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Archive for the ‘Visited in 2017’ Category

2017 Urbex In Review

Posted in Abandoned, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2017 on 2017/12/26| 9 Comments »

2017 has been a year full of ups and downs. I checked out more locations than ever before (120) with more people than ever before (20 in total!), and I actually explored more places than ever before (about 70) – and nobody is more surprised about that than I, given how the year started.

My first trip of the year was a non-urbex weekend vacation to Okinawa. I didn’t even bring my tripod, but somehow ended up near the *Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin*, which has become quite a famous abandoned place since my first visit almost five years prior. New signs had been put up, people were working in the area, so I had still no intentions to go inside again, when I saw a Japanese dude heading in… so I followed him. 2 minutes turned into more than an hour of improvised snapshots as it was an overcast day and, like I said, I had no tripod. Most memorable event of the day? Getting a blister the size of a silver dollar from wearing new shoes. Should have stuck with my beach plans, I guess…
Two weeks later a two day trip to the Izu Peninsula turned into a nightmare after one location. I jumped over a wall and didn’t land properly, and as a result twisted my knee so badly that it just slipped when I tried to walk. After some rest I was able to carefully walk again, with my tripod as a crutch and the moral support of my co-explorers who were eager to continue exploring. 4 hours later my knee was pretty much swollen stiff and I slept like a baby that night – waking up screaming in pain every hour or so. The next morning I cut the weekend short and returned to Osaka (the 45 minute drive to the Shinkansen station got me dripping with cold sweat just from sitting in the rear of the car), the following day I saw several doctors. Long story short: Stuff in my knee was sprained / stretched, but nothing was torn or broken – no surgery necessary if I take it easy, and I do till this very day. Mainly to avoid surgery…
For the following weekend I had a very important urbex day trip scheduled and I followed through with it after reassuring my friends (different ones from the weekend before!) that I’d be able to do it, despite the fact that I had no say in planning that trip and therefore had no knowledge what places we would visit. Of course the first location required climbing through a window, which would have been a challenge on a regular day, but was impossible with the busted knee. Instead of leaving me wait outside my friends got a side table and a chair and built me improvised steps, so I could follow inside – one of the nicest things anybody has ever done for me! Especially since that first location was an old wooden clinic with some amazing items left behind.
In early February my photo exhibition at *AIDA Gallery* in Osaka opened and kept me busy for pretty much the rest of the month.

In spring I did quite a few day trips that allowed me to explore pleasant surprises like the *Japanese Countryside Rest Stop* and the *Abandoned Japanese Karaoke Box*. Without a doubt the highlight of that season were the five days I spent in Hokkaido with my friend *Hamish* – that trip included the *Glückskönigreich* and the *Hokkaido Ski-Jumping Hill* as well as several other AAA locations I haven’t even mentioned yet.
Usually I take a break from exploring in summer, due to the heat, the unbearable humidity, and of course the nasty wildlife – long snakes, giant hornets, and big spiders; just to name a few. This year some unique opportunities arose and I embraced them happily, resulting for example in the exploration of the *Horseshoe Hospital*.
In autumn I was lucky enough to explore on seven weekends in a row; often just day trips, but also three days in Hokuriku, four days in Tohoku, and five days Kyushu. Theme parks, hotels, hospitals, water parks, golf courses, pachinko parlors – you name it, I explored it. Some of those trips were very focused, with strict schedules from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. – others I’d rather describe as regular vacations with recreational explorations; and all of them were fun, exciting, entertaining, painful, relaxing, … in their own ways. Sadly not nearly all of the previously mentioned 20 people will explore with me in 2018 – because they live in different countries, because they were just friends of friends, because they lost interest and rather spend their time in other ways, or because of new family members (without a doubt the best reason!). As you can see, I am always open to explore with new people – especially if they are not living in Kansai, but in other parts of Japan. Most plans fall through anyway, but I am more than happy to travel and try. (Before you consider getting in touch via e-mail: urbex can be quite expensive (rental car, gas, highway fees, …), hours are usually long (10 to 16 per day, I’d say), the weather is not always nice, and there are no guarantees that places are accessible or even still existing – there are many reasons why urbex days can be miserable…) That being said, please let me express my deepest gratitude to everyone I’ve explored with this year! I know it’s not always been easy, but at least every single day of exploration has been memorable one way or the other; especially those multiple day trips to the remote areas of Japan when even stunning locations came in second or third to great conversations and / or amazing local food. As much as I love urbex, over the years it has become more about the people I’m exploring with, some of which have become great friends – thanks for a fantastic year and cheers to new adventures in 2018!

From Okinawa to Hokkaido I’ve explored pretty much all over Japan in 2017, from some of the most famous abandoned places to original finds with the potential of becoming future classics. More than 20 of this year’s explorations I’ve already written about on this blog, some of them I’ve linked to in this very article. The gallery at the end consists of (mostly) unpublished photos taken at previously unmentioned locations in random order – please enjoy! And finally a big THANK YOU to everybody out there reading Abandoned Kansai, especially to those who write kind e-mails, leave comments here on the blog and on *Facebook*, Like and Share on Facebook and *Twitter*, or are in other ways actively supportive of this little blog; I’d probably be exploring anyway, but you are the fuel that keeps this blog running, so thanks a lot for your support and may 2018 be as great of an experience as 2017 was!

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Smile P&A Pachinko Parlor

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Pachinko, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2017 on 2017/12/05| 5 Comments »

“Another Pachinko parlor? Really? With no videos and just a few pictures? Are you serious?”
Well, welcome to exploration reality…

Reading the comments here and on Facebook I realize that there are quite a few misperceptions about Abandoned Kansai. While this blog and all connected social media channels (including every bit of content) are run by only one person as a hobby (although it takes as much time as a part time job…), this is far from being a one man show. I have group of about ten people I go exploring with irregularly, i.e. whenever the opportunity arises – back home in Germany usually family members and old friends, here in Japan most of the time new friends I met thanks to the blog. But we don’t go exploring every Tuesday or even every weekend – sometimes I go several weekends in a row, sometimes not for weeks. Tuesday is just the publishing day of the weekly blog article. And the articles are not in chronological order. Some locations I explored months or even years ago, some indeed just a few days prior to writing an article. More often than not I choose on Monday or Tuesday which abandoned place I’ll write about that week – not in random order, but based on how much time I have, how much material I have, what I feel like… and most importantly, what I have written about recently; just to avoid presenting three deserted hotels in a row – even though I often explore three abandoned hotels in a row; sometimes on the same day. The length of a video and the amount of pictures usually depend on how big and how interesting a location is – of course I get much more material when I stay seven hours at a place like the *Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin* than when I spend 20 minutes at the Smile P&A Pachinko Parlor… How much time I spend on a location depends of course on factors like size, how interesting it is, security, what the plans for the rest of the days are – and sometimes my fellow explorers lose their patience and want to move on.

As for the Smile P&A Pachinko Parlor – small location, not really interesting, a guy next door eyeing us, other places to check out, bored fellow explorers; 13 photos in 20 minutes, no video. One of the most rushed explorations, definitely snapshots as I didn’t have time to properly frame a single photo. As Japan becomes super busy (with all kinds of duties and parties) before shutting down for a week just after Christmas, this location is actually a blessing in disguise for the blog as I don’t have to go through a lot of photos and research, because this was just another random abandoned countryside pachinko parlor – I hope you enjoyed it anyway. And if not, you can look forward to an article about an abandoned theme park I worked on for a while… and of course to a look back at 2017, including some gorgeous photos of mind-blowing locations not yet published or even mentioned on Abandoned Kansai! Add the yearly Merry XXX-Mas article and you know what to expect for the rest of December… 🙂

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Countryside Golf Course

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Sports, Urbex, Visited in 2017 on 2017/11/14| 1 Comment »

About a year ago I wrote about an abandoned driving range – now I finally explored an abandoned golf course!

The transition from summer to autumn was rather abrupt in Japan this year. In September Kansai felt like a steam sauna and nobody wanted to do anything outdoorsy – three typhoon weekends with heavy rain later people cancelled BBQs and other events because it was “too cold” outside. And of course those friggin typhoons hit the area I lived in exclusively on weekends, which meant that I had to postpone several exploration plans as exploring during strong rain and severe winds is not fun at all. Even if you plan to explore indoors the five to ten minutes you need to figure out how to enter a building can become nasty and expensive – and most pictures look a lot better when taken during sunshine, which is why I tend to be a good weather explorer. Sometime though bad weather is unavoidable, for example when on long planned multi-day trips or when the weather forecast fails you – and sadly the weather forecast in Japan is rather unreliable…
The Countryside Golf Course I explored on one of those typhoon weekends with false forecast. The rain was supposed to start in the evening at around 6 p.m. according to the predictions made the evening before the day trip – sadly it began to drizzle just when we arrived at our first location at around 10 a.m., minutes later it poured and didn’t stop for two days. By the time we arrived at the Countryside Golf Course the rain was so heavy that the road leading up to the main area partly turn into a shallow rivulet – luckily the rain became a bit weaker at times, but overall it was an uncomfortable and quite wet exploration with only little to see. Located in the mountains, the Countryside Golf Club offered some gorgeous, very atmospheric early autumn views that day. Sadly the clubhouse had already been demolished and the driving range was more than underwhelming in comparison to the one I explored a year prior. All the paths and bridges were still accessible, though most of the courses were already pretty much overgrown after just two or three years of abandonment. And so the only really interesting area was at the end of a lonely downhill path that lead to a garbage dump (they removed a whole club house and nevertheless left some trash?) and a shed with two golf carts in decent condition. That’s pretty much it.

Since golf is definitely not my world it was kinda interesting to have a look around an abandoned country club, but as an urban exploration location it was definitely a bit underwhelming – and the constant rain didn’t make the experience any more joyful. Surely not a bad experience, but I’d take the *Japanese Driving Range* over the Countryside Golf Club any time…

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Countryside Pachinko Parlor

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Pachinko, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2017/11/07| 3 Comments »

Closed pachinko parlors are everywhere in Japan – from right opposite train stations in busy city centers to the middle of nowhere in the countryside. Yet it has been six years (!) since I last wrote about one…

Pachinko is as Japanese as it gets – probably even more so than sushi and sumo as it is mostly contained to Zipangu. Currently there are between 15000 and 16000 parlors in Japan, and from the looks of it about 10% of them are closed or even abandoned. Although the number of regular players was cut in half between 2002 and 2012, there are still more than 10 million regulars in Japan. Some 34000 of them are professionals while the majority of players loses money big time; in 2006 the average customer spent a whopping 28124 Yen (!) per visit (today about 250 USD / 210 EUR). About the legal problems pachinko parlors face and how they are connected to North Korea in a way that’s hard to believe *I wrote about in a previous article*, so I won’t repeat it here.

Back in 2010/11 I found and explored two abandoned pachinko parlors in excellent condition and therefore wasn’t aware how rare they are in that state. In the following years I realized that most of those closed / abandoned parlors are either tightly locked – or completely filled with trash. I must have tried at least half a dozen of them under a variety of different circumstances, but none of the attempts lead to an exploration worth documenting. Until recently, when I came across the Countryside Pachinko Parlor in a small onsen town. While most of the machines were gone, the parlor was still in good condition overall. Most stools were still there, some advertising, the frames for the pachinko AND the slot machines… and nobody vandalized the large mirror / chrome / neon installments at the main entrance. Even the living area on the upper floor was accessible – featuring one of the slot machines, a kitchen / dining area, several balconies and half a dozen bedrooms. Nothing special, but better than nothing – especially after all those years, especially on a rainy day. (Exploring on rainy days sucks. Outdoor locations are hardly doable and even indoor places are a pain as everything is / can be wet and uncomfortable – from access points to whole floors…)
Overall the Countryside Pachinko Parlor was a decent exploration, but since you most likely never saw the much better earlier explorations I did, I strongly recommend checking out the now demolished *K-1 Pachinko Parlor* and the now classic *Big Mountain*!

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Drachenburg

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2017/10/17| 3 Comments »

If a location looks German, has a German name, and is presented on Abandoned Kansai, it most likely is a real one in Germany… or a more or less fake one in Japan. Willkommen in der Drachenburg!

The Drachenburg (“Dragon Castle”) is a massive concrete house in a weekend home community. It was built in 1976 and rented to families and groups, most likely for weekends or full weeks. The Drachenburg’s design is obviously based on European style castles from the Middle Ages – from the looks of it, I’d classify it as a Trutzburg (counter-castle) or Hangburg (hillside castle), but I am not an expert in medieval history or castle architecture. In any case, it’s a massive construction that makes you feel small, especially when approaching through the garden and up the outdoor stairs to the main entrance. That area also featured some sitting accommodations, an outdoor shower, and probably a now overgrown area to set up a BBQ.
The first floor (ground floor in pretty much the rest of the world) of the Drachenburg offered indoor showers, lots of storage, a ping-pong table and some kind of changing rooms. From there a half-spiral staircase lead up past the second and third floor to the top. The second floor was the heart of the Drachenburg and the main entertainment area. The walls of the open area were clad in a heavy, high quality and very detailed ruby red and white wallpaper – there was a bar with a small kitchen area, a fireplace, a pool table, a sound system with several speakers and a couple of smaller items, like a rocking chair, a soroban (Japanese abacus) and some taxidermy birds. The third floor looked like a mid-size Japanese apartment – wooden or tatami floor, a bathroom, a shower and some more storage. The more or less flat roof once must have offered a gorgeous view. But after about 10 years of abandonment the surrounding trees grew as big as the Drachenburg itself – and much closer. The roof still got more than its share of sunlight and offered another set of tables and chairs, water supply and probably a BBQ, but in the early summer heat of my visit being on the roof felt like being under a magnifying glass, so I didn’t spend that much time up there.

Overall the Drachenburg was an amazing exploration and almost everything I hoped it would be ever since I found out about it 1.5 years prior to my visit. Sure, the suit of armor had been stolen, but other than that the fortress was still in pretty good condition – probably because it is a bit off the beaten tracks and was not well known back then. Despite being rather small (according to GoogleMaps barely 5 by 10 meters) there was quite a lot to see – and it was a truly unique location! There are not that many Western style castles in Japan and not that many abandoned ones. The overlap should be a number very close to 1…

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Pig Auction Market

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2017/09/26| 1 Comment »

When you think you’ve seen it all you start to have a closer look at things that have been under your nose for years – and then you’ll find places like an abandoned pig auction market!

Desperation is barely ever a good advisor, but after exploring Kansai (and the rest of Japan) for eight years, I am kind of running out of places to explore within reasonable range. Well, at least places I am interested in – locations that are virtually inaccessible, mostly collapsed, or completely moldy are not exactly luring me out of bed early on a Saturday morning. A couple of months ago I was planning another day trip with my buddy Mark and I finally added a location I’ve been skipping for years – because it was small, because it was located along a very, very busy street, because there were no other even remotely interesting places around; and let’s be honest, how interesting could a pig auction market be?
Well, surprisingly interesting actually! Since I had low to no expectations, the Pig Auction Market was a very positive surprise. Yes, it was located along a busy road between a car dealership and a trucking company, but the only building on the premises was at the far end of the lot, separated from a rice field only by a small road with basically zero traffic. From the bird’s eye perspective the small complex must look like a large grey Pac Man eating the auction building – Pac Man, of course, being the roofed outdoor pen. Back in the day, trucks apparently were able to drive up directly to the stalls to unload the pigs – and on the other end of the metal cage stable was a small railroad to drive the poor creatures directly into the building, where people bid on them. To my total surprise the auction building was accessible, too. Mostly empty, nevertheless extremely interesting as Japanese pig auctions are something I never wasted a single thought on in my whole life, but I had the feeling that I learned a lot about them just by having a look around at the Pig Auction Market, which included a small private area, so somebody probably lived there for a while, at least temporarily. (The place was established in 1969 by the ZEN-NOH (National Federation of Agricultural Co-operative Associations), part of the omnipresent Japan Agricultural Cooperatives or JA, as a shoat market. In 1974 it was bought by the prefectural government and lent to the local pig keeping society – they used it till the market was finally closed in 2005. After years of abandonment the next door car dealership started to use the premises as a parking lot, though I don’t know whether or not they own the place now – all I know is that it didn’t help taking pictures outside as there were used cars all over the place…)

I knew about the Pig Auction Market for at least five or six years until I finally explored it in early July, on the last bearable weekend of yet another horrible Kansai summer. Despite dripping with sweat (inside) and being eaten alive by mosquitos (outside) it was great to explore this location – looking at the different elements and piecing together how the place could have worked 20, 30, 40 years ago… it felt like a true exploration with unusual motifs everywhere. When I planned the the trip out there I scheduled about an hour at the Pig Auction Market, but in the end I took pictures for pretty much exactly 2.5 hours – because I really, really liked that place. The whole thing actually reminded me a bit of the still Abandoned Kansai exclusive abandoned *Poultry Farm* that I explored in early 2012…

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Chateau Banana

Posted in Abandoned, Europe, France, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2017/09/19| 10 Comments »

Why on earth would you nickname an abandoned mansion in the French mountains Chateau Banana? Well, the answer is surprisingly obvious…

Sometimes I wonder if I publish too many photos with my articles… probably around 30 in average, usually between 20 and 40. So far nobody has complained about too many photos, some people actually want even more pictures, but I often feel like I am watering down photo sets by posting too many average photos that show the average or below average parts of a location – because let’s be honest, only a handful of locations are interesting enough for 30 really good photos, a more realistic number is probably between 10 and 12 per set… and “just” good Pictures, which is in the ballpark of what I’ve seen of the Chateau Banana before exploring it. People were rather monosyllabic with information and stinted with photos, giving the impression that the Chateau Banana was a spectacular kitschy version of the now legendary *Chateau Lumiere*. The location wasn’t even on my radar as I just don’t have the time to intensely follow urbex trends outside of Japan, but luckily my reader Dennis made me aware of it and pointed me in the right direction without just handing me coordinates – very much appreciated!
The Chateau Banana is a rather recent discovery even amongst European urbexers, which is why there is only little known about it. Located in the Vosges Mountains, the Chateau Banana most likely originated as a private mansion maybe 80 to 100 years ago on quite a piece of land on the edge of a small town. Luckily my friend Nina and I found a quick and easy way in, because two hours and forty-five minutes into our three hour long drive it started to rain – the main door was locked, but the side entrance through the kitchen was only closed.
Kitchen instead of kitsch… The Chateau Banana was nothing like it looked like on the photos – at first. I’m sure it once was a majestic kitchen, but not at the time of our visit. The whole area was cluttered; boxes, cartons and random items stacked over each other, along the wall till underneath the ceiling – a path just wide enough to walk through leading deeper inside the eerie building. Lighting on the ground floor was difficult in general as most window shutters were closed and nailed shut – only a few of them had been partly “opened”, with the use of force and not without damaging the shutters. The hallway and most of the other rooms on the ground floor were as cluttered as the kitchen, only the gorgeous living room was in excellent condition… like on the photos I had seen. Since the lighting situation didn’t improve during the first few minutes we decided to explored the building from the top – two more floors plus the attic. The wooden staircase didn’t inspire confidence, but I had seen worse. At least it was made from massive, solid wood, much more sturdy than the lightweight construction I am used to in Japan.
The attic was not much of a surprise, maybe except for the fact that there was still laundry to dry on the clothesline rope. The floor below looked like it was privately used, with the peculiarity that that every room had its own bathroom, some even a dressing room. It was there where I found one of most unusual abandoned items ever – a fencing mask. A little less cluttered than the rest of the house it slowly dawned on us what was going on at the Chateau Banana. This wasn’t just an abandoned mansion – this was a failed conversion, private villa to hotel. The middle floor gave even more hints – most of the rooms there were almost done and ready to welcome guests, the most beautiful room with the biggest bath was labelled private though. Interestingly enough a lot of items we found at the Chateau Banana had German text on it – like the Happy Families card game with classical composers or pretty much all of the renovation material.
By the time I finished shooting the upper floors it stopped raining and the sun came out… for a few minutes, only to hide behind clouds again, and again, and again… Nevertheless I took a couple of photos in the beautiful dining room and living room – in such good condition that some of the tableware was still in the glass cabinet. Other items left behind included a great piano, an old bible and a turn of the century stroller plus quite a few pieces of furniture; whether they just looked like antiques or actually were antiquities is impossible for me to say. Just before we left I final look around, still wondering why this was called the Chateau Banana – and then it dawned on me. A lot of the boxes between the living room and the main entrance, stacked up to the ceiling, were actually banana cartons from a variety of companies…

At first the Chateau Banana was kind of a disappointment as it didn’t live up at all to the image I had in my mind based on the pictures I had seen beforehand. Luckily my friend Nina was extremely patient and allowed me to explore and take pictures for three and a half hours, sacrificing a second location I had in mind for the same day. It wasn’t an easy photo shoot, especially since I had to deal with a really crappy tripod (if you buy one, buy a good one – sadly I left mine in Japan as I was just on vacation…), some tight spaces and ever changing lighting. And yet I ended up with 40 photos again. Usually I post them in chronologically order – this time I will post them differently. The good ones first, then the crappy ones you usually don’t see on other blogs / urbex sites. So in the end the Chateau Banana was beautiful in its own way – but my favorite location in France is still the amazing *Chateau Lumiere*.

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Kobe Love Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Love Hotel, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2017/09/12| 1 Comment »

Japanese people love euphemisms, especially English ones. Let’s check out another abandoned love hotel!

It has almost become kind of a Christmas tradition here at Abandoned Kansai to write about an abandoned love hotel (Merry XXX-Mas!) for Japan’s last Valentine’s Day of the year (after the original one and White Day), but the country is littered with them… and my explorations of them start to pile up, so I guess I have to throw in one or two at different times of the year.
The Kobe Love Hotel is actually my most recent love hotel exploration, the pictures are barely 72 hours old. Located in one of many love hotel districts in Hyogo’s capital Kobe, this abandoned fashion hotel was actually in surprisingly good condition, considering that it was closed in September 2008 – the last porn on demand menu in the rooms was from August 2008. Before that the Kobe Love Hotel underwent several name changes as the big neon signs outside didn’t match the name printed on the escape routes in the rooms. Of course this couples hotel has seen better days, too – some rooms were more vandalized than others, but overall they were still in decent condition, given that romance hotels are amongst the most vandalized type of abandoned places in Japan, at least in my experience. Since most of the parking lot was overgrown by thick thicket, I guess it prevented most casual vandals from getting access. Oh, and the giant, still active suzumebachi nest probably didn’t attract anybody either…
The layout of the Kobe Love Hotel, actually more of a love motel, was quite interesting – a long line of rooms, parking spots on the west side and a narrow non-public maintenance hallway on the east side; two external staircases allowed guests access to the second floor rooms. For access to the third floor rooms you had to go up an internal staircase past the lobby. Sadly those high up rooms were just regular rooms, without exotic features like an outdoor pool or at least a rooftop Jacuzzi.
The Kobe Love Hotel was a fun exploration, but as a location it was rather average – no kinky themes, no exotic interior, no unusual vending machines. Every room had a slightly different design, but overall the differences to a good hotel room were rather marginal. If you are new to the love hotel topic, I recommend reading my articles about the *Furuichi Love Hotel* and the *Love Hotel Gion*, as I write more about the history of those places there.

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Riverside Mall

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Visited in 2017 on 2017/09/05| 4 Comments »

Last week’s Riverside School and this week’s Riverside Mall have only one thing in common – the riverside part…

The Riverside Mall was a large shopping complex featuring not only stores and restaurants, but also a multiplex cinema, a Ferris wheel, an onsen and several sports facilities, including a basketball court on one of the roofs. I’m not really sure when the mall initially opened, but the cinema was in business from late 2000 to February 2011 – and then again for two weeks in March of the same year before closing down for good.
I found out about the Riverside Mall a few years ago, but never prioritized to go there until I finally had the chance in May of this year, 2017. Just in time to witness the demolition. Daaaaarn! The demolition was actually in full swing, so initially I wanted to drive on, especially since it was drizzling outside anyway. My buddy Mark on the other hand was super excited and convinced me to gaijin smash the place – playing the dumb foreigner to take some photos. Luckily one of the (de)construction site’s parking lots was open and unguarded, so we drove in, got our photo equipment and started shooting as if it was the most normal thing in the world. After about 15 minutes a big old guy walked up to us trying to shoo us away, so Mark started talking at him in English and a few words of Japanese to distract him, while I was continuing taking photos, slowing going deeper onto the construction site, but not into any of the buildings. The guy was friendly enough for about 10 minutes before he insisted that we should leave (no surprise he locked the gate as soon as we were gone to prevent other shmocks like us from entering…) – so I left with eight photos I wouldn’t have taken if it wouldn’t have been for Mark. I took another couple of shots from public ground and voilà, here we are. Not a spectacular location, but better than skipping a week – am I right or am I right? 🙂

Overall the Riverside Mall was a big disappointment, of course – especially imagining that in 2013 or 2014 we probably could have had access to the cinema and the onsen… or we could have been arrested by the police after causing an alarm. Who knows? Urbex is all about timing, and this time, the timing was bad. It could have been worse, because a month later probably nothing was left of the Riverside Mall, but well… it is what it is – or “it can’t be helped”, as the Japanese like to say: shoganai.

Initially I wanted to write a little bit about consumerism in Japan, but I am extremely pressed for time this week – so maybe some of you want to leave a comment under this article about how you imagine shopping in Japan or how you experienced shopping in Japan? (Sometimes I like to be entertained, too… 🙂 ) I will come back to that topic when I write about another abandoned shopping mall I already explored – and that time I actually got inside!

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Mindfuck Hotel

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Photography, Travel, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2017 on 2017/08/15| 12 Comments »

Exploring abandoned hotels usually means looking for interesting items, baths or pools as most rooms look exactly the same – not only within a hotel, but across hotels all over Japan. The Mindfuck Hotel was different though…

When I first saw the Mindfuck Hotel, located a few hundred meters above the Seto Inland Sea along a gorgeous scenic road, I had a good feeling about it, as if we were in for a special treat. Unlike most other abandoned hotels I’ve been to, this one was not only abandoned – it looked completely gutted: no windows, no doors, no nothing. At least not from the steep angle below. The last road leading up to the entrance was clean, a rather new metal chain keeping unwanted cars away. Right behind the hotel was a small reservoir, which is why using that road was “strictly forbidden”. And that’s when the mood start to change slightly… even more so when we reached the same level as the hotel and finally had a good look at the ground floor and the surprisingly clean entrance area. Two thirds of the building still looked completely emptied out, but the last one looked fortified and kind of used. Some windows were secured by metal bars, others had rather modern, unbroken panes, heat shields usually used for cars used to prevent nosy visitors from having a look inside. The first sign I saw was a camera warning, the first door warned of a big dog. In Japan, both “warnings” are usually bluffs, but the Mindfuck Hotel had a camera directed right at the entrance… and an electric meter box outside on the ground level, so I kept out of sight of the camera and had a look at the meter to confirm that the camera was as dead as the rest of the building – only to be proven wrong, the meter was running. Something in that building was using electricity! I’ve seen active security cameras in Japan and I have seen active meters in Japan, but never have I seen an active meter right underneath a security camera at a presumedly abandoned building. What the heck was going on here? And if there was camera, were there alarms, too?
Luckily the entrance to the hotel wasn’t on the ground floor, you had to go up some steps to the second floor – and the camera was directed right at the entrance. Which meant that it was rather easy to avoid the area covered by the camera… and going around the building was only complicated by some early summer overgrowth (that was hiding the remains of a nice little outdoor pond area). Much to my surprise the first room I came across once had large windows that were missing now, which means that we were able to get inside just by stepping over a knee-high wall. But should we really? That was something Dan, Kyoko and I discussed ever since we found out about the running meter. What if there was an alarm system? What if there was somebody inside? Most likely a person, because the big dog we were warned of apparently wasn’t there.
So of course we went inside, we had a mystery to solve! The mystery of the Mindfuck Hotel. The hearts in our boots we climbed in, walked out a few steps in and into what once probably was the dining area of the hotel – a half-open two storey room with a big glass front. Pretty much empty, except for a solid gate at the end of the steps leading to the upper floor and warnings everywhere. About death, about traps, about anything under the moon. Feeling even more uncomfortable I walked a few steps further into the dining hall and froze – a room on the upper floor, featuring large window facing both inside and outside, had lights on! What the heck? A completely empty hotel… with four fluorescent lights on? I took a couple of more photos when we heard a car closing in – so we left the way we came, only to realize that there was no car coming. Or anybody coming. It was just traffic outside on the road below the hotel…
So we decided to fully circle the hotel first, to get a better impression of the whole damn thing. In the process we found three or four bungalows right next to the hotel, most likely rentals. All except for one looked abandoned – some dirt, some broken pipes. But one of them… we weren’t sure of. So we left them alone and returned to the hotel, only to find the outdoor staircase on the north side completely open. Some floors didn’t even have doors. So we went inside and started exploring from the top – it was a solid concrete building we circled before, so we didn’t have to worry about missing sections, like at the *Deathtrap Hotel*.
At first everything went smoothly, but then we heard voice outside. Two men… no cameras, but hard hats and overalls. Darn! Hoping they were inspecting the nearby reservoir, we decided to wait out the situation. Everything went smoothly again, until I heard voices inside the building, coming from the main staircase I was taking pictures of! I warned Dan and Kyoko, and decided to leave. On the way out the two guys saw us and we hurried back to the car. WTF was going on there? About 10 minutes later, we had a snack and some water and were just about to drive away, the two guys left, too. Since their car was unmarked, we came to the conclusion that they were either with the reservoir or had no authority at all on the premises, so we decided to go back in. I continued taking pictures in the staircase, Dan and Kyoko went ahead and had a look at the area the two guys went to… where they found a large tatami party room with a gorgeous view at the Seto Inland Sea. Reservoir or not, those two guys probably just entered the hotel (on the third of four floors, avoiding the dining area of floor #1 and #2, too!) to enjoy the view for a few minutes…
When we finally reached the second floor, the one with the entrance, the one with the mystery lights, we realized that the metal fire door leading to the main area was welded shut – so we circled the hotel one last time to sneak in from the side… or the back. Call it whatever you want. Since we were practically done exploring the Mindfuck Hotel, we all got a little bit more brave. First I took a rather blurry photo of the lit area by using my tripod as an extended arm, then we headed up the stairs again. It looked like somebody welded in extra metal bars to intruder proof not only the front, but separate areas on the second floor – the kind of area you expect to find some tortured kidnapped person in. It was a bright sunny day, but this main area was spooky as hell. The barrier / locked gate to get to the secured area was maybe 1.2 meters high, but since we were still unsure about alarm systems or what we would find back there and since I was still slightly impaired by an urbex related knee injury, Kyoko and I decided to stay back, while Dan had a closer look. No alarms, but the (locked) room with the lights apparently looked like somebody was building a bar in what probably once has been the breakfast room.
In the end we concluded that the hotel once had been abandoned (some graffiti there were more than 15 years old!), somebody rather recently managed to get electricity running again and started to fortify the entrance (for whatever reason) and build that bar. The security camera was probably as much of a bluff as the dog – but to keep people away, the current occupant kept the lights one when he was away… so people would conclude: Security camera + running electricity meter = active site with alarms.

I am not sure if I was able to convey how amazing this exploration really was, but I had the time of my life there. It was a little bit like being on “the island” (Lost… if you remember) – two good friends, a mystery building, strangers showing up, slowly piecing information together while running into new things that didn’t make much sense. And in addition to that I took some photos I absolutely love. Of the hallways, of the indoor staircase, of the views the hotel offered, of the top floor shared baths. An indoor exploration with an outdoor feeling, once used and yet empty again – colors, light, textures. Everything came together perfectly. And very rewarding, because I still explore about a dozen abandoned hotels per year and I am getting tired of them – but then I run into places like the Mindfuck Hotel, and they keep me going; keep me going even to abandoned hotels… because you never know what you will get. And the Mindfuck Hotel, in its own way, was as good as it gets – right up there with the *Nakagusuku Hotel Ruin* and the *Hachijo Royel Hotel*!

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