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Archive for the ‘Visited in 2010’ Category

Festivalgate

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Demolished, Haikyo, Japan, Map, Osaka, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Visited in 2011, Visited in 2012, Visited in 2013 on 2013/10/15| 17 Comments »

Festivalgate was a post real estate bubble amusement park in the city center of Osaka, just down the street of the famous Tennoji Zoo and right next to a transportation hub combining two railway lines at Shin-Imamiya Station with the tramway stop Minamikasumicho and the subway station Dobutsuen-mae (literally “in front of the animal park”) on the city’s main line Midosuji – although “amusement park” doesn’t really nail it, since the park part was missing. Festival Gate was more like an amusement building with all kinds of arcades, shops, a cinema, restaurants and a rollercoaster on eight floors with a total floor space of more than 5700 m². Though located in a densely populated area with perfect connection to public transportation Festivalgate offered parking space for 380 cars and 120 bikes. Nevertheless it failed twice within 10 years…

I guess the planning of Festivalgate started during the bubble (1986-1991), when the Osaka Municipal Transportation Bureau got rid of the Tennoji Streetcar Garage (大阪市電天王寺車庫). The then leveled lot was split into two parts, A and B – A was the location of the now demolished Festivalgate, on lot B the still operative Spa World was built (a spa wonderland with saunas, waterslides, a gym and themed areas from all around the world). For that the city founded a joint venture with the Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation and the Chuo Mitsui Trust and Banking Co. (two of Japan’s biggest companies) to raise 50 billion Yen, back then about 290 million Euro / 350 million US$, nowadays 400 million Euro / 532 million US$ (not adjusted for inflation).

Festivalgate opened together with Spa World on July 18th 1997 with an underwater / Atlantis theme – little did they know that they would drown in debt soon…

The opening hours were rather long – 10:00 to 20:00 for stores, 10:00 to 22:00 for amusement facilities, 10:00 to 23:00 for eateries. To give Festivalgate a financial identity you were able to buy discount tickets at vending machines; for 1000 Yen you received a 1100 Yen card, for 3000 Yen you got a 3400 Yen card and for 5000 Yen you were able to enjoy 5800 Yen worth of fun. This was what the floor plan looked liked:
B1 – Underground walkway to Shin-Imamiya Station and Dobutsuen-mae Station.
1F – Miracle Gate: Entrance and main floor.
2F – Plaza Festa: Eateries and shopping.
3F – Festival Pier: Eateries and shopping with a West Coast theme.
4F – Oriental Festa: Eateries and shopping with a Marco Polo theme.
5F – Festa Mosque: Eateries and shopping with a Bazaar theme.
6F – Festa Lab: Arcade game zone (Sega World) with a Jules Verne theme.
7F – Cine Festival: Cinema complex with 4 screens for up to 600 guests total.
8F – View Festa: Restaurant area with a stunning view.

Since Festival was considered an amusement park (no entrance fee though!), of course there were pay as you go attractions scattered all over the floors 2 to 6 – for example 2F had the Mermaid Carousel, 3F had the entrance the parachute tower “Tower of Teos”, 4F had a cat petting zoo and a Chinese Ghost house, 5F had a kid’s land, an airgun museum and the entrance for the iconic rollercoaster and 6F was full of arcade machines run by Sega.

At the beginning Festivalgate was a huge success – in the first year (1997/98) 8.31 million visitors had a look, but in the following year the Asian Financial Crisis hit Japan and numbers dropped significantly. Four years later, which is one year after Universal Studios Japan opened in the south of Osaka, Festivalgate had only 3 million visitors – none of which paid an entrance fee… Shops and restaurants started to drop out and the downwards spiral could not be stopped – in January of 2004 the banks withdrew from the project, driving the Festival Gate Corporation into bankruptcy and leaving the city of Osaka with 20 billion Yen of debt. Orix, a financial service provider most famous for owning and sponsoring the baseball team Orix Buffaloes, stepped up in 2005, but dropped out when it became clear that Festivalgate was a bottomless pit. In January of 2007 the city of Osaka concluded that Festivalgate would cost 200 million Yen per year for maintenance and decided to get over with this unfortunate and highly unprofitable project – the remaining businesses were given notice and Festivalgate closed officially July 31st of the same year. After some back and forth with potential Korean investors the Japanese entertainment giant Maruhan (bets, pachinko parlors) bought Festivalgate in a third auction on January 30th 2009 with a winning bid of 1.4 billion Yen, announcing reconstruction plans soon after. The demolition of Festivalgate began in 2010 and it turned out to be a surprisingly time-consuming process given that Japanese wrecking crews usually are faster than a bunch of piranhas dealing with a chicken…
When I first went to Festivalgate on November 3rd 2010 there was little to nothing to explore, although it seems like the building was still accessible from 2007 till 2009, despite all shops and restaurants being closed. Demolition had already begun, but at least the underground passage and the entrance area on 1F was still accessible with signs announcing that this would change December 17th. Active Japanese construction sites usually are fortified – solid high fences all around, guards in front of every exit, sometimes with small lightsabers to stop pedestrians when vehicles are getting in or out. The Festivalgate deconstruction site was no exception. All potential entrances (including windows) were locked solidly, security was patrolling (probably to keep homeless people away since Festivalgate was in an area that has a rather bad reputation… by Japanese standards), fences were even higher than usual – 3.5 to 4 meters, not the normal 2.5 meters high ones. But not high enough to block the view from the elevated Osaka Loop Line! So I took a couple of photos… and again when I was visiting a friend for a Christmas party later that year. And again whenever I passed by – which wasn’t that often, but still enough to give you a general idea how things progressed. To my surprise it took more than two years to get rid of the ill-fortuned Festivalgate. Good for me (and you) as this article was only possible thanks to that… BTW: Sorry for the quality of the photos – they are not artistic at all, shot from crowded, moving trains, but I think they nevertheless are interesting.

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New HDR Photos

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Chugoku, Chūbu, Gifu, Haikyo, HDR, Hiking, Japan, Kansai, Mie, Museum, Nara, New Zealand, Okayama, Photography, School, Taxidermy, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Visited in 2011, Visited in 2012, Yamaguchi on 2013/09/21| 2 Comments »

All of the photos I publish with articles on Abandoned Kansai are without any form of enhancing post-production – I don’t even crop them; they either look good or they don’t. Every once in a while I like to play with an HDR tool or two. I wouldn’t call those photos enhanced or improved, I would barely call them photos anymore. That’s why I created a sub-page for them in the background. Today I added ten more of those little artworks to that page. *Please click here to have a look!*

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Old Higashi-Aoyama Station

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiking, Japan, Mie, Photography, Transportation, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2010 on 2013/09/03| 31 Comments »

“Why?”

More than once I asked myself that question when getting up way too early on a Saturday morning to head out to an abandoned place I have barely information on, once in a while not even the exact location. On some days it’s even a “WHY?!” – especially when it’s cold outside and I have to go all by myself. But then I grab my equipment packed the evening before and head out to the middle of nowhere, using up to four railway companies on a trip that takes up to four hours… each way.
The Old Higashi-Aoyama Station was my goal on one of those “WHY?!” days. A 2.5 hour long trip on three different lines to the Mie countryside, plus a 5 km hike in the mountains to the final destination. None of my friends wanted to come along, but at least the weather forecast was decent – sunny 12 degrees in the middle of December, not too bad while Europe was covered in snow. GoogleMaps, back in 2010 my most reliable haikyo partner, was rather useless in this case since my place of interest was really off the beaten tracks…

Opened on December 20th 1930 the Old Higashi-Aoyama Station was already in the middle of nowhere in 1971, when it hit the news big time. Located in a beautiful valley between two pretty long one track tunnels, it must have been extremely popular amongst day-trip hikers. Probably only with hikers, as there is or was no bigger town or even village in reasonable walking distance; and there are no hints of parking lots close to the station.
One track tunnels always involve the danger of train accidents and one of those sealed the destiny of the Old Higashi-Aoyama Station: On October 25th 1971 at around 4 p.m. an express train to Nagoya collided with a limited express going to Namba / Kyoto (I guess it was supposed to be separated later along the track…). 25 fatalities, 218 wounded, cause: human error.
To avoid an accident like that could ever happen again, Kintetsu, the company owning the line and its stations, planned a huge new two-track tunnel, avoiding the Old Higashi-Aoyama Station and the valley it was located in, building the current Higashi-Aoyama Station a few kilometers away. On November 22nd 1975 the new station was opened, while in the following months the railroad tracks of the old line were stripped down and all buildings except the platforms as well as the tunnels were demolished.

At first sight, after huffing and puffing up a steep forgotten road that once must have been used to transport supplies to (build) the station, the Old Higashi-Aoyama Station was a big disappointment. Although I hadn’t seen anything but seven years old photos of two abandoned train station platforms on a hiking blog, I was kind of hoping for something more. I took a couple of quick pictures of what I had already seen on the internet, looking for more signs of the past.
Luckily the disappointment disappeared in no time as I quickly found a side-track and then something that must have been a kiosk four decades ago – including a fridge and several empty glass bottles of “Morinaga Twist”, a soda I’ve never heard of before, and other drinks. That’s when the mental cinema screen started to work again. Left of the kiosk I found a shrine, so overgrown that I wasn’t able to see it from the platforms. To the right was a concrete flight of stairs leading up the mountain – I guess that was the starting point for the hikers once buying Morinaga Twist. What could it have been like to follow that trail 40 years ago? I tried to get a taste by climbing the stairs, only to find a reminder of how dangerous even the most harmless *haikyo* can be when having bad luck – a huge rock, at least 60 cm in diameter was “blocking” the stairs; some things can just hit you without a warning… I went around the boulder and climbed the mountain for about 15 minutes, concrete step after concrete step. Up there I found the typical leftovers of what must have been another kiosk when the train station was still down in the valley – lots of corrugated iron, some broken bottles and dented pots as well as a rusty gas canister.
This discovery just fueled my imagination, so I followed what I assumed once was the hiking trail, now covered by leaves. After about another 10 minutes I reached the top of the mountain and there I found more leftovers from hikers passing by decades ago – bottles and cans once holding tea, juice and sodas. A couple of meters along the ridge I startled up a bigger specimen of the local wildlife (I guess it was a deer), so I decided to turn around and go back down to the station for a couple of more photos, still wondering what it would have been like to be an autumn hiker 60, 70 years ago. At that point I was actually happy being alone on that exploration, because I didn’t have to talk to anybody and could fully enjoy the atmosphere of this wonderful location on that amazing late autumn day. Eight hours prior I asked myself “WHY?!” – leaving the Old Higashi-Aoyama Station behind, I knew why…

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Daieikaku – The Deathtrap Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Kansai, Osaka, Photography, Spa / Onsen, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2013/04/23| 34 Comments »

Urban exploration is a dangerous hobby. How dangerous it really is I found out at the Daieikaku, a rather big abandoned ryokan south of Osaka. I was literally and figuratively one step away from my demise…

The Daieigaku was the first location Damon and I went to together back in 2010. Later we continued to explore the *Gion Love Hotel*, the Ferris wheel *Igosu 108*, the *K-1 Pachinko Parlor*, the *Tsuchikura Mine* as well as the *Kasuga Mine A* and *Kasuga Mine B* – but first the Daieikaku, a hotel that turned out to be quite hard to get to.
Back then I had done all my explorations using trains, but the Daieikaku was too far away from the closest station to walk to, so we had to take a bus. Which is a hassle in pretty much every country, especially if your command of the local language is… sub-par. Sometimes it’s close to impossible to figure out schedules and stops. When I wanted to get to a place near a university campus in Hokkaido last year it took the local tourist information at JR Sapporo Station 15 minutes to figure out which bus to take – and I knew the name of the bus stop I wanted to go to! Figuring out which bus to take to the Daieikaku wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t the only problem: The Daieikaku was located at a slope on the other side of a river, but the bridge leading to the ryokan was completely overgrown. Even in autumn with weakened flora we weren’t able to get to the other side, especially without being seen by locals and day visitors. So we crossed the river via another bridge, climbed up the slope and got to the back of the Daieikaku at the level of the third floor. Instead of taking some steps down to the ground floor we entered through a smashed in window right where we were. Starting up there was as good as anywhere else we thought…

Big mistake! The first room was one of those tatami party rooms you have in pretty much every hotel in Japan. Thanks to open doors and windows everywhere in the Daieigaku the place was in rather bad condition with leaves all over the place. I went to the side of the building, looking for a staircase. Found it, passed it and opened a door… a restroom. I went inside to have a closer look, but although the floor looked a lot more solid than the one in the tatami room it didn’t feel like it. Halfway into the room I had a very, very bad feeling, so I went back to the hallway, down one floor via the staircase, opened the door to the restroom below the one I just entered and… it was gone! There was no friggin restroom! Only one wall with some urinals hanging mid-air! And the bathroom I was in basically was attached to the rest of the building by its walls. I guess I don’t have to mention that the floors below were gone, too, so if I would have walked further into the restroom two minutes earlier (or probably just would have stayed where I was) there would have been a good chance that I would have crashed through a thin layer of tiles and wood three floors down to my death. After I recovered from that realization I went straight to Damon to warn him about the death trap on the third floor. Luckily he didn’t put himself in danger, so we continued our exploration without further incidents, although we continued to take risks every once in a while – especially Damon, who was exploring the hotel like a honey badger. Through tiny broken windows with shards left, up and down rotting wooden stairs, … Which lead us down to the onsen part of the ryokan, a part of the hotel I probably wouldn’t have gotten to if I would have gone there on my own, especially after that little shock right at the beginning. There we saw some major cracks in the ceiling and the wall, which didn’t exactly help to ease my mind – parts of the Daieigaku already collapsed, so being in the middle of the building with unstable floors above and below wasn’t exactly the place I wanted to be in. But the former lobby didn’t look any better. We first saw it from 2F and looked down – staircases gone, walls caved in… The whole building was in worse than dilapidated condition and I guess every single step could have been our last!

Looking back at the exploration of the Daieikaku I have to say that we were terribly naïve and really lucky. The term “Daieikaku” means big glorious building and it is often used for restaurants serving a charcoal grilled meat dish called yakiniku – and while the ryokan Daieikaku was indeed a big building it was everything but glorious. It was a deathtrap and by far the most dangerous location I have ever explored. It also was rather unspectacular overall, that’s probably the reason why I never wrote about it, almost forgot about. Back then I just did a pre-selection of my photos, deleting only the worst, so I had to go through almost 150 of them to make a final selection for this article – and it actually makes me wanna go back there. Three years ago I shot without a tripod and the Daieikaku was pretty dark in some places, though it was a bright and sunny autumn day. Furthermore several earthquakes hit Kansai since then, including the Tohoku Earthquake that caused the Fukushima Incident and a recent one that struck Awaji Island. Plus Mother Nature had 30 months to do additional damage… Well, we’ll see – if time allows I’ll stop by there again to give you an update on what happened to the Daieikaku. For now I hope you’ll enjoy the photos I took during my visit. I’m sure you are eager to see what the collapsed bathroom looked like… 🙂

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Kasagi Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Kansai, Kyoto, Photography, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2010 on 2013/02/05| 26 Comments »

“Flash? I don’t use flash! Most photos look ugly when using flash!”
In February of 2010 I had no clue what my dear friend *Enric* was talking about. I had my first DSLR for 3 months and I had no clue about photography either. But when I was using the flash of my D90 in the darker corners of the Kasagi Sightseeing Hotel my now truly missed buddy got really upset. I didn’t think much about it, to be honest. I just picked up urban exploration and photography as a hobby, and I was happy about every decent shot I was able to take. Flash or not…
Who cares? Just let the crazy Spaniard talk! — Gosh, was I ignorant. But I really had no clue what I was doing. Couldn’t have known a good photo from a bad one even if Ansel Adams would have hit me in the face with a picture book! I continued the learning by doing process and half a year later I bought an ultra-wide angle lens and a tripod – and I guess my photos improved massively since then, probably because I barely ever used flash again. But whenever I do, I remember Enric’s words at the Kasagi Tourist Hotel…

I don’t know why it took me more than 3 years to write about the Kasagi Hotel; this is actually one of the oldest unpublished locations I had on my hard-drive – and the other ones are way less interesting! It’s probably because of the name… or its rather convenient location in walking distance of a train station… Guess which one! Although I have to admit “convenient” and “walking distance” is relative. It’s convenient and in walking distance for urban explorers. If you arrived as guests with suitcases you better took a taxi!
Although one of the most popular abandoned places in Japan for many, many years there is not much information floating around about the Kasagi Hotel. It’s widely known as a ghost spot, since rumors have it that the owner committed suicide by arson – half of the Japanese blogs writing about the place admit that they didn’t dare to enter. Or care to find out more about the hotel’s history. So here’s some information I got from reading a dented sign near the entrance and that is nowhere to be found on any Japanese blog: It seems like the Kasagi Hotel was famous for its onsen. The hot spring was fed by a spring 1200 meters below the hotel, rich in sodium and alkali. Staying at the hotel for one night including two meals was 6500 Yen, onsen only was 1000 Yen, onsen and one meal 2000 Yen.
Enric and I didn’t mind those suicide stories to scare away children and walked straight in, past the barricade that once prevented nosy people from entering; but of course it was ripped apart by some vandals by the time of our arrival. We mostly ignored the smaller storage buildings to the right and headed straight for the hotel, squeezing past another barricade made of conjugated iron, a lot more solid, but nevertheless wide open even for foreigners.
The ground floor was a pitiable sight. Half destroyed by arson and littered by bent and rusted iron it offered a sample of the general condition of the Kasagi Hotel. I guess that’s the downside of the hotel’s fame and location: It was vandalized like hardly any place I’ve been to before or after – graffiti, arson and ripped apart walls, floors, ceilings… you name it. Even two staircases were completely ripped apart, although it looked like that was done professionally and with heavy machinery; especially since there was barely any rubble left. The whole floor was dark and gloomy, with holes in the wooden floor spared by the fire. The hotel kitchen also became the victim of flames, underlining the spooky first impression.
A concrete and graffiti stained staircase in the back lead to the upper floors, but the door to the second one was blocked by a huge welded metal plate. Somebody built an improvised metal ladder from 1F to 2F, but I preferred not to climb it – especially since 2F suffered as much damage from vandals as all the other floors. Except for the ground floor and the top floor all the floors looked pretty much the same with different kinds of destructions: On one floor the toilets were completely intact, on other floors you could still see parts of the wallpaper, while on another floor the intact walls gave a good impression how big the rooms really were – the whole building was one big puzzle.

The Kasagi Hotel was one of the first 20 explorations I did and therefore everything was extremely exciting. Looking back years later it was one of the more unspectacular locations I visited; except for the view. The view was fantastic, especially from the terrace on the roof top and from the corner baths, which allowed free sight on the Kizu River ten meters below the ground floor of the hotel.
One word of warning though to all the people planning trips there to have a look themselves: I wouldn’t do it! About a year ago I went there again for a quick revisit. More about that trip later this week or early next week…

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Japanese Ghost Town Mukainokura (向之倉)

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiking, House, Japan, Kansai, Shiga, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2012/10/16| 11 Comments »

Mukainokura is probably the most famous ghost town in all of Japan as it was featured in many books and by many websites. It is also quite easily accessible by ghost village standards – it’s less than 10 kilometers away from the next train station (more like 6 km actually) and you can drive right up to it if you have a car. And since it’s on top of a hill in the mountains of Shiga prefecture, there are millions of potential visitors from all over Kansai.

Mukainokura was the first ghost town I ever visited, back in the spring of 2010 – and the last location I ever visited with my colleague and dear friend *Enric*, since only weeks later his fugue kicked in and he left the company we both worked for back then.

Spending a sunny spring day hiking with a friend in the Japanese countryside is as good as a day can get in my book. And so Enric and I passed several beautiful temples, shrines and rice fields on our way to the mountains. Back then there was way less information about Mukainokura on the internet, including GoogleMaps, so of course we overshot the side road taking us to the deserted town by a couple of kilometers. After walking back on the beautiful valley road along a small river we finally hiked up the mountain. Almost 200 meters height difference on a length of about 700 or 800 meters – I can see why that village was abandoned! The location was beautiful, but going up and down that slope on a daily basis must have been a pain… Which applies to a lot of villages in the area, about a dozen, all abandoned. Mukainokura is just the most famous one.

Mukainokura was founded halfway through Japan’s most famous era, the Edo Period (or Tokugawa Period), in the early 18th century. Back then people were living off agriculture and by producing charcoal. Growing slowly for one and a half centuries Mukainokura was home to 95 people in 1880, living in about 20 houses. Although in the 1920s the production of ogatan, Japanese charcoal briquettes made from sawdust, brought a more advanced source of income to Mukainokura, the number of inhabitants decreased quickly when gas, oil and electricity replaced charcoal everywhere in Japan after World War 2 – and younger people moved from mountain towns to the big cities in the plains. Mukainokura had:
52 inhabitants in 1960
43 inhabitants in 1965 (12 households – 17 male, 26 female)
10 inhabitants in 1970 (3 households – 5 male, 5 female)
3 inhabitants in 1975 (2 households – 2 male, 1 female)
2 inhabitants in 1980 (2 households – 1 male, 1 female)
0 inhabitants in 1985

After more than 25 years of abandonment there was not much left of Mukainokura. About a dozen wooden houses (half of them completely collapsed, the other half partly), scattered across an area of several hundred square meters, connected by tiny paths, short staircases and terraces. More than two dozen winters with heavy snowfalls left the remaining houses in a dilapidated state – beyond repair actually. Nevertheless a couple of houses were still accessible and full of everyday items like magazines, china, photos, bottles, boxes and cans.

I guess in 2010 Mukainokura had more visitors than in 1980. During our two hour long visit Enric and I ran into four different groups having a look at the abandoned town. From a elderly couple that might have been born here to an early twen couple wearing designer clothes – the guy behind the wheel of the sports car showing his trophy girlfriend the spooky dark side of their home country… All of them were driving up the paved road, not walking, like us and for centuries the inhabitants of Mukainokura did.

The two most vivid memories I have of Mukainokura involved nature though. When Enric and I strolled through the ghostly remains of the village Enric spotted a wild monkey in the forest. It was ignoring us completely, minding its own business – sadly I wasn’t able to get a photo of the furry fella. Right before we were leaving Mukainokura we were following signs to the Ido Jinja, the “Well Shrine” (井戸神社). Turns out that this shrine near Mukainokura’s well is quite famous till this very day, featuring signs that were clearly put up after Mukainokura was abandoned (one was dated, 1991, others looked even newer). The shrine was (and is) accompanied by a Katsura tree 39 meters tall and 11.6 meters in girth, according to the sign 400 years old. A wonderfully tranquil place and the perfect location to stop by before heading home…

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Mt. Hiei Artificial Ski Slope

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiking, Japan, Kansai, Kyoto, Restaurant, Shiga, Ski, Sports, Transportation, Urbex, Visited in 2010 on 2012/02/23| 2 Comments »

The Mt. Hiei Artificial Ski Slope is an abandoned ski resort near the top of Mount Hiei on the border between Kyoto prefecture and Shiga prefecture. Famous for its Enryaku Tempel and the Kokuhoden Museum this holy mountain was once thought to be the home of gods and demons in the Shinto belief system. Interestingly enough the predominantly religion on Mt. Hiei has always been Buddhism. The monk Saicho founded the Enryaku-ji in 788 as the first outpost of the Tiantai / Tendai sect and it remained the Tendai headquarters till this very day, although it was famously destroyed by Oda Nobunaga in 1571 to vanish the rising power of the local warrior monks, killing about 20,000 people (including civilians) in the area. The temple was rebuilt soon after and is one of the main tourist attractions in Shiga prefecture today, accessible via two cable car lines, several beautiful hiking trails and a toll road for cars, motorcycles and busses.

Along the “Kitayama East Course” lies the Mt. Hiei Artificial Ski Slope, probably the most visited haikyo in all of Japan. On an average day during the hiking seasons in spring and autumn you’ll never be alone in the area as people are constantly passing by – about half a dozen hiking trails meet here and a close-by cable car station, serving the longest funicular line in Japan, attracts hundreds of people a day. Most hikers barely notice the abandoned ski lift and ski slope, hardly anybody peeks through the broken windows of the gear rental store or has a look at the undamaged closed restaurant. Why wasting a thought on that ugly stain when the surrounding nature is of such beauty? Because beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and though the ski resort on Mount Hiei was rather small it nevertheless offers a few neat angles now that it is abandoned.

Wanna know some facts about the resort? Okay, this is what I was able to find out: The Mt. Hiei Artificial Ski Slope was opened in 1964 and on November 1st of 2002 the newspaper Kyoto Shimbun reported that the ski resort was closed for good after a hot summer in 2000 and a way too warm winter in 2001 – followed by a year of temporary closing; which explains why both the restaurant and the rental store are still stocked with all kinds of items. In the almost 40 years of operation the already mentioned facilities welcomed customers for both a summer and a winter season. In winter a combination of natural and artificial snow (provided by a snow gun) offered fun for the whole family, in summer grass skiing was the business of choice. A lift transported guest for a distance of 170 meters so they could enjoy the pretty short slope of up to 200 meters with a vertical drop of 38 meters.

Oh, before I forget: The nearby “Garden Musem Hiei”, a flower park, once was an amusement park with a haunted house, a small Ferris wheel and a viewing platform, but I guess it was converted quickly enough to never been considered abandoned.

And that’s it for now from Mount Hiei. For now, because the ski resort was actually my second urbex trip there and my fourth or fifth overall – I really like Mount Hiei! Next time I’ll take you there I’ll either show you an abandoned rest house on a steep slope or a mysterious construction I’ve never seen anywhere else on the internet…

(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the*video channel on Youtube*…)

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Daikyo Driving School

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Driving School, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, School, Transportation, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2010 on 2012/01/12| 8 Comments »

And now to something completely different – an abandoned driving school in Japan. Well, since it’s abandoned and in Japan I guess it’s not that different, but how many abandoned driving schools have you seen? Especially since it’s so much more than just a driving school, at least by what I’m used to.
In Germany a driving school more often than not is a two room “office”. One small real office room and a bigger seminar room where the driving instructor is having his lessons several times a week. Not much more space needed, because German driving schools tend to be small, at least when I got my driver’s license more than 15 years ago. The one to three driving instructors usually are out on the road, because that’s where the real money is for them. Pretty much all driving school cars in Germany are manual / stick-shift cars – probably because there is only one license (no separate automatic-only license!). Most cars in Germany, except for taxis, have manual transmission anyways. A lot of Japanese people are surprised when I tell them about it, even more so when they find out that you don’t have to renew your driver’s license in Germany. It’s lifelong unless you mess up by violating traffic rules too often.
In Japan (and probably your country) the situation is a bit different. First of all: Most cars in Japan have automatic transmission, which kind of makes sense since traffic here can be nerve- and ankle-wrecking. So when you enter a driving school you have the choice between a “general” manual license and a “limited” automatic-only license. And a surprisingly high number of Japanese people actually have a automatic-only license – which feels totally wrong from my German point of view since I would never give up that kind of control over my car; to me shifting gears manually is part of the fun and it (usually…) reduces fuel consumption. Even worse: In Japan you have to renew you license every 3 years, which costs time and money – if you managed to not violate any traffic laws for 5 years you get gold status and have to renew your license only every 5 years. But it gets worse! New drivers have to put a yellow and green sticker to their car denouncing them as beginners. If you are a senior citizen age 75 or above you need a orange-yellow sticker – guess why. (None of that bullshit in the land of the Autobahn!)
The biggest difference between a driving school in Germany and a driving school in Japan is what we would call a “Verkehrsübungsplatz” in German. It seems like there is neither an English nor a Japanese term, but the literal translation would be something like “traffic training location” – a place that has roads and traffic lights and crosswalks, but is on private property, separated from normal traffic; and therefore you are allowed to practice driving there without having a license (if you at least 16 years old, have an experienced co-driver with a regular driver’s license and are able to pay an hourly fee). In Germany those place are separate from driving schools and usually run by automobile clubs. In Japan those traffic training locations are part of the driving school, which is kind of ironic given the fact that Japan has oh so little space… But it gives the students the great opportunity to practice safely in a driving school car. Worst case scenario in Germany: After a couple of theory lessons and a general instruction by the driving instructor you are pushed right into traffic…
About 2 years ago I spent quite a lot of time researching new places. Nowadays you can find at least 50% of the locations popping up on blogs on one map or the other, but 2 years ago that was a dream! (Now it’s actually a nightmare since urban exploration is going to become a victim of its own popularity soon. Maybe not this year or next, but soon…) Japanese blogs have the funny tendency to obscure names by leaving out kanji in the text decriptions, just to show the full name on the photos coming along with blog entry. Happens all the time. In late 2009 I found the blog of a guy showcasing an abandoned driving school, but of course he wasn’t willing to give up the name or even the location. He just said it was a driving school in Hyogo and that the company is bankrupt now, but has a succession company with a similar name. So I did some research with Google and found out about the Daikyo Driving School and its successor. Sadly the original Daikyo school went bust before the internet got popular, so there was no way to find out about the exact locations of the old schools, just the cities they were in. Luckily the same guy was bragging about his GoogleMaps skills – showing different zoom levels of the same place, which turned out to be the driving school. The guy was pretty smart not showing any train stations and other landmarks, but since I narrowed the location of the school to a couple of towns it took me about 20 minutes to compare his screenshots with the current GoogleMaps satellite images and then I knew where it was…
Abandoned driving schools are pretty rare, especially in Japan. Usually they are rather close to train stations since their customers are depending on public transportation. But land close to railroad stations is rather expensive – and driving schools take up a lot of space since they have that huge training area, so I’m sure realtors can’t wait for them to go bust.
The Daikyo Driving School I went to was located in the same distance of 3 train stations, all about 30 to 40 minutes away by foot; forest on one side, surrounded by fields on the other three. Only a few farm houses in sight. And of course the owners of the closest one had to have a big party exactly on the day that I wanted to explore the Daikyo Driving School. Cars were coming almost constantly, parking up to the only entrance of the driving school. So I took my time circling the place, looking for other ways in, but there weren’t any. So after about half an hour I thought “Screw it!” and just went in, not sure if anybody saw me and how they would react if they did. Luckily nobody was able to see or hear me once I was inside since the driving school was slightly elevated with a beautiful view at the surrounding area.
Abandoned places in Japan have a reputation of being mostly undamaged due to the lack of vandalism – which isn’t true. My experience with urbex outside of Japan is limited to Germany and Luxembourg (*Pripyat / Chernobyl* in Ukraine is kind of a special case), but I can’t say modern ruins in Japan are in better condition overall than back home. Some are, some aren’t. The Daikyo Driving School was not. A couple of the inner walls were smashed in, the more solid outer walls were smeared with graffiti. Furniture not bolted to the ground was dragged outside and / or severely damaged, electrical installations were ripped out. Overall the building was in pretty bad shape and I was kind of surprised that the really rusty chairs and tables of the one “modern” lecture room weren’t smashed to pieces. For a rather remote and virtually unknown place abandoned for only about 15 years the school was in pretty bad shape, especially in comparison to other similar locations like the *Jumbo Club Hotel Awaji Island*. It was actually way more beautiful from the outside than the inside. Since it’s getting dark rather early in Japan the training area was equipped with floodlights, now as overgrown as the school building and most other installations on the premises.
Overall the abandoned Daikyo Driving School was a nice and unspectacular exploration, which I appreciate now, two years later, way more than back then – once you’ve realized that a lot of deserted places in Japan are either hotels or mines a unique deserted place like an abandoned driving school is a welcome change.

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K-1 Pachinko Parlor

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Kansai, Pachinko, Shiga, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2010 on 2011/12/22| 2 Comments »

Pretty much a year ago, a couple of weeks after we explored the *Love Hotel Gion* and the *Biwako Tower & Igosu 108* together, I met up again with my haikyo buddies Andrew and Damon. Our goal was a mine in the mountains on the border between Shiga and Gifu, but we got distracted pretty quickly.
Andrew was driving along the highway when Damon spotted a big red building that looked abandoned. We turned around only to find out that the place was not only abandoned, but a pachinko parlor. 2 months prior, while on the road with Jordy, I was able to explore an example of this oh so typically Japanese kind of entertainment location in Shikoku called *Big Mountain Pachinko Parlor* – this time we stumbled across the abandoned K-1 Pachinko Parlor.
While entering Big Mountain was a piece of cake it took us a while longer to enter K-1, but after a couple of minutes we found a way in. Against all odds and to our total surprise K-1 was in similar good shape as Big Mountain. Usually abandoned pachinko parlors are boarded up and / or looted and / or vandalized. K-1 showed some signs of all three factors, but none of them to a point where it hurt the atmosphere severely. When I wrote about Big Mountain I wrote quite a bit about pachinko in Japan in general (and its importance for North Korea), so if you are interested in that kind of background information then *please look here*.
While Jordy and I were in quite a hurry and squeezed Big Mountain between the hotel *shangri-la* and the *F# Elementary School* Andrew, Damon and I were able to took our time – this time we were even able to explore the upper floor Jordy and I missed in Tokushima. Coming up the stairs I found something that made me laugh out loud: Next to a page from a Japanese porn magazine lied a gripper – you gotta love the local humor! (Or was it North Korean humor? Who knows…)
The first room we entered upstairs was the main office / surveillance room. Three big monitors once hooked up to security cameras were still in place, and so was the big safe. Business cards, prizes, furniture and other stuff were scattered all over the floor, making the room quite a mess. The kitchen across the hallway on the other side was in pretty immaculate condition and looked like it was just left the other day. I’m not exactly sure when the K-1 Pachinko Parlor was closed, but judging by the calendars and train schedules on the walls it must have been around summer 2003. (Outside on the building was still a big sign from a real estate company trying to sell the thing – if you want me to make contact for you let me know!)
The hallway itself was pretty cluttered, too. We found some pretty big shoes and lots of porn, magazines as well as videos, in one of cabinets. What is it with porn in abandoned buildings? There seems to be a mysterious connection…
Most of the other rooms on the upper floor were actually living rooms / bed rooms. Some of them looked like they were ready to use, others not so much. One of them was stuffed with countless pachinko machines and spare parts. Also worth mentioning was the relaxing area out on the flat roof. There we found a couch, a table and a TV outside. Since it was snowing I’m sure all items were useless at that point, but I could clearly imagine some exhausted pachinko parlor employees far away from home sitting outside after a tough day of work, chilling with a chilled beer, enjoying their off-hours on a nice spring or autumn evening; you know, living the life!
Before we left heading for the mine we explored a small building across the parking lot of the K-1 Pachinko Parlor. In my article about Big Mountain I explained how the pachinko balls people win are exchanged for prizes since gambling is rather strictly regulated in Japan. Those prizes usually are getting off at “pawn shops” near the pachinko parlor – and the building on the parking lot most likely was one of those pawn shops. It was accessible, but completely gutted and therefore totally unspectacular. Nevertheless it was nice to have seen one of those shops, just to make the experience complete…

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The Maya Tourist Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Hiking, Hotel / Ryokan, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Restaurant, Spa / Onsen, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2010 on 2011/12/16| 13 Comments »

*Nara Dreamland* is the current haikyo hot spot in Kansai, maybe in all of Japan. But the area including Osaka, Nara, Kyoto and Kobe is also the home of a classic urbex location: the Maya Tourist Hotel. (A.k.a. Maya Kanko Hotel, Mayakan, Mount Maya Hotel, Mount Maya Onsen Hotel, and Gunkan Hotel – Battleship Hotel / Warship Hotel; similar to *Gunkanjima*, the now also abandoned Battleship Island off the coast of Nagasaki.)
Mount Maya is one of the highest peaks of the Rokko Mountain Range that spreads from the west end of Kobe to Takarazuka (near Osaka) and is one of the most popular recreational areas in Kansai. In 646 the Tenjo-ji (忉利天上寺), a Buddhist temple, was founded near the top of the mountain at the behest of Emperor Kotoku. During the 8th century a monk named Kobo brought a statue from China to the temple – a depiction of Maya, Buddha’s mother; and that’s how the Mount Maya got its name. (The original temple was burned to the ground by a pyromaniac in 1975. The remains are still a popular destination for hikers, although the temple was reestablished further north and at a higher place.)
The Maya Tourist Hotel is located halfway up the mountain and in walking distance of the original Tenjo-ji. It should be obvious how the place got its name… Something I still haven’t figured out is why it took me almost a year to go to the Maya Hotel and another 17 months to write about it, although the hotel is basically in my backyard, just a couple of minutes down the rail on a single line (yes, no need to switch trains!).
Going to the Maya Hotel was actually my first exploration I haven’t done by myself or with a friend, but with a fellow urban explorer: Michael Gakuran. Mike was passing through the area on his way back home from a summer trip to the Seto Inland Sea and asked if I was interested in a joint adventure – and since he runs one of few blogs I actually read it was a pleasure to say yes. Michael likes his abandoned places rather high profile (who can blame him for that?) and so we pretty quickly narrowed it down to the Maya Hotel. The downside of that location: It’s right next to an active cable car station whose employees have a reputation for calling the police if they see trespassers on their way to or on the premises of the Maya Hotel (you have a beautiful view at the roof of the hotel from the cable car station). Since Mike and I are both rather dedicated explorers we decided to tackle the place hardcore style: During my research about the place I found out that there was a steep closed hiking trail up the mountain that leads there without getting close to the cable car station. To be able to take some photos on the rooftop we met at a Hankyu line station before 5.30 in the morning, hiked about 400 meters up the insanely steep, spider web covered abandoned hiking trail to finally reach the hotel; drenched in sweat and out of breath. Osaka / Kobe summers are everything but nice, the temperature barely ever falls below 30 degrees Celsius (even at night!) and the humidity is breathtaking. Especially in the morning, especially hiking up a forest trail, especially close to an abandoned and rotting hotel. Getting up Mount Maya that morning was my worst hiking experience without getting in physical danger and the third worst overall. Oh, and did I mention that I’m not a fan of alarm clocks at 4.30 in the morning? They tend to make me grumpy…
Luckily the anticipation of exploring a legendary abandoned building dominated over my morning grouchiness and so Michael and I reached the Maya Hotel in good spirits. Until we reached the entrance. Which was recently boarded up and ripped apart again. Carefully we got closer, gigantic flying insects the size of table tennis balls buzzing around and landing on us. Footsteps inside. 100%! What should we do? Getting inside? Waiting to be eaten alive by the insects? After a short deliberation we decided it would be better to take our chances with whoever was inside than with the nasty beasts outside, so we passed through the cracked open plywood and entered undaunted by death – only to find out that the footstep noises were created by dripping water. Of course we weren’t convinced right away, but after 5 minutes… well, 10 – okay, after 15 minutes we were confident that we were alone in the big hotel.
The history of the Maya Hotel started in 1929. Four years after the Maya Cable Car (officially Maya Cable Line (摩耶ケーブル線, Maya Kēburu-sen) began to transport tourists to the foot of Tenjo-ji the same company decided it would be a good idea to have a hotel up there – so they built it right next to the upper terminus. Construction began on May 15th 1929 and the Maya Tourist Hotel opened after a record time of just 6 months on November 16th. 15 years later, late in World War 2 on February 11th 1944, the Maya Cable Car was shut down as a non-essential line and the next year the hotel was forced to close, too. I’m not sure though if it was before or after the damages through air raids occurred – on top of Mount Maya were anti-aircraft guns installed and I guess taking them out damaged the hotel. Shortly after the war plans to turn the hotel into an officer’s club for the U.S. Forces fell through. In 1960 the cable car company decided to sell the severely damaged hotel and the new owner began renovations on September 1st. On August 28th 1961 the once so luxurious lodging was renovated to shine in new splendor – with parts from the French luxury ocean liner “SS Île de France” which was disassembled in the spring of 1959 in Osaka. But the grand re-opening wasn’t followed by a streak of good luck and so the Maya Tourist Hotel was forced to close its doors again in 1967, this time after suffering severe damages from a typhoon and a resulting mudslide. A final and finally rather long-term future began in 1974 when the place was re-opened again as the “Maya Student Center”. But the student center was closed in 1994 and the destiny of the Maya Hotel was sealed on January 17th 1995 when it suffered severe damage from the Great Hanshin Earthquake that killed almost 6.500 people – in the aftermath the construction was boarded up and fenced off, and its rise to become one of the most famous abandoned places (haikyo) in Japan began.
Since time was of the essence when Michael and I arrived at the more than 80 years old Maya Hotel we went right to the rooftop to take some photos outside before the crew of the cable car station would appear for work. The atmosphere was utterly eerie. Half of the mountain was covered by low hanging clouds, so at first our sight was quite limited while the sun tried to break through. I felt like in the middle of a horror film, but at the same time I knew there was an active cable car station just a stone’s throw away. A weird, slightly surreal situation. The chimney on the top of the roof collapsed a couple of years ago and was lying there like a gigantic crumbling grey cigar. Crushed through a lower roof on the southern side I saw the famous plane tire that once actually stuck in the roof. (Nobody seems to know where the tire is from and when it got onto, or better: into, the roof. It’s the tire of a B-29 Superfortress though – used in WW2 and retired in 1960.) The tranquility of the place was amazing, totally worth getting up at a time people should rather go to bed and climbing up a mountain at the worst time of the year. Sadly we had to hurry since 8 a.m., our personal roof deadline, came closer – the cable car started at 8.30 a.m. and we wanted to be out of sight with a little bit of a buffer. Only minutes after we got back inside of the Maya Tourist Hotel we heard a sound signal from the cable car station.
Exploring the inside of the Maya Hotel was almost as exciting as exploring the outside. Since the place was abandoned almost two decades ago with little renovation in the years before, there were only a few pieces of furniture left, the most striking one a red leather couch clearly not part of the original inventory As far as I know it was part of a video shooting – at least three Japanese bands used the abandoned hotel as a location for their music videos. Not to mention the countless photo shoots. Urbex, fashion, nudes – its stunning architecture made the Maya Hotel one of the most photographed modern ruins in Japan, probably in the world. Luckily most visitors carry a tremendous amount of respect for the place, so vandalism is a surprisingly minor factor. I guess when you deal with the hassle of getting to the Maya Tourist Hotel without being discovered you rather enjoy the breathtaking theater hall, the beautiful dining room and all the big and little surprises waiting for curious and careful explorers. And you have to be careful visiting the Maya Hotel! Water is running down the walls and dripping from the ceilings, broken stuff is lying around everywhere and the floors are severely damaged. Nevertheless the Maya Hotel as a whole is stunningly beautiful, magical, just fascinating. Nowadays most abandoned hotels get trashed before they get the chance to age properly – the Maya Hotel was abandoned several times and the 1920s architecture offers a completely different basis than the usual concrete blocks that look like they were designed by the same architect and interior designer.
Now I have to bring this pretty long article to an end somehow; maybe by linking to nk8513’s blog, you can find his collection of old photos and leaflets *here* (it’s in Japanese, but even if you go there just for the picture material you won’t regret it). Well, other than that let me say that this was my last exploration before I got a wide angle lens and a tripod, so the photos are not nearly as spectacular as I hoped they would turn out to be – considering the age of this blog it’s actually quite old material. I hope the three videos will make up for it a little bit… Oh, and thanks for reading till the very end!
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