All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum – and many, many more! Plus: North Korea Special – 2 trips, 16 days / 14 nights! As seen on CNN…
Some locations just have a sound to them that is irresistible, places you want to visit purely based on their names. Like the *Abandoned Japanese Sex Museum*, *Nara Dreamland* or the *Zone of Alienation* – names that create images even without knowing anything about them. When I heard about the Olympic Ruins Of Sapporo I knew I had to see them at one point or the other. There have been only 21 Olympic Winter Games so far and although the ones in Sapporo were held 40 years ago I was stunned to hear that some of the locations were abandoned – which, admittedly, is kind of naïve given the fact that even some event locations of the Olympic Summer Games in Athens (2004!) are already abandoned!
Since my first day in Sapporo was surprisingly sunny and I had some time to kill till my fellow explorer would arrive, I took the opportunity to not wait for a second trip to Hokkaido and have a look at the Olympic ruins right away. Sadly the whole thing sounded a lot better in theory than it ended up to be…
First of all: The skiing season in Hokkaido starts in early December, but I was in Sapporo in late November – so there were no buses running, only taxis. When I told the (female) train station staff that I will walk instead I was taken away by a prime example of a typical wave of Japanese surprise and disbelief. Still hilarious even after six years…
5 kilometers, 400 meters altitude difference and 1.5 hours later (I took my time…) I finally reached the Olympic Ruins Of Sapporo 1972. In the 1972 Winter Olympics this area was the bobsleigh goal house – the track was constructed from reinforced concrete between October 1969 and January 1972 for 433 million Yen and highlighted by 127 lamps for night runs. After Nagano was rewarded the 1998 Winter Olympics the bobsleigh track in Sapporo (1563 meters long, 132 meters vertical drop, 14 turns) was dismantled in 1991, but the goal house wasn’t.
Since I was stopping by at another location first it was already getting dark by the time I arrived halfway up Mount Teine. The area around the bobsleigh goal house was covered by snow completely, making it difficult to approach safely and impossible to reach the back area and the green shack halfway up a slope. I was able to enter the basement though, where all kinds of crap and some heavy machines were rotting and rusting. Sadly I forgot my flashlight at the hotel, so I wasn’t able to enter the ground floor or the first floor, both in a quite dilapidated state anyway. It also made me hurry quite a bit so I would get back to civilization at daylight to limit the risk of breaking some body part due to black ice or getting run over by one of the few cars speeding up and down the mountain. Furthermore I am a jeans and T-shirt guy all year round, not well prepared for winters since there are no winters in Osaka… and it got pretty friggin cold up there after a while, especially after the sun was hiding from about 3 p.m. on!
So in the end it was a quick look at an unspectacular location, but I was able to take some photos of an abandoned building with the Olympic rings on it – and that made me feel like a winner!
Abandoned Kansai in Hokkaido… Who would have thought that? Up till now I never made it further east than the center of Japan’s main island Honshu. I limited myself to the western half of Japan, because that was the reason I started this blog. Heck, initially I wanted to limit myself to the Kansai region; hence “Abandoned Kansai”, not “Abandoned Japan” or “Abandoned West Japan”. But then the “once in a while” hobby urban exploration turned into a regular thing and only weeks later I went to different regions, then to different islands – and in spring of 2012 I did a *haikyo trip to Okinawa* together with my urbex buddy *Michael Gakuran*. “What’s next?” was the big question, and the answer was found quickly – we already explored Japan’s most western prefecture, so we kind of had to explore Japan’s most eastern prefecture, Hokkaido!
Usually I plan my urbex trips on short notice. One time I brought my urbex equipment to work on Friday to see how I feel during the day, booked a hotel in the afternoon and left for a weekend trip right after work. Flexibility like that is impossible when partnering up for a long distance trip, so Michael and I booked plane tickets weeks ahead – and according to the weather forecast we ended up with a rainy weekend; a long weekend even, to which we added some days. Luckily the forecast was as reliable as always in Japan and so 4 out of my 5 days in Hokkaido were sunny and slightly snowy, only the last one came with 8° Celsius and rain.
Since I arrived almost a day earlier than Michael the original plan for me was to do some sightseeing in Sapporo. To my surprise the weather was sunny to cloudy, no rain at all, so instead of visiting indoor classics like the Sapporo Clock Tower, the Ishiya Chocolate Factory or the Sapporo Beer Museum I opted for a little hike to Mount Teine, once home to some of the sports events at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo. One day of good weather? I had to take advantage of that! Then it turned out that the next three days were pretty nice, too – which is a big advantage when doing urban exploration as you spend a lot of time outdoors…
On the last day Michael and I split – while he drove for hours to infiltrate a location he asked me to keep secret for now, I went on to do some really touristy stuff, like visiting the old harbor town of Otaru and taking a glass blowing lesson. My favorite touristic place though was the Sapporo night view from the freshly renovated observation platform on top of Mount Moiwa – stunningly beautiful! It was soooooo cold up there, but the view was absolutely amazing! I went there on the first day before visiting the Sapporo White Illumination and I strongly recommend to pay Mt. Moiwa a visit – I would love to shoot a time-lapse video from up there…
Overall the trip to Hokkaido was a great mix of urbex and tourist stuff. Five days I really enjoyed, probably more than any five consecutive days I spent in Osaka this year… So this is a list of the abandoned places I ended up visiting:
Advantest Research Institute Bibai Bio Center Canadian World Park Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures Horonai Coal Mine Substation Mt. Teine Ski Lift
National Sanatorium Sapporo Olympic Ruins Of Sapporo 1972 Sankei Hospital
Sapporo Art Village
Showa-Shinzan Tropical Plant Garden Tenkaen – Japan’s Lost China Theme Park
When I wrote about the *Abandoned Japanese Sex Museum* in spring a lot of people seemed to enjoy my article – on Sunday I had the chance to visit the Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures, Japan’s other abandoned sex museum. It wasn’t bigger, but it was less artsy and a lot more explicit! This haikyo gave the term “ruins porn” a way deeper meaning…
“House of hidden treasures” – a Japanese euphemism to describe sex museums. In the 1960s pretty much every of the 47 prefectures in Japan had a sex museum, usually located in a small spa town somewhere in the mountains. Video did not only kill the radio star, it also made pornography widely available and started the decline of many sex museums – the internet finished the job 20 years later. Nowadays there are only a handful of sex museums in Japan (although you can barely call them museums as most of them are bizarre collections of art and what some weird people think art is…) and they are fighting for survival. The Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures (HHOHT) was no exception in that regard. Opened at a time when other sex museums started to close (1980), the HHOHT was equipped with the latest technology of the time (including a huge 3D pussy, created by a plastic, a gigantic lens and a mirror), but ran into financial trouble in the new millennium – closing was considered in 2007 (after lowering the entrance fee by 1000 Yen to 1500 Yen), but it seems like it was kept open for business until March of 2010, when thieves stole a Marilyn Monroe wax figure, a female wax figure with a snake around her neck, a belly dance doll and two travelers’ guardian deities. While most other sex museums get rid of their exhibits (by throwing them away or selling them) and then become another parking lot, the Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures became the haikyo Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures – one of two known abandoned sex museums in Japan.
Much to my surprise the HHOHD was quite different from the *Abandoned Japanese Sex Museum* in Japan’s south. Instead of featuring dozens of wooden and stone statues the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures was stuffed with taxidermy animals – most of them copulating: Horses, elks, zebras, boars, lions, monkeys, all kinds of birds… I’ve never seen that many stuffed animals anywhere. And while most of the sculptures at this museum didn’t even seem to be made from real stone, all the taxidermy animals were real and in pretty good condition – if not for the sex part the museum should have been famous for its stuffed animals. But of course there was so much more to see: paintings, drawings, animatronics, a shooting game called “French Ponpon” (5 shots with a gun: 100 Yen), a huge vibrating penis to sit on, sculptures, shrines (dedicated to birth or equipped with penis shaped statues), and wax figures in a bizarre forest scene – starring a big red demon (with a surprisingly small dick) and a naked woman, being watched by horny, peeping or even mating animals. The most strange thing though was found on the basement floor – it appeared to be another shooting game. This time participants had to shoot “water” from a huge golden penis at a naked female doll. I’m sure when the Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures was still in business it was all fun and games, but this time there was a victim. My haikyo buddy *Michael Gakuran* wanted to have a closer look at the naked woman and stepped into what seemed to be a concrete pool – except that the surface wasn’t concrete, but gypsum floating on top of the still intact pool; resulting in a mild shock and lots of wet clothes. In hindsight the water in the shooting game must have been colored white for a more “realistic” approach; a closer look at the female doll confirmed that assumption. (Luckily Michael’s equipment wasn’t damaged thanks to a water-proof camera!) Instead of going back to the car and changing clothes Michael dried himself and his stuff up as good as possible and continued shooting for 45 minutes with one bare foot! What a trooper, especially since the place was literally freezing cold. Most of the rooms had dripping water, and on the lower floor the water froze to icicles or drops on the ground! It was so cold I could see my own breath and after a while my fingers started to hurt – I can only imagine how Michael must have felt; who even refused to leave right away when we both heard some noise from the upper floor, followed by footsteps – because he hadn’t shot a pitch black room in the back yet…
The Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasure was a massive location and a real photography challenge thanks to lots of dark areas, massive amounts of glass and really weird setups; not challenging but weird BTW was the sukiyaki and ramen restaurant above the museum – I left that part out completely as it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the sex museum itself. All in all Michael and I spent almost 5 hours at the HHOHT – more time than at any other place before except for the *Nakagusuku Hotel* in *Okinawa*. And it was well worth it – I barely ever shot as many interesting and unique photos before. I also recommend watching the walking tour I shot as it shows the setup of the museum much better than I could describe it with words and photos. Speaking of which – here they are…
„There is no vandalism in Japan!” is one of the most untrue urbex clichés – and whoever still thinks that I will prove wrong with this posting, especially when compared to the previous one. When I visited the *Tuberculosis Hospital For Children* for the first time three years ago it was hardly abandoned and barely touched. No signs of vandalism, no signs of protection. 8 days ago on the other hand…
When my haikyo buddy *Michael Gakuran* came to Kansai to explore my old urbex nemesis *Nara Dreamland* I was devastated I couldn’t join him since I made other plans for that day weeks ago. But I was free the next day, so we met up and I showed him my most closely guarded secret location, the abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium for children I visited and never talked about. Ever. To anybody.
Walking up a gentle slope I didn’t expect a lot of change. Sure, by now two Japanese explorers posted inside shots of the haikyo hospital, so there must be a way in now… But that’s it, right? WRONG!
Approaching the tuberculosis clinic the once locked gate was wide open… and 100 meters down the road we found a brand-new barricade. Well, it was brand-new at one point, now it was grotesquely bended and nevertheless almost flat on the ground. It actually looked like a truck ran over it. Again and again. Not one of those Japanese mini trucks! A massive, manly American one! Most windows of the building were boarded up – or smashed after somebody ripped off the solid wooden panels. A half-open box of plastic syringes was scattered in front of a side entrance and glass was basically everywhere. If I wouldn’t have known better I would have said that this location was abandoned forever and a day.
With all the doors broken up and half the windows smashed in, the Tuberculosis Hospital For Children was exposed to the weather for a couple of years – and it showed. A lot of rooms were moldy, in some the wallpapers were falling off already. To make things worse the hordes of vandals (or a single very serious one!) emptied several fire extinguishers in several key rooms (like the radiology and the laboratory), making it hard to breathe after a short while. And of course some areas were swarmed by gnats, but that’s kind of a given for abandoned places in Japan during autumn…
Although the concrete building featured quite a few glass fronts, a couple of areas were still boarded up and therefore dark; darker than a black steer’s tookus on a moonless prairie night. I didn’t expect that and left spare batteries for my flashlight at home, which didn’t influence the photo shooting, but the second video I took for your viewing pleasure.
Exploring an abandoned place I always try to relate to the place I visit – which wasn’t exactly easy at a tuberculosis clinic for children, especially since I just read an article about the Goiania accident in the Brazilian city of Goiânia. (In 1987 two metal thieves stole a cylinder from an abandoned hospital. They punctured it and scooped out some grams of a glowing substance before selling everything to a nearby scrapyard. There the cylinder was opened and people loved the fascinating material they’ve never seen before and spread it all over town by taking some home. To make a long story short – the substance was cesium chloride, a highly radioactive inorganic compound. To this very day the accident is considered one of the most catastrophic nuclear disasters; 4 people dies, more than 110.000 were examined for radioactive contamination.) So here I was, strolling through an abandoned hospital, fascinated by the countless medical equipment that was left behind…
The Tuberculosis Hospital For Children turned out to be a treasure chest of objects big and small. While some rooms were (almost) completely empty, like the swimming pool and the cafeteria, others were stuffed with analysers, boxes of laboratory glassware and even private items like photos and drawings. Without a doubt one of the highlights was right next to the pool, a small room full of boxes containing envelopes filled with X-rays, MRIs and CTs – all of them taken at a hospital in Osaka, which kind of leads to the conclusion that Tuberculosis Hospital For Children was just an extension of a much larger clinic probably still existing… (More about the hospital haikyo’s history in a future posting, this is all about the exploration!)
Pretty much all of the images came with handwritten doctor’s notes, some of them bilingual (Japanese and English). *Michael* seemed to be quite fascinated by the found, so I left for the other building and only took a few quick shots right before we left. It’s a strange feeling going through other people’s medical files, picking up radiographs of potentially terminally ill people and holding them against the sun to take a photo – most of the MRIs seemed to be of adults, but especially the roentgenograms of kids were… eerie.
The massive concrete construction housing the hospital was connected by a bridge with a rather narrow lightweight building (remember the *previous article*?). Typical Japanese architecture of the 1940s / 50s with walls you could punch through. The floor was kind of yielding, but the huge hornets (or maybe suzumebachi?) flying through the smashed windows made my hurry anyway. As expected the lightweight building turned out to be rather unspectacular. One part was in catastrophic condition, so I didn’t even try to enter it. The rest was a couple of bathrooms, lots of empty rooms and some storage rooms – most likely the school part of the hospital in the 40s before it got its own building down the road. But like I said, that’s a story for another time…
If you are a regular reader of this blog you might remember my *rant about Golden Week* a while ago. To refresh your memory: I went to Kyushu for some urban exploration – my plan was to stay for four days, but I had to return to Kansai the same day, because I couldn’t find a hotel room; partly because I’m Caucasian, probably because my Japanese skills are limited.
Between the devastating news from the Sasebo Tourist Information Center (their staff was great though!) and me returning home I visited the abandoned Saikaibashi Public Aquarium, a location that gained quite a bit of popularity on Japanese *haikyo* blogs recently.
Sadly only a couple of urban exploration blogs, Western as well as Japanese, really care about the history of the places they present – a fact that sometimes makes it tough for yours truly to give you proper facts about the places I showcase on Abandoned Kansai. I’ve seen a really old photo of the aquarium taken in summer of 1965, so it’s pretty safe to say that it was in business already back then. The oldest photos of the abandoned aquarium dated as far back as 1996 – and on those photos the place already looked like nobody took care of it for a decade or two. The small floating platform in front of the aquarium did not have the wood and barbed wire installation yet, and the handrail on the waterfront was still there, but the concrete holding it up was already severely damaged.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a public aquarium still in business, but passing by the ones on *Mount Yashima* and the Kaiyukan in Osaka (which is one of the biggest aquariums in the world) I was under the impression that those installations are pretty big. The Saikaibashi Public Aquarium wasn’t big at all. Probably 6 or 7 meters by 35 meters, 2 floors (steps, no elevator). There was one huge tank combining both floors and several smaller ones on each floor. None of them were filled with water, hardly any had intact windows. The amount of vandalism was severe – no graffiti, but most of the smashable items were destroyed. The building being exposed to the elements didn’t help either – even on the upper level the massive concrete floor felt kind of unsteady due to the damages done in the past decades. And outside it was more than clearly visible how fragile concrete can be: the bridge leading to the aquarium collapsed at two different segments and I really hope nobody was walking there when it happened. Which is rather likely since I’ve seen photos of the intact bridge that weren’t that old – maybe 1.5 or 2 years. The chance that a fellow explorer took an involuntary bath is rather high…
What really surprised me, not to say shock me, was a fact I found out about only after I visited the Saikaibashi Public Aquarium. As small as the aquarium was, it seems like the main attraction of the place was a dolphin show! The now broken bridge, fitted with metal grids, limited an area known as the “Dolphin’s Cove” (イルカの池), show time was at 10:00, 12:00, 14:00 as well as at 16:00 on normal weekdays and at 10:30, 12:00, 13:30, 15:00 and at 16:30 on weekends, public holidays and during the six week long school summer break that to the best of my knowledge usually starts in July when the weather becomes too hot and humid to spend time in a building without AC, which applies for most Japanese schools.
Though small and vandalized, the one hour I had to explore and document the Saikaibashi Public Aquarium felt a bit short. How often do you have the chance to visit an abandoned aquarium? But at that point I was still hoping to get a hotel room in Fukuoka, so I had to leave prematurely and hurry to save my third Kyushu trip…
Since I’ve been terribly busy recently both at work and with several urbex projects / explorations it sadly has to be a short article this week; a location that took me just a couple of minutes to shoot, actually – the Kurhaus Sand (or Hotel Sand).
When I went on vacation to Germany in summer this year I met up with a kindergarten friend of mine, Nina. She became a regular reader of this blog and was eager to explore with me, so I planned a daytrip to the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) area of Germany. I had several leads there and thanks to an early start we managed to visit 7 (!) different locations on one day – possible only because some of them weren’t accessible; one of them being the Kurhaus Sand. Strangely enough a name that works both in English and German, but since kurhaus isn’t nearly as common as kindergarten let me give you a quick translation: health resort.
And that’s basically what the Kurhaus Sand was – a health resort in one of Germany’s most beautiful regions, the Black Forest. Not much more than a couple of houses in the middle of nowhere, Sand isn’t even a village. Its origin though is the now abandoned kurhaus. Around 1845 a mountain shelter was build on sandy soil (hence the name Sand, which means sand… Captain Obvious strikes again!) as a refugee for forestry workers. A couple of years later somebody started to sell beverages, with little success (the hut was subsidized by the city…), but after some state investments in 1874 the hut was turned into an inn under the direction of the retired country constable Josef Martin Weis at the age of 57. The place became more and more popular amongst hikers and in 1884 the previous head chef August Maier became the new tenant. In the early 1890s Maier bought, enlarged and enhanced the inn and re-opened it as the Kurhaus Sand in the presence of Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden – the last Grand Duke of Baden. The area continued to thrive, so around 1920 a gas station was added, in 1930 a post office opened and in 1936 a police station started its service. During those days the ownership of the Kurhaus Sand changed several times, but I’ll spare you the details.
Nowadays all of these installations are closed. Only the 1949 opened Bergwaldhütte (Mountain Forest Hut), a convalescent home for children and later for policemen, is still in business – offering food and drinks for all travelers coming through on the popular Schwarzwaldhochstraße (Black Forest High Street).
When Nina and I drove up to the Kurhaus Sand we were forced to stay inside the car for a couple of minutes as a cloudburst made it impossible to start our exploration right away. When we were finally able to get close we were still not sure if the Kurhaus Sand was really abandoned or not as the place isn’t really popular amongst German urban explorers. The building was in pretty good condition, but since there was no activity during a time that is considered the busiest vacation time in Germany it must have been abandoned… We were able to walk around the building clockwise once – no signs of anybody, no signs of vandalism, but also no way to enter the building…
It wasn’t until my return to Japan that I found out that a family named Wiedemann were the owners of the Kurhaus Sand from the 1930s on. In 1977 Günter Milz took over and turned the place into a popular destination for day trippers – he modernized the hotel part (baths, elevator, …) and his restaurant became famous for the cuisine of Baden; like Flädlesuppe, Käsespätzle, Maultaschen and Schupfnudeln. Milz retired in 1994, but I couldn’t find any information about the almost 20 years since then. Given the decent condition the Kurhaus Sand is still in it must have been opened for business for another couple of years, but who knows? Thanks to its remote condition hardly anybody would go there just to vandalize it… Luckily there are many local historians in Germany – maybe one of them finds this article and can add some information?
Okunoshima is urban exploration for beginners. Actually it’s more like a vacation day than urbex – with an inglorious past, probably one of the darkest chapters in Japan’s history. And it’s an island with many names. In Japan Okunoshima (大久野島) is famous as usagi shima (ウサギ島), Rabbit Island. People with a more twisted look at life call it Poison Gas Island, though the Japanese term doku gas shima (毒ガス島) is way less common – but I doubt that this is the result of a more positive Japanese mindset…
Located in the Seto Inland Sea about 50 kilometers east of Hiroshima Okunoshima disappeared before if became famous. Back in the 1920s Japan signed the Geneva Protocol of 1925 that banned the use of chemical and biological weapons – but it didn’t say anything about development, production, storage or transfer. At the time being up to no good and started making trouble in the neighborhood, Japan immediately began to take advantage of that loophole. And with that Japan became the only country to use chemical weapons in World War II, killing an estimated 80.000 Chinese soldiers and civilians according to historian Chi Hsueh-jen! (Not only with the knowledge, but with the permission of Emperor Hirohito… which probably should have lead to his prosecution as a war criminal. Sadly, hard evidence was found only decades later by Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a professor of modern Japanese history at the prestigious Chuo University and a founding member of the “Center for Research and Documentation on Japan’s War Responsibility”. My deep respect for the man, I’m sure his research made him more enemies than friends…)
The location of choice was the small and barely known island of Okunoshima, off the beaten tracks in case of a major accident, but still close enough to the important military city Hiroshima. From 1927 to 1929 an existing fish cannery on Okunoshima was “modernized” with a desalination plant, a refrigeration system and a power plant – and at the same time all foxes, martens, cats and rats were systematically eradicated. Okunoshima was erased from maps and Japan did everything to keep its existence a secret. Shipping routes were changed and trains along the coast had to close their window shutters, so did ferries passing the island. Plain-clothed members of the infamous Japanese military police kempeitai made sure everybody followed those rules and didn’t dare to sneak a peek. To avoid any activity on Okunoshima being seen from mainland Japan the old fish cannery was blown up, keeping the new installations intact – and the old pier in the west was replaced by a new one further south, closer to the research and production facilities. Huge storages for gigantic tanks were carved into the mountain and the soil was used to create ramparts as visual covers. In 1929 production began with high secrecy and under horrible conditions.
Since most of Japan’s leading scientists were under the supervision of western secret services they couldn’t be involved directly in the top secret base on Okunoshima. Production had to be executed by educated amateurs. Most of them were Korean forced laborers who worked in the production of medicine or soap before, locals looking for a good salary – and later on the military pressured more than 1000 local high school students into working on Okunoshima; at first only those with good grades in natural sciences, in the final years of WWII pretty much everybody available. The workers were given protective suits that weren’t really protective because the aggressive chemicals made the PVC brittle – thousands were injured because of that and during accidents, many died of their injuries because there were no doctors on the island and nobody was allowed to seek medical help on the Japanese mainland for the reason of secrecy. The production halls were cold in winter and smoldering in summer. Imagine wearing a plastic suit in a climate that sometimes makes it hard to breathe even when in shorts and T-shirt…
About 6.600 tons of mustard gas (Yperite), lewisite, phosgene and other poison gases were produced and stored temporarily on Okunoshima between 1929 and 1944 before being put to use by the Japanese military. While the gases were tested on rabbits on Okunoshima the scientists there worked together with the infamous *Unit 731* on at least two occasions in 1940 and 1943 – they tested mustard gas on Chinese prisoners. (In case you don’t know Unit 731: Have a look at Wikipedia and make sure you don’t wanna eat soon. Their initiator and commanding officer *Shiro Ishii* was one of the most despicable people to ever walk on this planet, the Japanese Josef Mengele, maybe even worse – but thanks to some Americans, especially from Fort Detrick, the weasel was never prosecuted, although he should have been executed for his war crimes. Ishii didn’t even have to flee Japan since he was able to negotiate immunity for himself and his closest allies. Instead he lived a peaceful life with his family until is death in 1959 at age 67.)
After World War II ended in 1945 the remaining poison gas was dumped in the ocean, buried or burned – the factories were blown up or used as housing or storage (e.g. for ammunition during the Korean War). This was done by Japanese contractors under the supervision of the Americans, but what happened to the rabbits used as laboratory animals is rather unclear. Some say they were released by workers after the Japanese military left the island – others claim that they were all killed by the American military and the current rabbits on Okunoshima are descendants of a dozen pets released by a Japanese school class in 1972. One thing is for sure: Since all natural enemies of the rodents were killed in the late 1920s they don’t have to fear any predators and so they breed like… well… rabbits.
Okunoshima stayed a forgotten island for a few decades until in 1988 something unusual happened, at least by Japanese standards: A poison gas museum opened on the Poison Gas Island. Of course emphasizing the harsh conditions for the workers in the factory, because as everybody knows, at least everybody educated by the Japanese school system: Japan was the victim of WWII. Well, sadly that is the common self-awareness, which explains South Park episodes like Whale Whores (and Chinpokomon…) – episodes that show an understanding of Japan most people, including Japanese, don’t have. And so all the photos of poison gas inflicted wounds in the 2 room museum are not from WWII, but from the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. And while most ruins on Okunoshima have signs in Japanese and English (which is quite commendable since it’s unusual for any location that far off the beaten tracks!) the ones at the museum are mostly in Japanese only. (Which reminds me of the Peace Center in Osaka, where most of the surprisingly critical exhibits are labeled in Japanese only while all the others are bilingual, Japanese and English – shamed be he who thinks evil of it…)
Nowadays Okunoshima is a popular tourist spot, visited by about 100.000 people a year, many of them staying overnight at the hotel or the camping ground on the island. Not so much because of the poison gas factory ruins or the museum, but because of the rabbits. Like I said, no predators, so 100s of them are roaming freely, probably making Okunoshima the world’s largest petting zoo. Usually when I am on my way to an abandoned place and there is some noise in the bushes close-by it’s a snake. Or a boar. Or a monkey. Maybe even a bear. On Okunoshima it’s a rabbit. Or a bunch of them. Charging at any person that is passing by, hoping for some food. And they are so adorable! I came for the ruins, but I stayed for the rabbits. Seriously, I spent much more time taking photos of rabbits than taking photos of ruins – when I found out that there were remains of a Meiji era fort from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/05 I almost considered it a burden, not another photo opportunity…
Pretty much all rabbits on Okunoshima are hand-tame. The ones near the ferry terminals and the hotel are by far the biggest ones. I’m sure they get fed 24/7! If you like your rabbits smaller and a little bit more shy I recommend going off the beaten tracks – to the tennis courts (de-facto abandoned, at least some of them), to the former gunpowder storage or any trail up the mountain. Don’t worry, even there you don’t have to look for rabbits… they will find you! (And you don’t have to worry about snakes, boars, monkeys or bears – you are not even allowed to bring cats or dogs to the island.)
As for my day on Okunoshima: I did a full circle, starting at ferry terminal 2 and ending at ferry terminal 1, since I left on the second to last boat departing from the island; you can *have a look at GoogleMaps* as Okunoshima is a tourist attraction. And I refrained from renting a bike, because I wanted to take my time and enjoy the relaxing atmosphere on the island. The weather started out sunny and ended overcast, poison for photography, but surprisingly I didn’t mind. All of a sudden I didn’t care that much for the gas factory ruins. Many of them were fenced off by ridiculously low bars, but for once I did respect those barriers that were more symbolic than effective. After learning about the place’s history all those chunks of concrete blackened with soot weren’t that important anymore. Okunoshima’s history was just overwhelming. Why disrespect a place that saw and caused so much pain and suffering? When at the same time you can spend a relaxing day at the beach and play with cute little bunnies!
Going to Okunoshima was a wonderful experience and I kind of left with a heavy heart – I visited in spring on a warm day, probably still a little bit too cold to go swimming, and I had plans for the next day. But if you ever have the chance to go to Okunoshima from late spring to early autumn make sure to bring a loved one (as well as your kids, if you have some) and stay overnight at the hotel – just make sure to make a reservation months ahead as the hotel is very busy. Unless you are afraid of ghosts and fear that hordes of Chinese war victims, Japanese workers and laboratory rabbits will haunt you…
Oh, before I forget: A shortened German version of this article, “Die Insel der Versuchskaninchen / Okunoshima – Zwischen Giftgas und Kaninchen” (The Island of Guinea Pigs / Okunoshima – Between Poison Gas and Rabbits), was published on Spiegel Online / einestages on Monday – you can *read it here*.
Strip clubs in Japan are a mystery to most foreigners. Most likely because of the language barrier – I guess the average tourist isn’t wiling to risk spending unknown amounts of money for drinks and other services; especially if they don’t know what services are available or if they are even welcome. Reports about foreigners not being allowed to enter onsen, brothels or strip clubs are almost as old as reports about foreigners being allowed to enter Japan again (i.e. 160 years…). I guess most foreigners, especially tourists, don’t even know where to find strip clubs in Japan. For that reason the two abandoned and gutted by fire strip clubs in the outskirts of Nagoya and Tokyo might be the most famous ones. But the one I want to present you today might be the new frontrunner…
Sex sells, even urban exploration. My article about the abandoned *Japanese Sex Museum* half a year ago was a pleasant success and it wouldn’t surprise me if some other websites would pick up on this little countryside gem, too – this abandoned Japanese strip club is in amazing condition, hardly known to the net and barely known even amongst Japanese urban explorers.
Like the Japanese Sex Museum I’ve seen the Japanese Strip Club maybe three or four times in three years on Japanese haikyo blogs. That’s it. Usually photos taken from the outside, at the entrance area and at a small stage. Because of that my expectations were rather low when I hit the road with my local urbex buddy Dan and two of his friends to go to a small onsen town in the mountains of Okayama. Luckily one of the Japanese blogs didn’t hesitate to throw out all kinds of information about the location of the strip club, so it was easy to find. Sadly it didn’t give any hard facts about the place, so I can’t tell you much about its history.
The official name of the strip club was a euphemism, like so often when it comes to the sex industry in Japanese spa towns. The sex museum was called “House of Hidden Treasures” – and this strip club was a “Sightseeing Theater”. I’m sure the sights to see were pretty awesome, but the name was kind of misleading as it implied fun for the whole family…
Well, at least our group had fun, although I have to admit that I never really “got” the place, never connected with it. I felt like a creep creeping around this creepy place. It was an interesting exploration though, because the photos I had seen of the place made up for maybe half of its size. Walking up the staircase covered by plastic sheets we quickly reached the entrance, out of sight from the busy street and a nosy neighbor, who had a good look at our little group when we approached the “sightseeing theater”. It seems like the entrance fee was 3000 Yen – and since the door was locked we looked for alternative ways to get in. To the right was a side entrance that lead directly to the oh so known strip room with its orange stage and the countless tine stool bolted to the ground. Well, countless, I guess there were about 150 of them, sometimes as little as maybe 15 centimeters between them. Thinking that in the probably not so distant past they were occupied by cigarette smoking sweaty horny men staring at naked women was quite surreal in the light of day. While I was taking photos of the room my companions went backstage and stayed there surprisingly long. It turned out that although we’ve already seen everything I’ve seen on the internet didn’t mean that we’ve seen everything there was. Behind the stage was a small room with a bed and from there a dark, narrow hallway with an uncomfortably soft floor lead to another part of the building, a part that was actually even closer to the locked main entrance. When I got out of the dark I stepped directly… onto a stage. A stage way bigger in a room way bigger than I just left. While the first location was a little bit shabby and tacky with plastic flowers everywhere and gigantic eagles painted on the wall the second room was… actually pretty similar; just bigger, more spacious and in better condition, probably thanks to the wallpaper that was missing in the other room. Close to the stage were the same tiny little stools bolted to the ground, but with a little bit more distance between them. The last three rows reminded me of old cinema seats – of way better quality than the horrible stools, but still not really comfortable and clearly installed before McDonald’s supersized the average Japanese from tiny to small. Bow chicka wow wow. This room was so cliché 70s porn it was tough to wrap my mind around it. The cheap pink plastic decoration was so horrible I felt a little bit embarrassed just looking at it, but I guess when it was dark and you focused on the stage it didn’t matter. Sadly it wasn’t completely dark in there. Just almost, with bright light coming in from a door leading outside.
I still didn’t like the location, but I continued exploring and taking photos. Before I headed upstairs (yes, this part of the building had a second floor) I checked the entrance area, but it just offered more tacky decoration, an upset vending machine and a huge list of phone numbers of local accommodations…
The second floor (with a sign “Men please keep out!”) was so vandalized and boring that I decided to not take photos there and just include it in the video tour, especially since we were running out of time anyway. I’m sure some fellow explorers would have loved to go through the personal belongings left behind for hours, but I’m getting tired of those moldy, smelly kitchens, bathrooms and tiny private apartments. The only really interesting room up there was almost completely dark and contained the controls for the lights and sound in the big strip stage room. Looking down almost made me expect some pig-cops – the whole setup really reminded me of the first episode of Duke Nukem 3D.
Oh, and in case you wonder: The big trophy you can see in the video was for a karaoke competition…
Leaving the abandoned Japanese Strip Club I felt a little bit like leaving *Nara Dreamland* – my head knew that I was exploring an amazing unique location, but my heart didn’t feel it. Nevertheless I hope you enjoyed this article and come back soon for more. Japan is an urbex paradise and there are dozens, maybe hundreds of locations to come…
The Taylor Barracks in Mannheim-Vogelstang are one of those locations that are not really abandoned, but have the looks and feel of a deserted place. Cleared by the US Army on August 30th 2011 the Taylor Barracks are now under the administration of the BImA (Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben / Institute for Federal Real Estate), which has to decide what will happen to this former military base.
The Taylor Barracks, named after Private 1st Class Cecil V. Taylor who died in the last days of World War II and who posthumously received a Silver Star for courage in the face of the enemy, were built in 1939/40 by Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht as Scheinwerfer-Kaserne (Searchlight Barracks) – most likely because it was home to the Flakscheinwerfer-Abteilung 299 (299th Anti-aircraft Searchlight Detachment) to defend Mannheim from bombings. From April 1948 on many, many US Army units were stationed at the Taylor Barracks; way too many to name them all. In the early years most of them were Ordnance Companies and Engineer Companies, later on a lot of supply and service battalions found their homes in Mannheim-Vogelstang.
(Fun fact: When I told my dad, a musician basically all of his life, that I had a look at the Taylor Barracks he told me that he played there on the opening night of a military club. When he asked for a whiskey coke the bartender handed him half a gallon of Jim Beam! The 70s must have been an interesting time…)
In the summer of 2012 the Taylor Barracks stood there waiting for a new purpose. Most of the buildings were in pristine condition, only some metal started to rust here and there. Also in pristine condition was the fence around the 46ha big premises – about 2.5 meters high and secured by barbed wire there was no way to enter the closed base. In areas considered a special security risk, like fence sections with streetlights, additional rolls of razor tape were installed on top of the fence and / or on the ground. And so the exploration I hoped for turned into nothing more than just quite a long walk…
Addendum 2013-09-09: It turns out that the good people at the BImA are great sports – instead of going after me for taking photos they link to Abandoned Kansai on their official page about the Taylor Barracks! 🙂 They also link to newspapers, the official homepage of the city of Mannheim and several others… but Abandoned Kansai is first! You can *have a look here*, but be aware that their website is in German…)
When *Michael* and I drove to the Himeyuri Park we had no idea what to expect. Would we be able to find it? Would it be really abandoned? Would there be security? Would we be able to get in? Or was demolished already? And was it really a cactus park, so close to the cemetery-turned cactus park *Okinawa Seimeinooka Park*?
A huge sign at the entrance still welcomed potential visitors, but the road to the parking lot was blocked, so we tried to find some kind of back entrance. On the way there we were impressed by the massive walls surrounding the place – as I found out later is was 2.5 kilometers long, up to 10 meters high and made of 150.000 tons of Okinawan limestone! Our efforts were fruitless – and we didn’t have a chance to look at the entrance, so we turned around and walked straight up to the place. Who knows, maybe a gigantic security guard was waiting for innocent urban explorers like us with a whole selection of deadly weapons?
Well, there was no gigantic security guard. Not even a skinnyfat one. Just an empty parking lot for 240 cars. (I didn’t count – whenever I throw in facts I know about the Himeyuri Park it’s thanks to research I did after I returned to Kansai; we had zero information about the park when exploring it!) Right in front of the parking lot we found a couple of gigantic shade-giving metal cowboy hats, so called ten gallon hats – those were actually big enough to easily hold 10 gallons / 40 liters, not just three liters like the real hats. Well, they could have hold that much liquid if they wouldn’t have been in rather bad shape and even lost most of their shade-giving properties; giving no protection to the stacks of pamphlets and merchandise on the tables underneath the hats.
After we checked out the rest of the surroundings we found a way into the park that was clearly divided into two parts, represented in this article by two videos. Right at the entrance was a big building with a huge gift shop and a restaurant (the kitchen interior being completely removed), the tall pointy roofs visible from quite a distance. In the back Michael and I found several office rooms and a locker room for the employees – all areas have been pretty much completely vandalized, although this clearly abandoned cactus amusement park never popped up on any Japanese or Western haikyo blog, at least not to my knowledge. The place was damaged so badly that I had to find out afterwards that the Himeyuri Park was actually a Wild West themed cactus park – hence the enormous cowboy hats at the entrance. But all the other signs, like prairie schooners and similar stuff, were long gone. I found a totem pole in the second main part, the actual cactus park, but I didn’t think much about it since Japanese theme parks tend to take elements from all kinds of places and create a strange mix.
The restaurant and gift shop building was in a dilapidated state, especially since both pointy roofs were severely damaged and offered no protection against the elements anymore. Everything was wet and moldy, not really a nice place to be at. It seems like they sold all kinds of souvenirs there, like Disney merchandise, photos and the previously mentioned Okinawan shirts called kariyushi shirts. (They started out as a marketing tool in the 1970s to attract tourist, which means that they were introduced to Okinawa 40 years after Ellery Chun invented the modern Aloha shirt! Those were made of leftover kimono fabric and so the circle is complete…) Of course there also was cactus-related stuff, like cactus ice cream. Also worth mentioning are the weird coconut shaped lamps hanging from the ceiling – I didn’t know why, but their tackiness caught my attention several times.
The office part of the building wasn’t as wet, but not less vandalized. Things were scattered all over the floors in most of the rooms and there is not much to say about it since it was just another vandalized office area you can see at an estimated 75% of all abandoned places. One room was kind of interesting since it looked like a 70s living room with carpeted floor and some more or less comfy looking chairs. It also contained some documents and a stack of business cards belonging to a person working for the Taiwan Pineapple Corporation – and this is where the story gets messed up and rather interesting. For example the small fact that the address given on the business card isn’t in Okinawa… it’s in Ryukyu, Okinawa’s old name…
As for the park’s unusual history: Himeyuri Park was opened in 1983 (earlier than the Mexico Cactus Park Sarabanda!) as a subsidiary of the Tohnan Botanical Garden (東南植物楽園, Southeast Bontanical Gardens) and closed due to poor business performance in 2005 (later than the Mexico Cactus Park Sarabanda…). But before that happened it was bought by the Taiwan Pineapple Corporation, a subsidiary of the Typhone Group, one of Taiwan’s most powerful companies. But this investment wasn’t just a business decision, it was mostly political. At the time Taiwan tried to expand its influence in Japan, especially Okinawa – not a surprise given the fact that the Okinawan Islands are rather close to Taiwan. It actually seems like the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, was behind the deal, trying to negotiate a no visa entrance to Japan for all Taiwanese tourists and businessmen in return for an investment of up to 1 billion dollars. Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan’s president and chairman of the Kuomintang from 1988 till 2000, was friends with the father of Ohbayashi Yukino, the director of the Tohnan Botanical Garden – who also was from Taiwan. At one point Lee met the Okinawan governor at Tohnan and repeated the claim that the Senkaku Islands in fact belong to Taiwan. (The Senkaku Islands are five uninhabited islands and three barren rocks in the East China Sea. They are administered by Japan and claimed by the People’s Republic of China as well as by Taiwan (the Republic of China) for territorial reasons.) Despite that statement Lee’s efforts weren’t ill-willed with the intent to undermine or infiltrate Okinawa, they were supposed to bring both countries closer together as Lee grew up at a time when Taiwan was occupied (and to some degree modernized) by Japan.
But business at Himeyuri Park was bad and after Lee’s influence vanished the Taiwan Pineapple Corporation sold the management rights in 2003 to a company called Yakushido (short for Yakushi-do Seiyaku Kako (薬師堂製薬化工, Hall of the Medicine Buddha Pharmaceutical Chemical Industry / Yakushi Hall Pharmaceutical Chemical Industry – the company is known so little I couldn’t even find out what they do exactly or if they still exist). And now it gets really complicated as Himeyuri Park was closed shortly afterwards and then reopened in 2004, just to be closed again in 2005. On October 20th 2005 the Ryukyu Shimpo (Ryukyu News(paper)) reported online that the Himeyuri Park was closed one day prior after the entrance to the parking lot was blocked on October 18th. It seems like in February of 2005 the owners of Himeyuri Park (most likely the Taiwan Pineapple Corporation) started to receive payments from Yakushido after settling some rental contract issues in front of Naha’s summary court (probably dating back to 2003). The total sum was 40 million Yen and Yakushido paid some installments, but something wasn’t working out – so operations were shut down. The newspaper article was rather vague and so the end of Himeyuri Park lies… well, not in the dark, but somewhat in the shadows…
(This whole section about Himeyuri Park’s history was a gigantic puzzle with lots of endlessly long Japanese sentences – it would be missing almost completely if it wouldn’t have been for the generous and extensive help of my incredibly smart and dedicated friend Mayuko; thanks a lot!)
Oh – in September of 2010 there was a sign in front of the park stating in Japanese “For sale – 28.000 tsubo” (about 80.000 square meters) and a phone number. The sign was gone (if I remember correctly…) when Michael and I explored the place in May of 2012, so the park either has a new owner or the real estate company in charge (based in Naha) stopped caring…
But now back to the exploration!
Separated from main building by one of those gigantic limestone walls was the actual park part of the park. According to several tourist and advertising sites the Himeyuri Park had 100.000 cacti and other plants, amongst them 4000 banyan; fig trees from the Himalaya. Highlights of the park were of course the 450 different kinds of cacti, up to 10 meters tall and up to 1000 years old. Every year there was a special event called Flower Aquarium where large displays depicted ocean animals composed by 275.000 flowers in vases. Opening hours were from 8.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. (9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. from October to March) and the entrance fee was 850 Yen for adults (430 Yen for ages 3 to middle school) when the park closed, in 1994 it was 720 Yen for adults and 360 Yen discounted.
The huge maze like area is mostly overgrown now, making it hard to navigate and even harder to spot most of the abandoned cacti. In the center of the park was a rest house, pretty unspectacular, though it had a rusty freezer with a Blue Seal logo on it. (Blue Seal is the most popular ice cream brand in Okinawa, going back to 1948 when it was founded as Foremost Co.)
If it wouldn’t have been for the cactus theme Himeyuri Park would have been quite an uninteresting exploration – moldy, vandalized, overgrown. But how often do you get the chance to explore an abandoned cactus park? One that to this very day doesn’t appear on any Japanese urbex blogs, and I was actually looking for articles! So overall it was an exciting 3 hours from driving to the park to leaving it. Nothing worth *flying to Okinawa* for, but most definitely a nice chance from the usual vandalized and moldy hotels you can find everywhere…
Abandoned Kansai 