I recently stumbled across Sekigahara Menard Land again after seeing pictures a while ago; it opened in 1972 and was closed in 2000 – at first under the pretext of renovating it; 3 months later it was closed for good. This time the pictures came with a map, so finally I had the exact location and although I’ve read it was destroyed I thought: “Great! 2 hour train ride, 1 hour hike – nice and easy Saturday trip!” Man, was I wrong…
Living in the Osaka area snow becomes little more than a memory. It snows on maybe two or three days a year, but it hardly ever sticks to the ground. 5° Celsius is considered “really cold” by the locals and overall Osaka winters don’t deserve to be called winters.
When I started my little Gifu vacation it was about 10° Celsius and sunny outside, perfect for the usual T-shirt and leather jacket combination. Reaching Lake Biwa the sky became cloudy and when I started to head east patches of snow were lying on the ground. When I arrived in Sekigahara I was welcomed by the iciest snow storm I experienced in years – horrible weather. After about an hour of walking along country streets I finally reached Menard Land, freezing like hardly ever before…
Entering was as easy as it can be, if you ignore the fact that the snow was about 20cm high even right along the street leading to SML; I was never that glad to wear hiking boots on my explorations. The few remaining fences can be passed on the side, but there was not a lot to see – except for lots and lots of snow. The entrance was quite disappointing, even the buildings I saw on the satellite pictures were gone. I followed a former maintenance road / hall and a way uphill to the right where I assumed was the main part of the park. That turned out to be a dead end: After I sank about 50cm into deep snow several times I gave up since I had no clue what was under the snow, if the way I assumed underneath would lead somewhere, and what was left of SML anways – especially after the entrance was very discouraging.
3 hours to get there, 10 minutes of taking pictures… great.
But it got worse. Completely wet from the snowstorm (it came down almost horizontally!) and sinking knee-deep into the snow I decided to go to another station just so I didn’t have to walk the same way back – not a smart decision since that other station was further away and made me walk along a highway. When I reached the other station more than 1.5 hours later my umbrella was destroyed, I was soaking wet and my hands were stiff from the ice cold wind. Of course the waiting room at the station was closed so I had to wait another 25 minutes in the chilly weather for the train to come. And it was no surprise that only 2 stations later the sun was shining and the weather was great…
Hiking in the snow was kinda fun, except for the fact that I wasn’t prepared for it at all. But overall the whole trip was a total disaster – especially in winter Sekigahara Menard Land is a total dud! (I might come back in summer though to find out if there is still something left behind the little hill that was covered by half a meter of snow… maybe with a quick sightseeing stop in Hikone.)
Oh, and by the way: Technically this haikyo is in the Chūbu area of Japan, but from Osaka it’s way easier to reach than certain places in Wakayama or the northern parts of Hyogo and Kyoto prefectures…
Addendum: In spring of 2010 I went back to Sekigahara Menard Land – you can read about it here.)
Abandoned Kansai 