistreatment and health code violations. While most of the building consisted of offices and more or less regular laboratories I remember at least two air showers that lead to what I assumed were cleanrooms. In addition to that there were several doors and windows with biohazard signs – hence the name of the location among urban explorers. Oh, and there were several large freezers with locks… So if you combine all of that (air showers, cleanrooms, lockable chest freezers, biohazard signs everywhere in a building of a company with a history of health code and animal treatment violations) then you basically have the stuff that nightmares are made of.
Of course I wasn’t aware of all of that upon entering – to me this was a real exploration, I just knew about the standard laboratories and a few biohazard signs… and that was all I got for the first few minutes. Then I saw one of those freezers with a lock… and it had a laminated piece of paper on top, clearly added long after the facility was abandoned. (How one can abandon or even just close a facility like that without the authorities stepping in is beyond me – but hey, welcome to Japan!) At first I ignored the freezers – I’m not the touchy / moving things around type of explorer anyway and in this case I valued my health and safety even more, so I made my way through the building, at one point losing contact with my co-explorers – which was actually scary, because this place was by far the creepiest I’ve ever been to. That’s the kind of place you explore in a video game while your character is wearing a hazmat suit. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and for protection a 200 Yen mask, no gloves. And this place wasn’t digital, it was real. With real dark corners, real chemicals, real danger! I don’t care about how tough you think you are, but when you explore a dusty, slightly vandalized biotech company that was experimenting on / with dogs and you see a poster about how Coxiella Burnetii, a bacterial pathogen, can affect several parts of the human body, I’m sure your heart drops a bit, too! (“Fun” fact: Coxiella Burnetii was one of seven agents of the United States biological warfare program when it ended in 1969!) At one point towards the end the mental pressure became so big that I decided to find my friends first and explore the last part together… where we found molten plastic gloves on the ground. When you look at the pictures later I don’t know what impression you’ll have, but I can only urge you to remember that this was REAL: Not a movie set, not a disaster museum, not a 4k video game – a real biohazard facility. People walked out, locked everything up, and a few years later we were there; entering through the back, thanks to mild vandalism here and there.

Umbrella for real?
Of course you can’t explore a place called “Biohazard Facility” without referencing “Biohazard”, the Japanese name of the (in)famous Resident Evil multimedia franchise based on Capcom’s horror video game series.
My personal relationship with RE dates back right to the beginning 25 years ago, to the original game on PlayStation. It was also the first game I’ve ever reviewed, for my high school paper, which lead to a huge argument with the editor in chief as the game was rated M and in danger of being banned in Germany – so of course most of the students at my school weren’t able to legally buy the game and the guy was really conflicted about that. Something like 10 years later, shortly after I moved to Japan, a good friend of mine was working on an obscure Biohazard flip phone game only to be released in Japan, and asked me if I wanted to do some voice acting for two minor characters. With no experience in this area I was a bit hesitant, but how often in life do you get an opportunity like that, so of course I agreed to do it. What my friend failed to mention (or didn’t know himself when he asked me) was the fact that the voice acting didn’t include actual lines, just damage voices – so I was moaning and groaning for like an hour to record stuff what a pro probably could have done in 5 minutes; and what sounded more like horrible dubbing for amateur porn than for an action game. Fortunately it was really only released in Japan, but it was still an interesting experience.
So for my part of referencing Biohazard I brought a prop and created a picture puzzle / rebus which you can find in the gallery. I posted it a while ago on *Facebook* and it took people like 45 seconds to solve, and they didn’t even know the location name and what I was referencing, so don’t expect too much…
My co-explorers on the other hand insisted on recreating CGI artwork from RE6 with several game characters posing. Personally I hate posing for pictures in general, but especially at abandoned places. Urbex should be about locations, not the explorers – at least that’s my take on the topic. But like I said, my friends insisted and I was kinda needed as the fourth person, so they promised to set everything up, so I just had to come in for 30 seconds to be directed in the correct position and take a few shots, just to be on the safe side. And I have to admit, both photos turned out to be very, very cool, especially given the background story of the location. (Unfortunately in hindsight they weren’t be taken by me / with my camera, so I won’t be able to publish them…) During the whole thing we talked about Resident Evil 6 a bit (which in my opinion really didn’t deserve all the hate it received!) and I mentioned the logo. What about the logo, my friends asked. “Well, it looks like somebody fellating a giraffe…” WHAT? “Yeah, it looks like a woman giving a giraffe a blowjob – the game is five years old, you’ve never heard of that?” They hadn’t, but a quick internet search caused gigantic laughter and we left the Biohazard Facility on an extreme high note. (And if you are not a game freak who already knew this, I have a hunch what you just did / will do next… 🙂 )

Best. Urbex. Ever?
So… Exploring the Biohazard Facility… Absolutely amazing! Easily in my Top 20, most likely Top 10, maybe Top 5. We spent about 3.5 hours on location and were absolutely spent afterwards – by far the most exhausting, the most nerve-wrecking half-day exploration of my life! I’ve been to plenty of places where I had the feeling that I wasn’t supposed to be there, I’ve been to plenty of places that were kind of dangerous. But as exciting and somewhat mind-blowing abandoned theme parks and old hospitals are – exploring an abandoned biochemistry lab is not just next level exploring, it’s highest level with a boss enemy around the corner exploring! I wasn’t kidding in the intro, this experience gave me nightmares for months! Not every night, but a series of similar very bad dreams every other week… Nevertheless totally worth the hassle, because that’s the kind of place you normally only see in movies (where you know that it’s fake) or in video games (where it’s virtual) – being there for several hours blew my mind… and probably fried it a bit, too. 🙂