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Archive for the ‘Visited in 2012’ Category

Moriyama Auto Camp / Mount Noro Speed Park

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Chugoku, Demolished, Haikyo, Hiking, Hiroshima, House, Japan, Race Track, Restaurant, Sports, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2012/04/20| 2 Comments »

Expectations are one of the worst things in life. Especially when they are as high as mine were driving up to the top of Mount Noro in Hiroshima prefecture. What did I expect? A speedway abandoned in 1974 and a shuttered amusement park, also left behind in 1974. I didn’t see any photos in advance, but I read a slightly cryptical Japanese description and the satellite view on GoogleMaps was very promising. Sadly the location didn’t live up to the expectations, so *Michael* and I were about to face the first disappointment of our *road trip to southern Honshu*… which wasn’t as bad in retrospect.

Mount Noro (insert stupid joke about the Noro virus in Japan here) near Hiroshima is one of the city’s most popular recreational areas for hikers, mountain climbers, campers and flower lovers. It’s said that it offers a stunning view at both sunrise and sunset. Aside from the fact that Michael and I were way to too late for the first and way too early for the second we wouldn’t have been able to see either anyways – the 839 meters high mountain was covered by low hanging clouds from about its second half. Occasionally the visibility was only a couple of meters and it looked more like rain than clearing up. When we reached the entrance of what I hoped would be the abandoned Mount Noro Speed Park (a.k.a. Mount Noro Circuit) at an elevation of 830 meters (Japanese people like their race tracks high above sea level as we know from the *Hiroshima Kart Pista*) we realized that the place was reused at least once since we were welcomed by signs telling us that we found the Moriyama Auto Camp. Close, but no cigar…

It turned out that this location has quite a history. A history I only found out about after we visited the place – like I mentioned earlier: Before our visit I had only vague information about a racetrack and an amusement park. The Mount Noro Amusement Park was a typical mid-size theme park of the 60s with a couple of merry-go-rounds and a rollercoaster, and it opened in April of 1968. In close proximity the Mount Noro Speed Park followed with an opening ceremony in October 1969. The intent was to make Mount Noro more attractive for tourists. As we all know: Those hiking eco freaks that headed for the mountain until then weren’t spending much money while amusement parks were THE cash cows of 1960s Japan, where the tired workers of the East Asian Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) were looking to spend their hard earned bucks. Sadly the business people behind the big tourist plans didn’t expect two things to happen: The traditional nature lovers complained about the dramatically increased noise level on Mount Noro – and in 1973 / 1974 an oil crisis hit the world. The combination of those events forced both the amusement park as well as the speedway to close their doors for good in 1974. Which was incredibly sad in the case of the 932 meters long and technically quite demanding Mount Noro Speed Park as it was quickly used for races of national fame, including the “All Japan 200km Stock Car Race” which was held annually from May 1970 on.

Sad for Michael and I was the fact that the weather was bad and that the race track was in such horrible state we weren’t even sure we found the right place – especially with those Moriyama Auto Camp signs at the entrance. We entered the place (adults 500 Yen, children 200 Yen, cars 3500 Yen…) and were quite a bit confused about the routing along the slope, which seemed rather unusual for a speedway. And the empty pond with the garbage cans also didn’t really fit in. Down the road we reached a bifurcation – left: Moriyama Auto Camp; right: Moriyama Auto Camp. Well, that didn’t help much…

We continued to the left only to find a huge abandoned trailer advertising Fukutome Ham, the inside filled with some seats (no meats…), garbage and a seriously damaged suzumebachi nest. For those not aware of this danger for all urban explorers and hikers: suzumebachi are also know as Asian Giant Hornets (Vespa mandarinia), aggressive nasty beasts with a body length of 5 cm and a sting that injects large amounts of potent poison, potentially deadly for both other animals and humans.

We continued up the mountain along the seriously damaged asphalt road only to find half demolished bath rooms at what once was the pit lane of the speedway. The surrounding building was gone, making all the faucets, toilets and showers open air installations. 300 Yen for 5 minutes was written on the shower doors, the curtains behind moldy and nasty.

Further down the pit lane, a bit above the race track, we found a two-storey building. The lower floor once housed a restaurant and I guess it dated back to the speedway days. The upper floor once was the home of somebody. Quite an unspectacular house with the usual remains of an abandoned building.

On the way back to our car we saw a camping trailer next to the former race track. It looked way more modern than anything else on the premises, so I kept a safe distance while Michael had a closer look. Through the window he saw a calendar from 2012 and a working clock, so we wondered why somebody would rather live in a trailer than in the furnished room in the building three minutes away – and decided to leave as none of us were eager to ask the person who made this choice.

Right at the entrance we had a closer look at the attendant’s hut with the charming painting. I guess the previously mentioned empty pond once was an attraction of the Moriyama Auto Camp – rainbow trout fishing. The hut also revealed that the now abandoned area had a size of 71000 m2 and once offered 40 campfire places – just not right before it closed as this information was blacked out on the flyer. Reason for the leaflet was the opening of the place on July 1st of an undisclosed year. Leaving the hut my eyes caught one final item, the flyer of a Bihoku Auto Village, announcing its grand opening on June 26th 1999. I was confused. Same place, again a different name? Luckily not as it turned out later – just the flyer of a similar place elsewhere in Hiroshima prefecture… (And still in business!)

I never went camping in Japan and obviously I was disappointed that the expected abandoned race track turned out to be a converted one, but the rainy / foggy weather was a blessing in disguise. Walking along the seriously damaged speedway with that kind of weather created quite an eerie atmosphere I actually enjoyed more in retrospect than I was aware of at the time. But it took quite some effort to find out about and get to the Mount Noro Speed Park / Moriyama Auto Camp as to my knowledge it hasn’t appeared on any other urbex / haikyo blog yet… Would I spend that much time on it again? Probably not. Do I regret having it done? Definitely not! I especially enjoy exploring new kinds of abandoned locations, especially if they are in the middle of nowhere. And in that regard this haikyo was a great success – I’d always prefer my first abandoned auto camp over the 20th abandoned hotel!

(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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Ganne Fortress

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, Hiking, Hiroshima, Japan, Military, Urbex, Visited in 2012 on 2012/04/12| Leave a Comment »

Usually I don’t explore military ruins that were turned into tourist attractions. I went to Tomogashima off the coast of Wakayama about two years ago and deemed it so unspectacular that I haven’t even written about it yet. In Kanto a lot of urban explorers visit Sarushima (Monkey Island, like the game) in Tokyo Bay and write about it on their blogs. To me it doesn’t feel right. Those places are 100, 150 year old tourist attractions. Gutted and polished. With gardeners. Maybe it’s because I grew up in an area of Germany where you can hardly throw a stone without hitting a castle ruin. And no Greek would call the acropolis an abandoned place. Because those places aren’t. They are old buildings attracting tourists. Historical ruins, not modern ruins.

The Ganne Fortress on the other hand WAS a historical ruin that attracted tourists. After it was left behind by the Japanese military it was abandoned again as a tourist attraction and became a modern ruin. The peninsula housing the Ganne Fortress was of strategic importance for centuries to guard the sea route to Hiroshima. The current fortification was built in 1898 and retired in 1919 without having seen any action. It was equipped with four 270 millimeter canons as well as four 50 millimeter light artillery guns, supplied by four powder storages. In 1997 the Ganne Fortress was fixed up along with a couple of similar installations to create the Fortress Forest Park, teaching tourists and locals about the military history of that area. In 2004 the area experienced a major reorganization with cities merged and stuff like that, so I guess the new people in charge lost interest. Especially since they were now taking care of a real naval history museum, too. A small fortress on top of a mountain really off the beaten track with a rather steep narrow road that can become dangerously slippery leading to it? Nobody wants to be responsible for that!

While nature generally seems to do a pretty good job reclaiming territory given up by mankind it is especially fast in Japan. Just a couple of years after the Ganne Fortress was abandoned the whole thing is pretty much overgrown. The asphalt road leading to the installations is covered by needles and broken branches, trees are starting to reach over. Concrete handrails looking like wood are losing their color and cracking up, revealing their stone and metal innards. Smaller stairs, once used as shortcuts to the top and to reach one of the already mentioned former powder storages, are pretty much completely overgrown now, making it tough even in very early spring to pass through. The stainless steel chains, a decade ago preventing tourists from falling to their deaths, lost their purpose, but they are still flashing in the sunlight. Halfway up the mountain, in anonther one of the old powder storages, was a little museum – now completely smashed to pieces and hard to reach due to two other sets of overgrown stairs. The mountain top still offers a gorgeous view, although the uncontrolled growth of nature sometimes makes it hard to get a good look. Or to take interesting photos. The two short videos I took turned out to be so dull that I won’t even publish them.

My fellow explorer *Michael* didn’t seem to be impressed either so we called it a day pretty quickly and got *back on the road* again…

(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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Kart Pista Hiroshima

Posted in Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, Hiking, Hiroshima, Race Track, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2012/04/05| 6 Comments »

Exploring new haikyo locations in Japan can be quite tricky as you hardly ever know which place is really abandoned and which is not. I’ve seen so many run-down houses and factories I could have sworn were abandoned… but they were not. That’s the main reason why I usually stay away from places that look like abandoned barns or left-behind residences. If a place is a little bit out of the ordinary and is located in the middle of nowhere I usually take a closer look though. And that’s what we did when *Michael* and I found the Kart Pista Hiroshima (カートピスタ広島). We spent about 45 minutes exploring this inoperative looking go-kart race track near the top of a mountain in Hiroshima prefecture, though some things didn’t add up. Nevertheless we both came to the conclusion that the Kart Pista Hiroshima was a haikyo. I even listed it in the *overview article two weeks ago*. Now that I’ve done some research on the allegedly abandoned speedway I have to admit that Michael and I were wrong: Kart Pista Hiroshima is still open for business!

The Kart Pista Hiroshima adventure started when we were looking for a way to get to another location we knew was abandoned for sure. Haikyo on top of mountains can be very difficult to reach, especially when public transportation up there is discontinued and roads are blocked. Our car navigational system was kind enough to indicate another way up the mountain, so we gave it a chance. I was in good spirits until we reached the base of the mountain road. There we found several warning signs that the road ahead wasn’t in good condition and that it is strongly recommended not to use that road. Something I totally agreed with. Michael and I rented a rather small car, but the one lane road in front of us indeed was very narrow and in horrible, horrible shape. Due to other prior experiences I wasn’t exactly in the mood going up a tiny mountain road with more potholes than asphalt. Or concrete. Or gravel. Or dirt. Or whatever the surface was, because it changed every couple meters anyways! But since I wasn’t the driver and Michael was very eager to go up this nightmarish road during his first hours without a driving instructor I suffered through 20 to 25 minutes of a nerve-wrecking ascent – passing several steep, potentially deadly slopes. Oh, by the way, did I mention that it was already getting dark? I must have aged about three years on my way to the Kart Pista Hiroshima without maturing a single second… Luckily the road didn’t end at a deadlock (or with our deaths!), but at a small parking lot about 600 meters up the mountain (yay, a way to turn around, so we wouldn’t have to go back in reverse gear!). The road continued, but it was blocked by an abandoned blue truck – no license plate is generally a reliable sign that a vehicle is abandoned. A slightly rusty and overgrown sign with missing pieces just before the parking lot indicated that the Kart Pista Hiroshima must have been close. So we got out of the car and were surprised to see a mini-van parked there. One with license plates. Michael’s reaction to that was in the line of “Mini-vans are usually driven by older people. Why would a mini-van with valid license plates be parked up here at this time of the day and the year? Because Japanese elderly drive to the top of mountains to commit suicide!” After the friggin nerve-wrecking ride up this specific mountain my respond was something like “Dude, you are not helping here!”, so I passed the blue truck and headed up the mountain while Michael had a look at the car to make sure that there was no dead senior citizen in there…

After a couple of minutes we indeed reached the Kart Pista Hiroshima – and the first building we saw was clearly abandoned, so we starting taking pictures right away since the sun was already extremely low and it was getting darker by the minute. We found rusty karts, rubber tyres, video tapes, toys and even a couple of trophies and medals dating back to the very early 90s; amongst them a medal with the logo of the Japanese Automobile Federation (日本自動車連盟), Japan’s biggest automobile club and member of the FIA, and a really cheap looking plastic trophy commemorating the third place in a Christmas race held on December 16th 1990.

After a while I started taking a video and walked along the surprisingly clean race track, which didn’t look very abandoned to me. But who can tell for sure? I guess asphalt go-kart tracks take a while to look abandoned. When I got closer to the other buildings that were part of the pit lane I hesitated again – that area looked extremely run-down, but not necessarily abandoned. Especially the jacked up karts looked like somebody was still taking care of stuff up here. And I was able to see a rather modern computer in one of the buildings, whereas the first area looked like it was abandoned in the 80s or 90s with all the old stuff crammed in a seriously damaged and overgrown building. Things just didn’t add up. Like another car in good condition with license plates. How could it get up here with the only road blocked by that blue truck? I continued taking photos and my heart stopped for a second when I took a picture of the clock at the start / finish line. Not only did the clock show the correct time (that could have been a coincidence…), but the minute hand was moving!

After about 45 minutes and just before the sun disappeared over the horizon we moved on to find a way to that abandoned place we drove up the mountain for – we found some more abandoned cars (Michael checked them for dead people…) and an abandoned boat, but not the street, road or even path to the place we came for.

By the time we got back to our car it was pitch black outside – and I lost another two years on the bumpy way down that horrible, horrible mountain road…

Back home I did some research on the Kart Pista Hiroshima and was surprised to see that the place really wasn’t abandoned. The latest photos I found were taken on February 18th 2012 showing how somebody gets rid of snow covering the track; the last victory ceremony was taking place on December 11th 2011. There actually is an official homepage that lists opening hours (workdays from 10 a.m., weekends and holidays from 9 a.m. – till sunset), prices (5 minutes for 1500 Yen, which seems quite expensive to me), and a race schedule (7 events from March till December in three classes – Avanti, SSO and Junior…). At age 15 Japanese kart driver Yuko Segawa (瀬川侑子) actually won the Kart Pista Hiroshima series, so I guess it has at least some reputation since it’s mentioned on her (Japanese) Wikipedia page. The “paved sprint” race track is 630 meters long and 7 to 11 meters wide at an elevation of 650 meters with the longest straight being 130 meters – just to get all the facts in here.

Nevertheless there are a few things I don’t understand at all. Why would you build a race track on top of a mountain? At the end of a road that is falling apart? With no signs that there is a race circuit up there? With buildings that look like they were abandoned decades ago? What were those cars with license plates doing up the mountain?

And why on earth would anybody drive up that friggin mountain on a suicidal road to race some karts?

(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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Hiroshima New Zealand Farm

Posted in Amusement Park, Asia, Chugoku, Closed, Haikyo, Hiroshima, Japan, New Zealand, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2012/03/30| 7 Comments »

Abandoned or not abandoned? That was the question when my haikyo buddy *Michael* and I arrived at the New Zealand Farm in Hiroshima (a.k.a. the Rainbow Farm). It clearly wasn’t demolished, which is always a big relief when finally reaching a location to explore, but getting close to the place it was clear that we would be in for a ride at this supposedly abandoned theme park…

Entering the meticulously clean parking lot by getting around a knee-high road block things didn’t look very abandoned. Nevertheless a sign there confirmed what I knew from my long hours of research on the internet: The New Zealand Farm was closed more than three years ago on 2008-08-31. But to our surprise the entrance area looked very preppy. The hedges and trees were well-trimmed, with freshly cut branches waiting to be removed at some parts. Things just didn’t add up – causing a bad feeling in my stomach. Michael was all excited and ready to jump a fence or disappear into the bushes, but I was very hesitant. So we agreed on having a look from the outside first before doing something that might get us into trouble. Which was good thing in this case, because a couple of minutes later, still on the huge parking lot, we ran into a security guard and several maintenance workers. (On the other hand: Later during the *road trip* Michael’s great gallantry would get us to a place we didn’t even expect to reach.) Since Michael’s Japanese is way better than mine and since he’s the more voluble person anyway I stayed in the background while he was talking to the main guy. From where I stood I wasn’t able to hear their conversation, so I’m still not sure which language they were talking in (Japanese, English or a more universal one…), but after a couple of minutes a smiling Michael came up to me and pointed ahead – we had one hour to explore the Hiroshima New Zealand Farm! (We were probably the first people ever to do so since this location never appeared on any Japanese or any other haikyo blogs – and most likely never will given the circumstances.)

What I already knew about the Hiroshima New Zealand Farm was that it was opened in July of 1990 and closed on August 31st 2008. This agricultural theme park was run by a company called Farm Co., Ltd. that owns farm parks all over Japan. Four of them were New Zealand branded, but only the one in Tohoku (where the earthquake and the tsunami struck last year…) is still up and running – the other three were closed in the late 00s. The remaining dozen parks are served by about 700 employees and have all kinds of themes: Austrian, German, Japanese countryside, … The concept is basically always the same: Giving children and their families the opportunity to spend a day amidst tamed nature. The parks are usually pretty big and feature attractions like a petting zoo, an animal race track (sheep… yes, a sheep race track!), kid friendly rides like a hill slide, horse / pony riding, miniature golf, go-kart races or a kids train, paddleboats, exhibitions and different shops (like a bakery or a milk processing facility) where you can witness or even participate in making fresh bread, yoghurt and butter – and of course there is the usual array of restaurants, BBQ areas and snack shops. Buildings are named according to the theme, so in this case we saw the “Hamilton Restaurant” and the “Kiwi Museum”. Everything merges beautifully in hilly landscapes. High-tech attractions like at Universal Studios Japan (USJ) are nowhere to be seen – those kinds of amusement parks have a rather different target audience. Unlike USJ and its major competitors the farm themed parks are pay-as-you-go amusement parks – which means that you can enter for little money (in this case 600 Yen, children and senior citizens only 300 Yen), but then you have to pay additionally for every single attraction; usually between 400 and 600 Yen – which can add up quite a bit over the course of a whole day.

What I didn’t know about the Hiroshima New Zealand Farm was that it was just closed, but not abandoned – unlike its *sister parks in Yamaguchi* and Shikoku. About half a dozen maintenance workers make sure to keep vandals and other nosy good-for-nothings out and take care of the vast meadows and countless big and small buildings – it seems like the destiny of this New Zealand park is still uncertain and that Farm Co., Ltd. has yet to decide what to do with it. Until then some long-serving employees keep their jobs.

I’ve been to *several abandoned theme parks before (and after…)*, but never to one that was only closed. Which made this experience unique and eerie at the same time. With the slowly decaying buildings in the outskirts of the premises it felt like an abandoned theme park, but overall it was in way too good condition – it was actually kind of confusing to see no signs of vandalism whatsoever. Nothing. Not even a broken window. At the same time climbing frames were getting rusty, colors were losing their intensity and wooden panels were getting brittle. We were actually told to not cross a certain bridge as it wasn’t considered safe anymore.

Exploring the closed by not abandoned Hiroshima New Zealand Farm was an absolutely fantastic experience, though rushed in parts. There was so much to see, so many attractions to go to. So many little things to discover, like the small road between the buildings at the village square, or the bunny welcoming visitors big and small to the petting zoo halfway up the main hill – and even further up was a kart track of decent size. It was almost a little bit like Shigeru Miyamoto described his childhood neighborhood explorations in David Sheff’s book “Game Over” – you never knew what to expect behind the next corner, behind the next hummock…

(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*…)

Addendum 2014-07-15: The Hiroshima New Zealand Farm has been turned into a solar park recently – R.I.P.!

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Japanese Sex Museum

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, Japan, Museum, NSFW, Sex, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012, Yamaguchi on 2012/03/23| 20 Comments »

The abandoned Japanese Sex Museum (a.k.a. the Mansion of the Hidden Treasure) first caught my attention in 2009 when I first started doing some research about haikyo on Japanese blogs. Three years ago the museum showed up on two or three homepages; both urbex and more general pop culture blogs. After that it basically disappeared, I haven’t seen pictures of the place ever since. So what happened? Boarded up? Security? Maybe demolition? Since *Michael* and I *were in the area anyways* we decided to find out, especially since the museum was pretty much on top of both of our “Places I Want To Explore” lists.
I guess the abandoned Japanese Sex Museum, along with the *Maya Hotel* and *Nara Dreamland*, was actually one of the locations that convinced me that Japan not only has abandoned places, but that it has some great ones. There are not that many sex museums in the world overall – so an abandoned sex museum is pretty unique! (Although “Abandoned erotic art museum” would be a slightly more correct name for the place now that I know what’s to find there.)

Opened on October 1st 1978 the Mansion of the Hidden Treasure was in business for almost 20 years before it was closed in the second half of 1997. Mansion of the Hidden Treasure is actually a great name since the exterior looks like a massive, old-style Japanese mansion, like a fortress almost. The entrance was guarded by a statue of Daikoku, the God of Great Darkness and one of the Seven Gods of Fortune. Opening hours were from 9 a.m. till 11 p.m. and the entrance fee was 1000 Yen according to a pamphlet that was lying around in an office room. Exploring the place further we found actual tickets with a printed price of 1300 Yen, so I guess the entrance fee was raised at least once during the 19 years of business. Several vending machines near the entrance and the exit offered all kinds of items, for example erotic playing cards and saucy postcards at the price of 300 Yen. One of the trashed rooms had a small stage and nearby we found a sign that said “Nude Show 2500 Yen”, so I guess it’s safe to say that there were live performances at the museum, too.

(If you are easily offended by sexual contents and you nevertheless read this far I strongly recommend to move on to another posting as from now the article will become a little bit more specific – while at no point pornographic I might mention the p-word once in a while and the photos at the end… or dear… well, it’s an abandoned sex museum, of course the exhibits are 99% erotica!)

As you may or may not know pornography in Japan is usually censored due to article 175 of the Criminal Code of Japan which says that people who sell or distribute obscene materials can be punished by fines or imprisonment – meaning that genitalia are usually blacked out, white out or pixelated with mosaic. Article 175 was part of the original Criminal Code passed in 1907 and remains pretty much unchanged till this very day. It was the written manifestation of the Meiji Era efforts to reduce the publication of pornographic materials. Before the second half of the 19th century the shunga, erotic woodblock prints and therefore a type of ukiyo-e, were quite popular – and as explicit as modern western pornography; probably even more imaginative since the shunga not only showed traditional sexual acts, but also sex with animals, demons and deities. Some of them even showed sex with foreigners… And I guess that’s where the worldwide image of weird Japanese porn comes from. Well, that… the used panties vending machines and of course the anime series Urotsukidoji, famous for inventing tentacle rape, creating a whole genre with just one extremely disturbing scene…

With that being said there was no pornography found in the abandoned Japanese Sex Museum – only a couple of paintings (some of them in a special room with black light lamps), softcore photos (e.g. Playboy Centerfolds), a couple of mannequins as well as lots and lots of wooden and stone sculptures; dozens of them, to be accurate. Sculptures of penises, vaginas, combinations of both, couples in the act, buttocks, masturbating animals, priests, deities, demons and whatever you can imagine. In one room there was a forest scene with penis shaped mushrooms. Or mushroom shaped penises. Your guess is as good as mine. It was almost impossible to open your eyes without looking at a phallic symbol.

While two or three rooms were completely trashed (basically the entrance and the exit areas as well as the offices upstairs) some of the exhibition area’s ceiling was quite moldy, but still in good shape. Those huge statues must have been insanely heavy, especially sculptures like the stone penis with a length of almost two meters, and let’s be honest: Who would actually hit a giant stone vajayjay with a sledgehammer or tip over a couple of marble dicks? Even the most ruthless vandal respects those symbols!

Sadly that didn’t apply for the female models. The main exhibits in the last room were stolen (or “taken to security” by some previous explorers…) a year or two ago. One was a wax model of the famous European softcore erotic character Emmanuelle, the other one was a replica of Marilyn Monroe – both presented in slinky poses behind now broken glass. The already mentioned pamphlet / flyer featured photos of both wax figures and they looked pretty amazing. Even more so on the already mentioned Japanese blogs I saw a couple of years ago. When the museum was still open to the public the wax figures were scantily dressed and well-lit behind glass, but once it was abandoned the new visitors had less respect and undressed both Marilyn and Emmanuelle to show lower body parts that were out of sight before – and surprisingly both models were not as anatomically impaired as a Ken doll.
The left behind mannequins on the other hand were exactly that: Rather gender neutral below that waist and more or less what you can see at every clothing store when the clerks redress the shop window dummies. Of course they were all (partly) dismembered and slightly damaged, but they were basically normal mannequins… except for the really disturbing “Sleeping Beauty” one, which had vibrators mutating out of her nipples.

The main challenge from a photography point of view was the fact that 80% of the museum was pitch black, which meant that I had to take every shot with a tripod and illuminate every photo individually with my flashlight; similar to what I did at the *Lost Subterranean Shrine*.

With a sheer endless amount of statues and the time consuming process of taking photos Michael and I spent a whopping four hours at this fascinating location. Like I mentioned at the beginning, we both had high expectations about the abandoned Japanese Sex Museum and they were not only met, but exceeded. This haikyo is without the shadow of a doubt one of the best abandoned places in Japan and it would be a place worth visiting anywhere in the world. I just hope that future visitors will treat the location with the same respect Michael and I did so it will put a smile on the faces of urban explorers for decades to come…

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

Addendum 2012-09-10: If you liked this article you might enjoy the abandoned *Japanese Strip Club*, too…

Addendum 2012-11-27: I just posted an article about another abandoned Japanese sex museum: *Hokkaido House Of Hidden Treasures*

Addendum 2013-05-09: Two months later I revisited the museum – *click here for more photos and videos*!

Addendum 2014-07-11: According to a friend of mine the museum has been demolished a while ago – R.I.P.!

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On The Road Again – Southern Honshu Spring 2012

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, Hiking, Hiroshima, Hotel / Ryokan, House, Japan, Military, Museum, New Zealand, Race Track, Sex, Sports, Strip Club, Theater, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012, Yamaguchi on 2012/03/22| 4 Comments »

Spring time is long weekend trip time! While Kansai doesn’t have much of a winter it nevertheless can be quite cold, especially when having a hobby involving taking pictures in abandoned places, other places of Japan can be snowed in for months with meters of snow… So when the sun finally warms the hearts of Japan and causes the first sunburn of the young year it’s time to explore places beyond my beloved Kansai – whether it be *Kyushu with Enric* two years ago or Shikoku with Gianluigi last year (a series of articles yet to come…), it became kind of a tradition for me to go on an urbex spring trip with a friend of mine. This time *Michael Gakuran* and I teamed up for a road trip to the southern end of Honshu, Japan’s main island – Chugoku, to be exact, the area west of Kansai. A trip with such exciting places that I decided to start writing about it right away – the last pictures are barely 50 hours old…

At this point I don’t want to give away too much about the locations we visited or which order we visited them in. But there were 8 of them in 3 days. 3 long days I might add, with me getting up at 6.30 a.m. on a Sunday, at 6 a.m. on a vacation day and at 5 a.m. on a national holiday. As I mentioned before: I’m a morning grouch; and by “morning” I mean any point in time which is followed by “a.m.”…

But the trip wasn’t just exhausting, it was also exiting, fun, frustrating, satisfying, rich in variety, surprising, delicious (I finally ate Hiroshima Okonomiyaki in Hiroshima prefecture and bought the best local sweets outside of Kyoto – mikan dango) and insanely expensive.

Why insanely expensive? It’s because at the end of the first day a serious mishap happened to me. We were on our way to a hotel to stay for a night when we saw this huge, blue and white flame at a gigantic industrial plant – probably coke oven gas burning at a cokery. (Addendum 2012-06-11: I guess I was wrong about the gas – Gert from South Africa wrote me: “This couldn’t be coke oven gas burning, because coke gas got a very very hot orange (impurities) or yellow (cleaner) flame. But the flame in the video is actually blast-furnace or corex, midrex, finex gas flame (more methane content in gas).” Thanks a lot for pointing that out! I really appreciate it and changed the title of the video below, too.)
We decided to make a stop to take picture or two and when I got out of the car to marshal Michael I grabbed my bag and I don’t know how or why, but my beloved D90 camera flew through the air and crashed hard to the concrete ground. The body cracked open a couple of millimetres so I could see the insides. Parts of the electronics were still working (e.g. I could use the screen to look at the photos on the memory card), but since the lens mount was part of what cracked it was impossible to take pictures anymore. Mad props to Tokina BTW! The mounted 11-16mm lens survived without a scratch or any other damages as I found out with relief the next day.
Sunday evening past 7 p.m. – of course I was in shock at first, because going on a photo trip without a camera is pretty pointless. So we headed towards the flame to take some picture which I couldn’t do since my photo camera broke and Mike couldn’t do because of the lighting, lenses and passing traffic. So I took the video you can find below the article – it doesn’t fully capture the beauty of the flame, but it will always remind me of the death of my favourite camera so far (I also included the last JPG I ever took with it, even though it wasn’t related to urbex). Back at the car we decided to look for an electronics store, although it was almost 8 p.m. on a Sunday evening. After a couple of minutes we found a shopping mall, but it didn’t have a camera store. The staff at the mall was very nice, telling us where to find an electronics store – but it closed at 8. Michael, who did all the talking since his Japanese is WAY better than mine, wasn’t discouraged by that and asked for the phone number of the store. Although the store was closed Michael called and somebody picked up. He told them my tricky situation and they agreed to let us into the store if we hurry – so I got into a taxi and went straight to the store. There a guy with pretty decent English helped me at the camera department. I was hoping to replace the D90 with another one, but they didn’t have them in stock. A lower model was out of the question, so the only option was a D7000. Which they didn’t have in stock either. Just the display model – which they couldn’t sell me without the kit lens since it was a display model. After some deliberation and the certainty that not buying that display model would mean losing at least 5 hours the next morning looking for another camera (electronic stores in Japan usually open at 10 a.m.) I half voluntarily upgraded from a Nikon D90 to a Nikon D7000. With a bad feeling since I not only spent a huge chunk of money, but I also had to learn by doing how to handle a new camera. While I’m very pleased with how the photos of all locations turned out it was quite unnerving at times to get the shots I wanted to take.

Now just a few quick words about the locations we visited. The undisputed highlight of the tour was the abandoned Japanese Sex Museum. Both Michael and I had high expectations and we were not the slightest disappointed, shooting in almost complete darkness for the majority of the 4 hours we spent there. Another glorious highlight to me was the Kart Pista Hiroshima race track – why it was a highlight you’ll find out soon. Since theme parks are one of my favourite types of abandoned place we visited two of them and I loved them both. 4 world class haikyo in 3 days – plus 2 good ones (a Meiji Era army fortress and a quite tricky hotel) as well as 2 more we took pictures of because we went there and it would have been a waste not to cover them… a strip bar in an onsen town (euphemistically called “theater”) and a car camp site. To my knowledge all of these places never appeared on English speaking blogs, some of them are even unknown to the Japanese urbex crowd. So please enjoy the preview pictures and come back for much more information, photos and about one hour of video material!

Here’s an alphabetical list of the upcoming locations:
Ganne Fortress
Hiroshima New Zealand Farm
Japanese Sex Museum
Kart Pista Hiroshima
Moriyama Auto Camp
Noga Hotel
Onsen Town Theater
Yamaguchi New Zealand Village

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Former Iranian General Consulate (Persia House)

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Consulate, Haikyo, House, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Map, Museum, Urbex, Visited in 2012 on 2012/03/15| 4 Comments »

The Tohoku Earthquake of March 11th 2011 was a horrible, horrible event. I was on the 16th floor of an office building in Osaka at the time, almost 1,000 km away from the epicenter – but looking at the faces of my Japanese colleagues I could see that most of them remembered another horrible earthquake: the Great Hanshin Earthquake (a.k.a. Kobe Earthquake), January 17th 1995; the second worst earthquake in Japan of the 20th century with about 6,500 casualties. 200,000 buildings collapsed, the total damage was more than 100 billion US-dollars – with massive consequences for all of Kansai as many companies moved to Tokyo and other parts of Japan, closing subsidiaries in Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto out of fear of another earthquake; which is kind of strange since a major earthquake is overdue in Tokyo for quite a while now…

One of the buildings that were severely damaged in Kobe was the former Iranian general consulate or Persia House, as it was known in its later days. In the 19th century Kobe opened its ports quickly for oversea trade and became host of one of the biggest foreign communities in all of Japan. Especially an area now known as Kitano was the home of many, many merchants from all over the world. Nowadays a major tourist attraction Kitano is the home of small antique shops, fancy bakeries, lots of wedding halls and bridal gown boutiques as well as countless French bistros – or whatever Japanese people think French bistros should be like… And of course there are the old merchant houses. The Weathercock House (German style…), the Denmark House, the Original Holland House – and before the Great Hanshin Earthquake happened there was the already mentioned Persia House.

The Persia House was a 2 storey wooden building with a kiritsuma style roof. Until 1981 it was the home of the Iranian general consulate in Kobe, afterwards it was opened to the public as a tourist attraction, housing the Persian Art Museum which showcased pottery of the Persian Empire. In 1983 the Persia House received three sets of leaded glass windows from Roger Nachman Glassworks, making it even more beautiful than before.

Unlike the neighboring foreign residences the Persia House wasn’t rebuilt after the Great Hanshin Earthquake hit Kobe – nor was it demolished. It seems like the ruin was left alone for almost a decade until in 2004 city of Kobe seized the premises since the owner didn’t pay taxes for quite a while. Since from that point on the ruin was a problem of the city a green stockade was erected to keep people from hurting themselves; and to make it harder for the ruin to catch the innocent tourists’ attention. Hardly anybody likes an “eyesore” like that in a preppy area like Kitano, but it seems like nobody had the will or authority to get rid of it completely – and that assumption would have been dead wrong as the city in fact tries hard to get rid of the whole problem. So far the premises were up for public auction nine times, but there was never a taker, although the minimum bid was lowered in six steps from 159 million Yen to 95,4 million Yen. (1.5 million Euro / 1.9 million US$ to 0.88 million Euro / 1.56 million US$)

When I was visiting the Persia House it was kind of funny to watch dozens of tourists pass through the narrow street the former art museum is located at without even realizing that there was a ruin. But as soon as I took my camera to take some photos over the picket fence 80% of the people passing by did the same. After a while I left trying to take pictures from another angle – when I came back to the front again none of the passing tourists seemed to see the ruins…

I guess those tourists are basically the main reason why the location is one of the least photographed haikyo considering its exposed location in the heart of Kobe. Hopping the fence wouldn’t have been a problem, although a cable and a connected electronic device might have been some kind of alarm system. But even if you made it past the fence you could always be seen by people passing by. On the adjacent estate to the north is actually the Original Holland House (and with that I can as well mark the *location on the map*…) – looking down from its back porch you probably have a pretty good view at the side of the ruins of the Persia House. Sadly the teenager at the entrance wouldn’t let me take a couple of photos and I wasn’t willing to pay the 700 Yen entrance fee for 2 minutes of not entering the friggin house. I recently spent 15.000 Yen on a roundtrip train ticket expecting to see a demolished amusement park, so I don’t consider myself cheap, but come on! The Dutch being of German blood I would have expected a little bit more solidarity…

Anyway: board fence + uncontrolled plant growth + tourists + shooting in west direction in the afternoon = a picture set I’m not very proud of.

To end this article on a funny note, please have a look at the last photo of the set. I took this nearby at one of Kobe’s major tourist spots. It’s the map of a public restroom. Not a map showing public restrooms in the area – a map of ONE public restroom. If your sense of direction is below par you better study the map before you enter to avoid getting lost… unless you are a man. The gentlemen’s section is so small it really is your own fault if you get lost!

(Update 2013-01-05: The Persia House was demolished since I took the photos – I’ll write a RIP article as soon as possible…)

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Takarazuka Macadam Industrial Plant

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Factory, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Mine, Urbex, Visited in 2012 on 2012/03/01| 4 Comments »

Takarazuka is one of those bedroom towns at the foot of the Rokko Mountains, home to thousands of commuters working in Kobe and Osaka. Like Nishinomiya and Ashiya (both to the south) Takarazuka is a rich suburb. While Nishinomiya is famous for sake and the Hanshin Tigers in all of Japan till this very day, Takarazuka’s brightest days are in the past – although it’s still a beautiful place to live and attracts hordes of tourists every weekend. The days of Hanshinkan Modernism, which made Takarazuka one of THE places to be in the early 20th century, may be long gone, but a few parts of this cultural heyday survived for almost a century. Prime example being the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theater troupe, founded in 1913 by the president of Hankyu Railways to attract more people to come to Takarazuka and its hot springs – and of course to sell train tickets… 99 years later the revue is popular as always with ticket prices up to 11.000 Yen. While the hot springs are outshined by the nearby Arima Onsen town Takarazuka gained a new attraction in 1994 when the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum (Takarazuka’s Tezuka Osamu Memorial Hall) opened its door. This three floor museum is dedicated to Osamu Tezuka (who would have thought it?), the godfather of anime, father of manga, Japan’s Walt Disney – and creator of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion (still in development hell at Nintendo?) and Black Jack. Oh, and of course there are dozens of hiking trails in the mountains to Takarazuka’s west and north!

Being one modern and tidy city Takarazuka is way less famous for abandoned places. I’ve actually never seen one on any of the Japanese haikyo blogs. The more surprised I was when I spotted some rusty machinery on my way back from a hiking trip a couple of years ago, long before I started urban exploration as a hobby. So when I remembered the rusty gold a few months ago I saved it for one of those “I wanna explore an abandoned place, but I don’t wanna get up at 6 a.m. to ride several trains for 3 or 4 hours” days. In February of 2012 I finally went back to Takarazuka again – after lunch, because I could!

When I was exploring the Takarazuka Macadam Industrial Plant I wasn’t sure what the place was exactly. Judging by the look of the surroundings and the machinery left behind I guessed it was another limestone mine, an industry almost omnipresent in Japanese countryside – just without the chemical plant the *White Stone Mine* had. A stone crusher was also missing, which is kind of ironic in retrospect given the fact that the kanji for macadam are the same as the ones used in the Japanese term for “crushing stones”. So basically all I found were a couple of loading bays (probably with sorting devices to separate small stones from bigger ones) and conveyor belts; plus controls for the machinery. Some installed within wooden huts in dangerously desolate state, some in wooden boxes just nailed and bolted to concrete walls; I guess waterproof wasn’t invented back then…

Exploring the area was especially exciting since I’ve never seen the place anywhere on the internet before – and it was dangerous! Every step forward, every corner revealed more unsound wood and brittle metal. I guess somebody lived for a while in one of the shacks and left behind, among other things, a suitcase full of porn. Yes, not just a couple of magazines – a whole suitcase full of the censored Japanese school girl porn that seems to be so common for abandoned places in this country… I guess you could call it the Porn Shack.

The other thing that really fascinated me was the already mentioned wooden box containing some of the controls for some of the machinery. Being located at the foot of a mountain range Takarazuka gets its share of rain, so I really wonder who thought it would be a good idea to nail a wooden control box to a concrete wall – and put a metal control panel right next to it. One can only imagine how much maintenance those things needed…

And finally a couple of words about the history of the place – stuff I found out after I explored the plant based on the information gathered there; and of course the internet was a big help… The whole rusty thing is / was owned by a company which could (should?) be translated as Osaka Macadam Industrial Place (大阪砕石工場, Osaka Saiseki), which is still a major player in the earthwork / crushed stone industry with 350 employees and several plants all over Japan. But my limestone assumption was wrong, hence the lack of a chemical plant. Osaka Saiseki was founded 1934 and the macadam plant in Takarazuka was opened in 1938. I assume the area I explored was the old separation and transportation line that was abandoned when the plant moved further into the valley to continue ripping some chunks out of the Rokko mountain range…

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Abandoned Poultry Farm

Posted in Abandoned, Animals, Asia, Chugoku, Factory, Haikyo, Japan, Okayama, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 on 2012/01/19| 7 Comments »

I have to admit: Finding and exploring the abandoned poultry farm in Okayama prefecture was one of the most rewarding and exciting experiences since I started urban exploration. It was unusual in many ways and I’m so eager to tell you about it, that this has become the fastest published article in Abandoned Kansai history – the events, photos and videos are just 5 days old…
Gosh, where to start? Pretty much everything about this exploration was unusual. The whole thing started when in 2011 a *red factory* / mine popped up on Japanese blogs several times. Urban exploration usually means going to places where many men (and women) have gone before, so I did some research, but didn’t get more than the information that the red mine was supposed to be in Okayama prefecture. So when I kind of randomly looked at the satellite mode of GoogleMaps I found two places with red roofs in the mountains that might have been abandoned. While I found confirmation about the smaller one that it was really a factory, the larger one I had no lead on. A still quite blurry satellite image, that’s it. No information on other blogs, no marking on a Japanese haikyo map, no Streetview – darn, not even a link to a Panoramio photo nearby. Just a bunch of buildings with red roofs standing rather close to each other, kind of similar to the satellite image when you look at the *White Stone Mine*. I didn’t know what they were or even if they were still there as the satellite photos of GoogleMaps tend to be a couple of years old. Nevertheless I grabbed my equipment and a book (The Hunger Games, which I really enjoyed!) last Saturday early in the morning and boarded a train – and another one, and another one, and…
After I finally reached a small station in the middle of nowhere I left the tiny town it was in quickly and walked along a country road for about half an hour, reaching a small settlement close to where I suspected the red roof shacks to be. I was on my own for this exploration – it’s hard to find people to get up when it’s still dark outside to go to a cold place in the middle of the mountains, especially when you can’t promise a spectacular site; or in this case: anything at all. While I was walking past gorgeous little wooden Japanese houses with the stunning roofing tiles and neat gardens a small pickup truck with two senior citizens passed me and turned left down the road – where I suspected the red roof shacks to be. My heart sank almost as quickly as when Gil and I approached the *Deportation Prison Birkhausen-Zweibrücken* back in Germany. And like half a year ago I was right: Getting passed by a truck near an abandoned place is barely ever a good sign. When I reached the small gravel road that supposed to lead to the red roof shacks I found the street and the whole area fenced off. Not with a sturdy fence that is easy to climb. No, one of those half-ass ones you basically have to trample down to get across – unless you are willing leave and get home. But at that point it wasn’t the decision to be made. Because the previously mentioned senior citizens were there, early on a Saturday morning of all days… inspecting the fence and making sure that it reached about a meter over the little river so nobody can go around it – like *Enric* and I did at the *Iimori Mine* two years ago. Since those guys looked like they came to stay I climbed a nearby small mountain with a cemetery. My hope was to get a glimpse into the valley, to at least confirm that the red roof shacks were still there. But that didn’t work out either. Slightly frustrated I came down the mountain and made my way back to the train station when I realized that I will miss the once per hour train by about five minutes even if I’d run. At that point I became rather frustrated and angry. Why the heck did I get up early on a Saturday winter morning to ride trains for hours to go all by myself to a cold mountain valley where I didn’t know what to expect just to find it fenced off and guarded by two old guys? While I was silently cursing on my way through the settlement outside the little town I heard a small pickup truck behind me. When it passed I saw the two old guys sitting in there and I stopped… I had at least half an hour to kill and even then I would make the next train. Why not getting back to that stupid fence?
So that’s what I did. I hurried back to the fence only to find that Japanese planning never disappoints. Since I couldn’t make it around the fence I just followed it for a while. Up another mountain and another cemetery. And there it was, an opening in the fence, at least a meter wide, probably to allow hikers and mourners to reach the top of the mountain. I followed the fence back (on the other side, of course!), only to find a rather steep slope along a wastewater pipe or something like that. Luckily somebody set up a rope there, so it was quite easy to get up and down, ignoring the fact that I ripped my fingers on the cutting plastic, but well, small sacrifices…
Finally on the other side of the fence at the gravel road I hurried deeper into the valley. The road here was overgrown and barely visible, but to my left I saw a couple of shacks in abysmal condition. I was relieved. A lot! Whatever I saw on the satellite pictures was still here. But the feeling of relief didn’t lower the tension at all. At this point I was still visible from the street and being alone in a fenced off area in the Japanese mountains isn’t the best situation to be in. No need to worry about poisonous snakes in January, but I ran into both wild boars and wild monkeys before… and there are wild bears in Japan, too. I tried to ignore those worries and hurried deeper into the valley on this overcast, hazy winter morning. And there it was – the big red building with the intact roof. And at first sight it was clear: This wasn’t the red mine / factory I hoped it would be… it was better!
The first thing that caught my eyes was the small silo in front of the open, but rather uninviting building. When I entered I saw cages inside. Dozens, hundreds of them. With the roof still intact the building was pretty dark towards the middle, so I got outside again, circumvented the place and entered from the back. It seemed like nobody had been here in years. And there’s where I found a couple of Lyon Debeaker machines (to „stop losses from picking, cannibalism, fighting, and egg eating”). A silo, cages, debeakers… no need to be a modern Sherlock Holmes to conclude that this was an abandoned poultry farm. An abandoned poultry farm that, to my knowledge, hasn’t been mentioned on any urban exploration / haikyo blog. Ever. Not in Japanese, not in English. So this wasn’t the nth mine to visit – no, this was a unique place. An abandoned poultry farm in Japan!
Finding new places is always exciting to some degree, but in most Japanese prefectures you can’t throw a stone without hitting an abandoned private home or small business, so it isn’t actually that unusual. Finding a yet unknown gigantic abandoned animal farm in the middle of nowhere on the other hand… that’s kind of the urbex definition of “jackpot”. I was truly happy for a short moment, until I realized that I had only a little bit more than an hour to shoot the huge place – I could afford to skip a train, but I would have to catch the next one to make it on time to the second place on my agenda that day. Nevertheless I forced myself into taking my time at the mostly undamaged building. Doing some bracket shots and taking photos with long exposure time in the dark parts of the one room building.
Separating the one intact building from two dozen severely damaged shacks was a small, mostly dried out river. I followed it for a while back towards the fence to find a place where the river bank on both sides was rather low so I could make it on the other side. I had about one third of my time left to cover 80% of the area, so I decided to leave my tripod behind and take some freehand photos, which turned out fine; nevertheless I wish I had an additional hour or two, but there was this other mysterious red roofed building on my schedule. So I hurried a bit making my way through the poultry farm and took a video on my way back to the tripod. I then crossed the tiny river and walked carefully up to the fence, but nobody was in sight. Just to be sure I climbed the mountain again and ripped my fingers just a little bit more. Back down the mountain and through the settlement. This time with a big smile on my face. I had found a huge yet unknown unique abandoned place in the middle of nowhere without any help and explored it all by myself on a cold Saturday morning – the only thing making this experience even sweeter was the fact that I almost failed when the two old guys showed up at the fence at the same time as myself.
What an absolutely awesome adventure!
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