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Archive for the ‘Visited in 2013’ Category

North Korea – Getting Started / Beijing

Posted in Asia, Beijing, China, DPRK, Korea, Map, Non-Urbex, North Korea, Photography, Pyongyang, Travel, Visited in 2013 on 2013/05/16| 26 Comments »

I grew up in Germany, a country that was divided for 45 years. When the wall came down I was 12 years old – and not interested in politics whatsoever, but of course I understood that this was big news, like *Chernobyl* three years prior. My family didn’t have relatives in East Germany, so I didn’t have a personal relationship to the German Democratic Republic, as the neighboring country was officially called. I learned about the situation in school, but like most kids that age it was stuff I learned because I had to, not because I wanted to – my interest in history started to bloom a couple of years later…
You can’t fully understand the history of Japan without knowing at least a little bit about the history of China and Korea, so after I enrolled at university to dedicate my next few years to Japanese Studies I also took seminars and lectures about China, Korea and Taiwan. At that point Germany’s reunification was history for more than a decade, but Korea was still divided; still is to this very day. Like most people I grew up “knowing” about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (isn’t it interesting how most states using the term “democratic” are everything but?), nevertheless I actually didn’t know much about it, so the university studies sparked my interest.

History lessons in German schools are not necessarily set up to teach you about history in general, they are conceptualized to educate you to be a good democrat, a person who cherishes freedom and despises dictatorships. You usually start with the Old Greeks, to learn about how democracy was invented. Then you jump to the French Revolution, to learn about how modern democracy came to Europe. Next you jump to the year 1848, to learn about the revolutions in the German States – and after you know how the good things started you learn about the opposites, World War 1 and World War 2; especially World War 2. It seems like 50% of German history lessons are about World War 2 – which is good and bad at the same time…
At university I finally understood that history is so much more than just Greeks, French and World War 2 – and that you have learn about history in general to fully understand how everything is connected, though you only learn pieces at school.

In 2006 I moved to Japan, and my attitude towards visiting North Korea was still ambiguous. On the one hand there was this attraction of evil and the many similarities to East Germany’s history – on the other hand it was morally totally out of question that I would ever go there, supporting the system of supervision, nepotism and torture with hard currency.
That attitude changed gradually while living in Japan – mainly because of two factors:
1.) Japan’s obsession with pachinko that rolls 200 billion Yen a year into North Korea. (Again, that’s 2 billion US Dollars or 1.5 billion Euros currently!)
2.) Japan’s concept of honne and tatemae.
As I mentioned in the previous article, it wasn’t until I explored an *abandoned Pachinko parlor* in Shikoku that I realized that the money I would spend on a trip to North Korea wouldn’t change the course of the world. Those trips are not cheap, but even if the DPRK would earn a couple of hundred bucks it would be nothing in comparison to the billions the Japanese transfer indirectly and probably partly unknowingly every year.
A friend of mine back in Germany once told me that I was “too honest”, so understanding und living with honne and tatemae for years helped me to deal with certain expectations the local guides in Korea would have on me. “Honne” (本音) describes a person’s true thinking, their feelings and desires. “Tatemae” (建前), literally façade, stands for how a person acts in public – often in contrast to their “honne”. 10 years ago I wouldn’t have bowed in front of bronze statues of a dictator, but sometimes you gotta be a two-faced bastard and go against your own principles for the sake of peace and harmony… which Japan is all about.

In late March I finally booked a tour to the DPRK, basically last minute and on the height of the 2013 tensions. German media outlets were all over the topic, even reporting that tours to South Korea had to be cancelled due to German Angst, but Beijing based *Koryo Tours* offered a “May Day Long Tour” from April 27th to May 4th – which coincided with a series of national holidays in Japan, generally known as Golden Week. So I took 5 of my 15 paid days off (no Statuatory Sick Pay in Japan…) and went on vacation from April 25th to May 7th, adding a couple of days in China before and after the main event. I had to be there on the 26th anyway, because technically the trip to the DPRK started with a briefing at the Koryo Tours office – the next morning we met to go to the airport to catch our plane to Pyongyang (more about that in the upcoming *Air Koryo* article…). From that point on it was a group tour till we left Pyongyang by train via Sinuiju / Dandong – which I used for a 24 layover in Dandong with some fellow DPRK travelers before returning to Osaka via Beijing.
Contrary to the widespread opinion that there is no visa needed when travelling to the DPRK you actually have to have one. Depending on where the travel agency is located you might not get your passport stamped though. Visas issued by travel agencies based in Beijing for example are a separate piece of paper you barely ever see; and Koryo Tours does all the paperwork anyway. (If you look at the highly censored scan (censored by myself obviously…) please note the mythical winged horse Chollima and that the dates are given according to the Juche calendar, based on Kim Il-sung’s birthday.)
The visa for China on the other hand I had to organize myself – I was able to get in and out the first time on a 72 hour transit visa, but that is only available when entering / leaving through Beijing Airport (or Shanghai Airport), so for entering by train at Dandong I needed a regular visa. Which turned out to be a much bigger problem than I thought, given that I am a German citizen living in Japan. The German consulate in Osaka referred me to the Chinese consulate in Osaka – and they told me to go to a Japanese travel agency, which had no idea what to do, because Japanese people can enter China for 15 days without a visa. And what Japanese person has the time to do that? So Japanese people usually don’t apply for Chinese visas, which means that Japanese travel agencies don’t know how to get Chinese visas. After half a dozen agencies, including the big players that have offices all over Japan, I gave up and got in contact with Koryo Tours. Luckily they were able to help: 2 passport photos and 60 Euros would get me a Chinese visa issued in Pyongyang. I wasn’t happy with the solution as I would have preferred to get things done before starting the trip, but sometimes you gotta roll with the punches. So on April 28th I met a guy from the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang and a couple of days later I had my visa to enter China by train. To make a long story short:
It is easier to get a Chinese visa in Pyongyang than it is in Osaka!

(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. 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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North Korea – A Travel Report

Posted in Amusement Park, Asia, Consulate, DPRK, Korea, Map, Non-Urbex, North Korea, Photography, Pyongyang, Travel, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/05/13| 65 Comments »

I have been to North Korea!
Not a lot of people can say that – probably not a lot of people want to say that. I am actually pretty sure that I scared away a couple of dozen readers just with the headline; and I probably will again during this upcoming series of articles about my recent trip to North Korea from April 27th to May 4th – most likely including the few North Koreans with internet access. I know I already pissed them off by continuously referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as North Korea, a term not much liked in North Korea… North Korea, North Korea, North Korea – Jehova… Jehova… Jehova…

Growing up in a divided Germany I’ve been interested in Korea as long as I can think, and that curiosity continued to grow step by step. Reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, going to *Pripyat & Chernobyl*, exploring an *abandoned North Korean School* in Gifu prefecture. Nevertheless I was hesitant going there for years, mainly because of two reasons:
1.) I didn’t want to support the system with foreign currencies.
2.) I didn’t want to travel a country struck by famines.

North Korea Countryside DPRK Countryside

The economic situation in the DPRK is rather dull due to lack of useable land (most of Korea is rather mountainous), skilled labor, energy and means of transportation – and of course the international sanctions don’t help at all… Even if the government is able to scoop up some oil they have to pay in advance in US Dollars, so the country is desperate for foreign currencies – and I was hesitant to support the system with mine. Which only makes sense if you don’t think much about it, because tourism doesn’t keep the country running. About 3500 Westerners a year visit North Korea, but even if each one of them ends up spending 1000 Euros (which is way too high as some tours don’t even cost that much!) it would mean that the DPRK would have a tourism revenue of 3.5 million a year; minus their costs. Most ski villages in the Alps make more money than that! I highly doubt that you’ll be able to finance 1.2 million soldiers and a nuclear weapons program with that amount of money – with the *200 billion Yen Japanese pachinko players transfer indirectly every year* on the other hand though… (That’s 2 billion US Dollars or 1.5 billion Euros!)
The food situation though was harder to dismiss and I still kind of have a bad feeling about it. According to international statistics the food supply situation in the DPRK improved massively since the mid-90s when hundreds of thousands of North Koreans died due to famines, but the country is still depending on food imports (so is Japan, which is lucky to be able to pay for the high quality deliveries and doesn’t have to rely on handouts). I don’t know exactly where the food we were given came from, but I hope it was specifically imported with the money we paid for the trip, *like the meals that I had in Chernobyl*. But even if not 3500 tourists a year won’t make much of a difference – the amount of food thrown away in restaurants in Dandong right across the border between China and North Korea (and all over the industrialized world for that matter…) actually disgusts and worries me much more by now.

Sales Stand In A Park North Korean BBQ Park

Western media paint a pretty clear and consistent picture of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – and it’s not a positive one, so I had certain expectations before travelling the country. I expected the Korean tour guides to be party principle hardasses, I expected to be spied on all the time, I expected to be not allowed to take many photos / hardly any video, I expected to have no contact with the locals at all – and I expected the tour to be one big scripted event. To my surprise hardly any of this came true…

I booked the “May Day Long Tour” of *Koryo Tours* like any other vacation via the internet, barely 4 weeks before departure; easy as booking a flight. On April 26th there was a pre-meeting at the Koryo office in Beijing to receive last minute instructions and get any open questions answered, on April 27th we met early in the morning to go to Beijing Capital International Airport to catch our *Air Koryo* plane to Pyongyang. The group consisted of 11 people from all over the world plus Sarah, our guide from Britain; all of them very well-traveled and highly educated – the DPRK isn’t exactly a destination for all-inclusive beach tourists…

North Korean Theme Park North Korea - Shot From The Bus

Upon arrival in Pyongyang we were welcomed by two of our three Korean guides, Mr. Yu and Mr. Kim, who were joined by Ms. Pak the next day, a 21 year old tourism student in her 4th year at university. A friend of mine who has been to Korea three times told me that the first 24 hours are crucial for the relationship with the guides – and he was right. A bit stiff at the beginning of the tour our Korean guides clearly loosened up after we behaved commendably at the *Arch of Triumph* the same night, dressed up with shirt and tie as requested the next morning and paid our respect by bowing according to local customs when *visiting the mausoleum of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il*. We showed the guides that we came to Korea out of genuine interest and they instantly rewarded us with their trust. Don’t get me wrong, all of them were convinced socialists and wouldn’t even think of criticizing the system – but they didn’t try to impose their views on us and they were very interested in what we had to say; about politics, history, technology, pop-culture… everything. Their English was astonishingly articulate, especially considering them not being able to travel abroad, and their kind of humor was surprisingly compatible with the groups’; something I miss at times here in Japan… Overall all three of them were just fun and easy to talk to. (Mr. Yu actually appears in the recent “undercover” BBC documentary with the sappy and overly dramatic music (John Sweeny is not only good at reporting about manipulations, he is also a great manipulator himself…), where he is portrayed as a guard, not a guide – my experience with the man was completely different, and he never told me not to take photos. Whenever I asked in case of doubt I was given permission by him – though I saw people being refused by the staff of Air Koryo and shops; which I find perfectly normal as I wouldn’t want to be photographed without permission either…)
The guides were not only easy to talk to, they were also easy on us. At the meeting in Beijing we were asked not to take photos of random people, not to take photos of construction or poverty. None of that was enforced on us by the local guides. We even got permission to take photos / videos from the bus – not just in Pyongyang, but also in Nampo and Kaesong as well as on the overland drives between cities; a privilege not given to another Koryo Tours group arriving with us on the same day. Different guides and different behavior by the group results in different rules… Off limit for everybody: military, except at the DMZ.)
Of course there were certain restrictions though. In Nampo we were not allowed to leave the hotel, in Kaesong we were not allowed to leave bungalow resort and in Pyongyang we were only allowed to roam freely half of the island the *Yanggakdo Hotel* was on (which is half an island more than most reports on North Korea state…). One night I told Mr. Kim that I wanted to go to the tip of the island to take some night shots and he was totally fine with that. I found my way through the darkness outside with a flashlight and enjoyed the breathtaking view – when I did the same thing on the same route the next night without telling anybody beforehand I triggered an alarm twice, on the way there and on the way back; sound, light and a guard with a flashlight who saw me, but ignored me. I’m still not sure if that was a coincidence or not – because the rest of the time I didn’t feel spied on at all.
Despite those limitations we had several opportunities to make contact with the locals; in my case thanks to group member Jeff, who was fluent in Korean. When we visited the Pyongyang subway we were on the platform for several trains arriving and leaving – and when we finally entered one our group split spontaneously to board different wagons. At no point we were kept from making contact, sometimes a brave Korean kid even made use of an English word or two they learned at school.

Pyongyang Fun Run Taesongsan Park
On May 1st I participated in the Fun Run, the first charity run in North Korea (for an orphanage in Nampo). Basically a 5k along Taedong River up to Kim Il-sung Square in the city center of Pyongyang. While some participants were taking the run rather seriously I decided to use the opportunity to make it a relaxed photo walk with a snapshot camera (for weight reasons, others brought their DSLRs). There were track marshals every couple of hundred meters to show us the way, but other than that we were on our own – since my Korean is basically non-existent I wasn’t able to talk to anybody, but I could have if I wanted to.
My favorite stop of the tour was at the Taesongsan park and fun fair in the outskirts of Pyongyang. It was right before lunch time when we had a little bit more than an hour to roam freely, an opportunity we put to use extensively. I will go into more detail with the help of a separate article later this month, but the trip’s absolute highlight without the shadow of a doubt was when Jeff randomly approached one of countless families sitting on blankets, having a BBQ under cherry trees – a regular hanami party Japan is famous for. They invited not only the big guy without hesitation, but also the three foreigners in his tow. So we sat down and enjoyed some regular local food and alcohol, which was absolutely delicious. When more people of our group passed by and saw us, our temporary Korean hosts invited them, too. We were chatting (with gestures and Jeff translating), laughing, sharing photos and just had a great time – 3 generations of Koreans and foreigners from the States, Canada, Great Britain, Austria and Germany. I’ve never felt more welcome anywhere in my life! (And of course we contributed some bottles of local alcohol and snacks we brought from home, too – it was just a regular BBQ in a park…)

Believe me, I am very well aware that throughout the tour we were in a privileged position and that North Korea has more than its share of problems. It’s an incredibly poor country, the political situation is more than dubious and the human rights situation is atrocious. Every information given had to be taken with a grain of salt (our guides definitely got some numbers wrong…) and sometimes they clearly put on a show (like at the Pyongyang Schoolchildren’s Palace where they showed us some young kids drawing – though they were clearly not; more about that later, too).
BUT: That applies for every source of information, also and especially for Western mass media. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is definitely not a great place to live in and how conflicted it is shows by its name – as the country is everything but democratic. But the situation, judging by the superficial observations I was able to make spending 8 days / 7 nights in the country, is not nearly as bad as we are made believe by the sensationalistic mass media business where stories sell better the more dramatic they are. I was able to talk to North Koreans without having to rely on indoctrinated guides, I was able to see locals in three different cities and on hours of overland drives – and to be honest, I didn’t get the impression that they were overly fanatic or unbelievably unhappy, especially given that North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world, a fact they seem to be very well aware of. Of course they are trying to masquerade that by showing flagship factories and stores to foreign visitors – but at the same time it’s more than obvious that most of the farming is done without any modern equipment, that some roads are in abysmal condition and that people are comparatively small and skinny due the sharp supply situation that is having a grip on the country for decades.

Kindergarten Kids In North Korea Poor People Washing Clothes In A River Empty Road Between Pyongyang And Kaesong

While in North Korea I was engaged in countless conversations with my fellow travelers about the country’s situation, especially since we went there in times of rather high political tensions. It became obvious pretty quickly that there is no easy solution for this incredibly complex struggle. As you know I am not a journalist and I don’t have a political or economical agenda, so I am basically writing this article to show you what I experienced and to make you aware that the situation isn’t black and white, but very, very grey. When I hear voices saying that North Korea should be leveled and that the Americans should just bomb the shit out of the country it makes me sick to the stomach, because I was able to get a glimpse at the unstaged, human side of North Korea. Or maybe I am just a gullible idiot and I fell for the greatest show that was ever put up, involving thousands of extras…

In the following days and weeks I’ll write a couple more articles about my trip to the DPRK to go into further details and to show you plenty of additional photos and videos – *you can find an overview here*. Until then please have a look at my *GoogleMap about tourist spots in North Korea* and enjoy the media published with this article.

(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 2013-11-19: I just posted a general article about my second trip to North Korea in October 2013 – quite a different experiece. *Please click here to read all about it!*)

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Toyoko Inn Online Reservation – WTF?

Posted in Aichi, Aquarium, Asia, Chūbu, Japan, Kansai, Mie, Non-Urbex, Photography, Sacred Site, Shiga, Snow, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/03/22| 22 Comments »

I love the Toyoko Inn hotel chain in Japan. Their prices are fair, they are located right next to bigger train and subway stations, they offer free breakfast from 7 till 9.30 and free WiFi / internet 24/7, their staff usually speaks at least a little bit of English, they have a discount and point system for members – and you can make online reservations via their English homepage.

One reason I was hesitating to go on a trip *as mention in the previous blog post* was the fact that I was in-between credit cards for a couple of weeks. (In my experience it’s close to impossible for foreigners to get a credit card in Japan – but I am looking forward to the comments of every expat who got one… I know people who were rejected more than half a dozen times, I tried it once or twice and then got one in Germany…) But you need a credit card to make an online reservation at a Toyoko Inn – or so I thought.
When it was clear that I would spend the first night of my trip in Nagoya I stopped worrying. Last weekend wasn’t a typical time to travel in Japan (unlike *Golden Week*) and Toyoko Inn has six hotels in Nagoya, eight if you count the ones close to the airport – I was sure I would get a room somewhere. So the plan was to show up at one of them and ask the staff to make a reservation for me for the second night, which I planned to spend in Matsusaka – a town famous for its high quality beef, which turned out to be more dead then the cows it is famous for.

Luckily my plan was a good one, so I checked in at the hotel of my choice in Nagoya and asked the staff to call their sister hotel in Matsusaka to get me a reservation for the following night since I didn’t have a credit card. The friendly lady at the counter pointed to the opposite wall across the lobby and asked me to use the internet to make the reservation myself. I repeated that I didn’t have a credit card and therefore couldn’t make the online reservation. The answer was “You don’t need a credit card to make an online reservation.” – so I told her that I needed one when I tried to make one the night before. Since the hotel receptionist insisted that I wouldn’t need a card and was eager to show me that she was right we started the procedure on their English homepage – as usual. Another guest arrived so I filled out the form, scrolled down and… there it was, the section for the credit card information. I left it blank, tried to continue and of course it didn’t work and I got an error message. When the receptionist showed up again she seemed to be very surprised, switched the language settings of the homepage to Japanese and… finished the reservation without having to enter credit card information! She didn’t even have to log out / start the procedure from the beginning, she just switched the language settings and pressed a button to finalize the reservation.

I totally understand that hotels need some kind of security when people make online reservations and that’s the reason I never had a problem entering my credit card information when making an online reservation at a Toyoko Inn, 15 times for trips in 2012 alone. In fact they don’t charge your credit card and you can pay cash upon arrival, it’s just a security measure for no-shows, which I completely understand. Nevertheless I am kind of irritated by the fact that you have to put in your credit card information when you make the reservation in English, but not when you make it in Japanese – to me it implies that Toyoko Inn considers people who prefer to make reservations in Japanese more reliable than people who make reservations in English; which could be considered borderline racist. Again, I understand that (most) online hotel reservations require credit card information. But either it’s a general requirement for Toyoko Inn or not – doing it on the basis of the language chosen on the homepage feels wrong to me, as it means that not all customers are treated equally.

What do you think? „WTF?“ or “WTF!”?

(To end this posting on a lighter note I’ll add some non-urbex photos and videos I took during my three day trip. Inuyama Castle, Tagata Shrine Festival, Mount Gozaisho, Yunoyama Onsen, Toba, Iruka Island, Ise Shrine, … If anybody is familiar with dolphins please have a look at the video and let me know what you think – to me it looks like the poor creature was desperate to get away as it repeated the same motion at the “prison gates” to the ocean over and over again; I didn’t watch any shows on the island and didn’t spend any money there – Iruka Island (iruka = dolphin) was an optional stop on a harbor cruise I took in Toba.)

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Misato Tennis Club Lodge

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiking, House, Japan, Kansai, Mie, Photography, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2013 on 2013/03/19| 20 Comments »

One of the trends during the Japanese Asset Price Bubble of 1986 to 1991 was building company retreats – on top of mountains with stunning views, in old onsen towns, along the coast. Regular trips for team building in addition to the weekly drinking nights were a given anyway, so why not go all in and build a weekend house with the company logo on it? It surely was a lot more prestigious than sending the staff off to a ryokan or a hotel. As soon as a company had a couple of hundred employees it also had a more or less big and luxurious house somewhere; and not only companies – universities and private high schools, too. Some of those buildings were small wooden huts for 6 to 8 people, others were kind of company hotels with (part-time) staff, taking care of chores like cooking, cleaning and gardening. Most of them were for class trips, department vacations and team building events – others could be booked like a hotel with internal company credit.
As we all know the real estate bubble burst and the Japanese economy began to struggle. It actually still does, probably more than ever since World War 2. Over the past 10 to 15 years a lot of those relaxation retreats became too expensive and were just abandoned; because the company went bankrupt or because it couldn’t afford the running expenses anymore and wasn’t able to sell the property.

In 2012 I visited about 100 abandoned places in Japan and Germany and I had quite a slow start into 2013 – the weather wasn’t exactly great and I felt a bit exhausted. Last Thursday I had to make a decision whether to go on a (non-urbex) trip for three days as I wanted to see a shrine festival near Nagoya, but I still felt tired and worn out by one of those colds that get you in Japan every couple of weeks in winter, since most companies don’t have sick days and therefore people drag themselves to the office instead of taking a paid day off. It was on that Thursday morning when I found two extremely motivating comments by Nikki praising the last two photo sets I published – and while I appreciate every comment (especially the positive ones! :)) it was the timing of those two that gave me the final push to see Inuyama Castle, attend the Tagata Shrine Festival, take the gondola up Mount Gozaisho, do a boat trip from Toba to Iruka Island and finally pay a visit to the famous Ise Grand Shrine. Although I knew that there were abandoned places near all of those locations I didn’t do much preparation as I wanted to experience Japan again the same way I did when I fell in love with it – as a tourist, doing touristy things.

While I was walking along a countryside road on one of those three days, minding my own business, thinking about this and that, I saw a house with an open door from the corner of my eye, MISATO.TENNIS.CLUB written in neon green letters above it. If the door would have been closed I probably would have passed by as the building was in good condition and there was nothing unusual about it. But an open door and neon green letters… who knows?
So I turned around and had a closer look. While I was entering I was trying to remember simple phrases in Japanese, like “Excuse me, do you know where can I buy something to drink?”, just in case I would run into somebody – but nobody was there. From the outside the building looked like a normal single-family house, but the entrance area and the name above the door made it pretty clear that it was one of those company vacation facilities.
Since I have never seen the Misato Tennis Club Lodge anywhere on the internet I tried to be as careful as possible. Original finds are always especially exciting to explore, but this one was in exceptional condition – no graffiti, no vandalism, barely any signs that the place was really abandoned. The saddest thing about this lodge was a dead bird I found in the hallway of the upper floor. Other than that it was a clean place with lots of stuff left behind – like the model of a boat on the counter at the entrance, lots of plates near the kitchen and plenty of furniture. With a couple of cleaning products you could make that place ready for occupancy within a day! (I guess that’s what the Misato Tennis Club is thinking, too, as I found a completely faded sign with a phone number outside…)

I had been to similar places before (although I haven’t written about them yet), so I didn’t take a lot of photos – especially since I didn’t bring my tripod and the lighting conditions inside the building weren’t always great. But it turned out that the lodge was full of lines and fascinating details. Well, at least fascinating to me. If you want to see what the place looked like in general I recommend to watch the video – the photo set mostly shows those details I was strangely attracted to; in that regard the lodge reminded me of the *Takarazuka Macadam Industrial Plant*. All of the photos I took were taken freehand within 30 minutes. And while not all of them turned out the way I hoped others still put a smile on my face. So much that I had to write about the place right away, although it really wasn’t that spectacular. But it was an original find in great condition, a rare combination nowadays, where you have more urbex blogs than abandoned places…
The downside of an original find is that it’s close to impossible to find any information about it. The Misato Tennis Club Lodge could have been abandoned a year ago, maybe five; maybe it just wasn’t used during winter and somebody forgot to close the door when he had a look at what to fix for the new season? Some places in Japan go to shit in a heartbeat, others look barely touched after 30 years. In this case one to three years kind of sound reasonable, the remote location being the reason why it was spared by vandals. (There actually is a Misato Tennis Club in driving distance of the lodge – and like I said, their phone number can be found on a sign outside. They have locations in Yokkaichi and Suzuka, and about a dozen trainers; including head coach Robert “Bobie” Angelo, a Davis Cup player from the Philippines.)

I always try to be as respectful as possible when exploring an abandoned place, but I think this time I didn’t even leave footprints… I actually wiped off my shoes on the doormat before entering! Like all exceptional original finds the Misato Tennis Club Lodge will forever have a special place in my heart and I really hope it will find a new owner before it falls victims to vandals or the forces of nature.

(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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