All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum – and many, many more! Plus: North Korea Special – 2 trips, 16 days / 14 nights! As seen on CNN…
A few days from now the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris will begin. A spectacle that costs about €9 billion – and probably will leave some abandoned places behind… like in Japan!
Japan’s history as a host of the Olympic Games dates back to 1964, when Tokyo was home of the Summer Games. Sapporo 1972 and Nagano 1998 followed with Winter Games, before the disastrous Tokyo Summer Games 2020 were held in 2021. Sapporo (who had won the bid for 1940, but couldn’t follow through for obvious reasons) remembers the 1972 games so fondly that there was a large campaign to get the games in 2030 – an effort that became rather unpopular quickly in the aftermath of Tokyo 2020. 2034 is still in talks, but extremely unlikely… Some politicians seem to cling to it, but that’s pretty much it.
Since I avoid Tokyo like the plague (or Corona… still no infection!) I don’t know what the status of their Olympic ruins is, but both Nagano and Sapporo still have some installations left. The Olympic bobsleigh track in Nagano called Spiral is a tourist attraction now (coordinates: 36.71088, 138.1578), the other remaining venues that have been abandoned are mostly forgotten now – some have been demolished after my visit, for example the bobsleigh goal house in Sapporo and that gymnasium used by athletes to change and prepare right before their competitions. I compiled a little gallery with some interesting photos at the end of this blog entry, but here is a list of links to the full articles I’ve written in the past, in case you want to see (and read?) more: *Sapporo 1972 (1)* *Sapporo 1972 (2)* *Nagano 1998 (1)*
A new video in a long time, just weeks after I said to expect no more. But this one is different…
For most of its existence, Abandoned Kansai featured a video or two with every article, in addition to text and photos. They were pretty much always taken at the end, after I’ve explored the respective location and knew it reasonably well – which was kind of necessary since I didn’t edit them at all. As I mentioned before, I initially took them only for my own reference… and to make use of a Sanyo Xacti I originally intended to be my main camera in Japan, but then I picked up urbex as a hobby and the photo quality was kind of sub-par for that hobby, but the videos were pretty good (for the time), so I switched to Nikon for photos and kept the Xacti for videos. Fast forward something like 10 years and the Sanyo died – at first I was upset since I also lost a days’ worth of walkthroughs, including the amazing *Trump Hotel*, but then I was kinda glad that I had an excuse to not take videos anymore. Fast forward six or seven years. I had forgotten what a pain in the behind those videos were for me and my co-explorers, so I made the stupid mistake of buying a Insta360 X4 at Yodobashi Camera for an upcoming trip to Hokkaido after being instantly fascinated by the camera’s ability to easily take 360° photos and videos – something I quickly regretted. *Please click here if you missed that story…* Long story short: The experience with Insta360 and Yodosucky Camera was so off-putting that I probably lost interest in video for good.
A few days later I was exploring an original find in the outskirts of a rather remote town in Hokkaido, when I heard some ungodly noise in the distance – as if animals were screaming and somebody was yelling. It really kinda freaked me out, but of course I finishing taking photos. If I would have quit because I was afraid a little bit, I wouldn’t have made it past my first explorations back in 2009. Afterwards I continued up a hill, further away from the town, and entered another abandoned building – and again I heard those bloodcurdling screams, this time a bit closer. I once more finished my exploration, trying to stay calm and then… I walked further up the hill, towards the noise. As you do when you are by yourself on a rainy day exploring what are supposed to be abandoned buildings in the outskirts of a rundown town in Hokkaido. What could possibly go wrong? Well, I walked around a corner of a road, when all of a sudden I saw some fur on a metal construction – and seconds later the screams again! My first thought was: a dog on some torture device! Then some kind of head was turning towards me… and I realized that it was a wolf Halloween mask with flickering eyes. Like something from a haunted house. Now, you have to know that I don’t like Halloween or horror… or violence in general; except for Dead Rising – Frank West covered wars, you know! So this thing freaked me out for the third time, but this time really for real! What the heck was this contraption?! Well, the sound obviously was pre-recorded and came from a speaker, so at least I wouldn’t have to deal with some animal torturing hillbilly. When the most messed up animatronics I have ever seen finally stopped after 20 or 30 seconds I carefully had a closer look. Upon inspection the setup apparently consisted of a solar panel connected to a battery, connected to the screaming furry fella, with a control unit and two speakers underneath. I was intrigued, but nothing happened for a while… I quickly set up my photo camera, which I hardly ever use for recording videos, but this was too strange to not record. Initially I came from behind and didn’t know what to expect, but for the pictures and videos I decided to use an angle that shows a bit more. Nothing happened for another 15 minutes. I got closer from the road at the left side, trying to trigger the device. Still nothing. Then a friggin fox walked by on the main road, right in front of it! Still nothing. My camera was mounted on a tripod, set to video – and everything happened super fast, so I only got blurry photos of the second furry fella. Fortunately the fox couldn’t care less about me and I was spared an attack as well as a rabies shot. At this point I was running out of time, and when you have to catch one of four buses per day, you make sure to meet their schedule! So I walked a bit down the “main” road, in front of the damn contraption – and finally it triggered! Repeatedly. With different sound samples. So I adjusted the camera in a way that I could trigger the thing without being seen and… well, enjoy! It might not be that scary on video, but in reality it got me pretty good. Both from a distance as well as approaching it for the first time from behind. I still don’t know what the Horror Wolf was for though. It was located at a T crossing halfway up a hill amidst abandoned / rundown companies in the outskirts of a rather remote town. The next residential buildings were about half a kilometer away, the town center with the bus stops rather 2 kilometers. The purpose most likely was to scare away bears, but I don’t know for sure.
And now please enjoy the first videos I have published in years… and probably the last ones ever. That stuff in a 360° video would have been so cool, but *the unholy alliance of Insta360 and Yodobashi Camera* had to mess up… 😦
Japan has plenty of bizarre and quirky roadside attractions, but the Maboroshi Hakurankai, about 3 hours south of Tokyo, trumps them all.
The Izu Peninsula is famous for many things. Shimoda and the Black Ships. Kawazu and the first cherry blossoms of the year. The gorgeous train ride along the coast. Wasabi. Onsen. Seafood. Spectacular views of Mount Fuji. The Izu Peninsula has it all! And more… One of the most underrated tourist attraction in all of Japan, at least among foreign visitors, is the Maboroshi Hakurankai, literally the “phantom exhibition” – an eclectic collection of real(ly) old items and bizarre art at the former site of a botanical garden called Izu Green Park along Route 135. The latter was sold in February 2011 to new owner Sailor-chan, who has become somewhat of a social media star due to their… unconventional outfits and photo sessions with visitors at the entrance. After three months of demolition and renovation the museum opened on July 16th 2011. The creepy-cute concept was fed by 100 truckloads of exhibits – some from its sister museum called Ayashi Shonen Shojo Hakubutsukan (“The Weird Museum for Boys and Girls”) just 3.5 kilometers down the road, other items came from many years of collecting, including auctions, antique stores, closed museums like a house of hidden treasures (a euphemism for the 70s sex museums Japan had in a lot of onsen towns) and a film museum. As of 2021 the Maboroshi Hakurankai displayed more than 20000 exhibits across several buildings and outdoors – pretty much everything from newspapers to books to toys to arcade machines to vehicles to uniforms to mannequins (with different levels of clothing) to more or less bizarre art; most of the exhibits are from the Showa Era (1926-1989), which currently has a revival in Japan nicknamed Showa Mania.
According to the Japanese Wikipedia page about the museum “many of the objects are traumatizing to children, and some local parents discipline their kids by telling them, “If you do anything bad, we will take you to Maboroshi” – which made the museum just the more interesting to me. (I studied Japanese History at university, focusing on social and technological history.) I finally had the opportunity to visit the Phantom Exhibition just before the pandemic and it was all that I expected… and much, much more! Usually I schedule between 15 and 60 minutes for a museum visit, this one I had to leave after more than two hours to catch a bus back home – and I hope I will be able to come back one day as parts of my time there felt a bit rushed. The large parking lot was disappointingly empty, maybe half a dozen cars, but I guess toward the end of a long weekend most Tokyoites and other visitors were already on their way home. Sailor-chan wasn’t there to greet me, so I made my way up a winding slope, past the first exhibits, to the entrance with a small pay booth (1200 Yen back then, 1400 Yen now). The first exhibition hall was one of the old gigantic greenhouses that now included a 12-meter-tall head with shoulders. No air-conditioning, so pleasantly warm in January, but probably barely bearable in summer. When I entered, a guy pushing a sex doll in a wheelchair just left and I thought “Oh, they must be redecorating!” – later that afternoon it turned out that the bloke wasn’t an employee and that the doll was his “girlfriend”. So, yeah, not just the owner and the exhibits at the Maboroshi Hakurankai are eccentric, some of the visitors are, too. From the greenhouse I went back to the main area, which turned out to be a maze of paths and buildings while you are slowly ascending an Izu peninsula hill. Even four and a half years later I am still unable to properly describe the things I’ve seen… and how this place wouldn’t survive a week in any other country as its exhibits have such a great variety that they probably offend 90% of people at one point or another for being too liberal (all the sex stuff…) or for being too conservative (plenty of WW2 memorabilia…) – or for being just too bizarre, like the sculptures from artists that were placed near the top. But not only the owner, the exhibits, and the visits were unusual, so was the presentation of everything. Some areas looked like a proper museum, others felt like people just dumped stuff. Not even by topic, just piles or collages of things – a surprising amount of it outdoors, exposed to nature. Which makes the whole place something like a piece of partly decomposing art that is composed of an ever-changing collection of art and discard.
If I would have to describe the Maboroshi Hakurankai in one word, it would be “mind-blowing”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bizarre and sometimes deeply disturbing place, parts are just random piles of stuff, some areas are narrow and dirty… and yet there is so much to look at. Things you have never seen before and will never see again. Things from your childhood that you have long forgotten about and never expected to see again. I’m not an artsy kind of person and my historian heart was bleeding half the time over how a lot of the exhibits were presented – but if you go with an open mind and accept the place for what it is, I’m sure that you will have an amazing time there. Just schedule at least three hours for your visit… and make backup plans in case you hate it there and leave after 5 minutes.
And now I hope you will enjoy the gallery, but please be aware that some of the photos are definitely not safe for work. Some of them are probably not safe for sane minds. But it’s also art and I think it should be presented uncensored. Just be aware that you are looking at the stuff at your own discretion. To give you a general idea: If you had no problem with my explorations of the *abandoned sex museums*, you should be fine with this photo series, too!
No joy and excitement greater than finding and exploring an abandoned place without prior information. Please join me on a journey to a remote sanitation center in the far north of Japan!
To me, Google Maps is one of the greatest pieces of software ever written. Without it (or something similar) I probably would have never gotten into urban exploration – and Street View is the icing on that amazing cake. I was always fascinated by maps, from child days on, so even before I picked up urban exploration as a hobby in 2009, I liked Google Maps. In 2009 though I fell in love with it. I saw abandoned places popping up here and there on the internet, back then it was kind of an underground hobby and not nearly as mainstream as it is today – so of course I tried to had a look at them on Google Maps. I started creating my own maps dropping pins… … And then I went out there exploring. At first most parts of the world map were rather blurry, and Street View wasn’t as widely available. The better the maps and SV got, the more I just had a look randomly. At first nearby, the Kansai area. Later all over Japan. Instead of watching TV I’d rather looked at Google Maps for half an hour. When I needed a break for 5 minutes, I checked out a countryside onsen town or a remote stretch of coastline – hoping to find a place that looked abandoned. I actually still do that several times a week. That’s how I found the Hokkaido Sanitation Center. Just a couple of abandoned looking structures in a remote area of Hokkaido, not a single soul nearby – which made it hard to get to, but easy to access. Fortunately the buildings not only looked abandoned, they actually were abandoned! That could have easily turned into a wasted day instead of a wastewater day.
When I explore in Kansai, I’m basically a good weather explorer. Don’t get me wrong, taking pictures in the rain has its own charm, but despite spending a lot of time outdoors, I’m actually not much of an ourdoorsy person. I like the comfort of a comfy couch and comfort food. I also like nature, but I prefer it tamed… or barbecued! So when it looks like a rainy day in Kansai and I have plans to explore (solo), I tend to postpone those plans to the next weekend. A luxury I don’t have on longer trips, because transportation tickets need to be booked and hotels need to be reserved – so then options on potentially rainy days are not “Now” and “Next week”, the options are “Now” and “Maybe never”. And never is such a sorry word, so I tend to explore in the rain. Which is what I did a while ago when I was in Hokkaido and I had to choose between a day of museums and onsen – and a day of exploring two original finds; places I found by chance on Google Maps. A few modes of transportation after a delicious breakfast I found myself walking up to the Hokkaido Sanitation Center, about two kilometers away from the closest bus stop. Well, at least back then there was a bus stop. Looks like it disappeared since then, like so many others on Hokkaido, which becomes harder and harder to travel to by public transport – and that is really sad, because once you get away from what I call the Silver Route (Otaru, Sapporo, Noboribetsu Onsen, Hakodate), Hokkaido is probably the greatest prefecture of all! Anyway, I was walking up to the Hokkaido Sanitation Center, nervous as always when approaching an original find, despite not having seen a single soul or car for like 20 minutes. Fortunately it took another 90 minutes and a hike back to civilization for me to see anybody else. There was a rather small fence around the sanitation center, which I guess is a fancy word for water treatment plant, but there were also some additional buildings, so they might have done some testing and stuff there to justify the name. Like I said, access was easy – I never break anything to enter anyway, but this time I didn’t even have to climb over or into something, there was enough space on the side of the main gate to get onto the premises. The hard part was finding the place and getting to it. I took some outdoor shots of various buildings, when the clouds finally opened and it started to rain. Time to find a way inside, which was equally easy as I hit the sweet spot of being there after curious visitors willing to crack open a (roll-up) door, but before vandals and metal thieves – and definitely before other urban explorers as I had never seen the place on other blogs or social media accounts. Therefore my nervousness quickly turning into having the time of my life leisurely exploring a mid-sized unknown abandoned industrial – it was amazing, despite the rain occasionally ruining a shot or two when I was taking more photos as I switched between buildings. Speaking of unknown: Of course I know the full name of the Hokkaido Sanitation Center, it was written on a plaque next to the gate at the entrance, nevertheless I couldn’t find anything on the internet about its history. My gut tells me it was built post-war and abandoned in the 1980s, though I could be off by 20 years for both the opening and closing date. But who cares? I enjoyed the exploration and I really hope that you will equally enjoy the gallery below!
I’ve been urbexing for almost 15 years. During that time I’ve never written any articles about equipment, despite being very happy with three different Nikon DSLRs, two Manfrotto tripods, and a Sanyo video camera – which broke in 2019 after almost 15 years of recording countless hours at hundreds of locations as well as places like Chernobyl and North Korea. Videos I always considered a bonus anyway… and I’m still having a hard time thinking of myself as a photographer, given that I have no formal education in that field and only do it as a hobby. A really time-consuming hobby, but nevertheless just a hobby. I also don’t have a background in technology, so what’s the point of reviewing camera equipment when I just have an opinion based on learning by doing? Well, that doesn’t keep countless “influencers” and Youtubers from churning out incompetent nonsense, but I wouldn’t want to be found dead with either label on me! And like my favorite professor at university once said in regards to papers we had to hand in: “Don’t claim anything you can’t proof!”
Fortunately there is no need to be technical or scientific about this Insta360 X4 article, because unfortunately we never got that far… Like I said, I always considered video walkthroughs of the locations I explore a bonus. I started them pretty much right away, but at first I didn’t even publish them, because I only took them for myself. And even when I published them, I didn’t edit them. No cuts, no voice overs. Just me walking around breathing heavily into the silence. That all came to a sudden halt when my Sanyo stopped working after exploring the abandoned *Trump Hotel*, also wiping out the recordings of the whole day. At that point I was tired of doing the videos anyway – and my co-explorers were increasingly annoyed, because I added 10 to 30 minutes at the end of every exploration for the walkthrough. So I stopped doing them. For the past 18 months I’ve been exploring solo again (don’t ask, it’s complicated and often quite frustrating, to be honest), but a few weeks ago a colleague of mine showed me an older model Insta360 video camera that a visiting cousin from the States forgot at his place in Japan. I was fascinated by the easy to use 360 photos and videos, so I did some research and decided to get one. I’ve read reviews, I’ve read product pages – I did my best to make an informed decision, because at first I considered buying the X2 or X3 as older models often are cheaper with only slightly fewer / worse features. The X2 was out of the race when I read in a review that it required a smartphone to be activated – something I didn’t read anywhere about the X3 and X4. I guess because it’s an idea that is so stupid that it probably was a one-time mistake by Insta360, facing so much backlash that they removed the requirement from following models. The price difference between the X3 and X4 wasn’t very big and since the latter was only four weeks old at the time, the price on Amazon and in brick and mortar stores was the same, so I decided to get it at my local Yodobashi Camera (street block sized electronics stores with hundreds of employees each, in case you are not familiar with the chain), where I’ve been a customer for almost 18 years – ever since I moved to Japan. BIG MISTAKE!
Yodobashi Camera was extremely stingy, giving only 1% points on the video camera, despite a promotional campaign of giving 13% points for purchases over amount X – except for (small print)… But when you shell out 80k Yen on a new video camera you are looking forward to use, store points are the last thing you worry about anyway. Fortunately I still had some of those points, which I used to get a seriously overpriced MicroSD card, because without it the video camera would be useless and I wanted to try it out on the weekend before an upcoming urbex trip. 83500 Yen poorer, but with a big smile on my face I left Yodobashi Camera on a Friday evening after an otherwise pretty horrible week.
Saturday was supposed to be a great day, though it started with a rude awakening / realization… After sleeping in and having a delicious breakfast, I enjoyed a nice unboxing. The first slight disappointment was when I realized that the included battery was dead. Well, not dead dead, but completely empty. Whatever, an hour or two wouldn’t make a difference. It would not dent my great mood for sure. That came a few hours later when the battery was fully charged. I booted the small brick for the first time, its screen came to life, asking me to choose a language – and then the screen showed what the camera was seeing… for about a second or so. Then some text popped up and my heart sank. You gotta be kidding me! What I was looking at was a screen telling me to download an app by Insta360 to a smartphone, iOS or Android, to unlock the video camera. What. The. Heck? I literally felt it in my fingers how my blood-pressure exploded, because unlike pretty much every person on the planet above the age of 6 years I don’t own a smartphone. Never have. In the late 90s I had a black and white Nokia for work (yes, I’m not the youngest anymore, though I started working full-time in my early 20s). When I moved to Japan I had a flip phone or two, but for the past 15 years or so I didn’t have any mobile phone at all, smart or not, because I don’t like them as they turn way too many people into dumb zombies. So here I had a brand-new, quite expensive video camera… that forced me to make it usable by using another device with cameras? Who comes up with stupid ideas like that?! Certainly not Nikon! Their D7500 DSLR I bought just weeks prior worked with a partly charged battery and regular SD cards straight out of the box 5 minutes after purchase – without any charging or unlocking BS! So I started to do some research… and didn’t find much. Like I said, I couldn’t care less about smartphones, apps and all that stuff, so I tried to find a solution to unlock the darn X4 via PC or MicroSD card. Of course I couldn’t find anything about that either, so I contacted Insta360 directly – who apparently didn’t read my message and instead sent me a standard reply. So I got back to them, apologized for not describing my problem properly (I’ve been in Japan too long…), and this time got an answer that at least implied that they understood the situation I was in – without being able to help, because though it seems to be nowhere stated on the box, the promo material or even on the X4 website (at least back in mid / late May, maybe they changed it by now)… you really need a smartphone and the Insta360 app to use a newly bought X4 video camera, that seems to work perfectly fine, but is made not usable on purpose by the manufacturer. Which absolutely blows my mind! How is that even legal? How can a company force you to use a completely unrelated piece of expensive technology that actually partly does the job of the product you just bought, to make your purchase usable? Without mentioning that essential detail with big warnings before purchase! And in addition, forces you to use an app, which does who knows what in the background without one knowing? What’s next? You need an electric bike with WiFi to unlock your newly bought car? And if you don’t… sucks to be you, it’s completely useless!
Yodobashi Camera – (The Lack Of) Customer Service In Japan! After some back and forth it was Monday and I came to the conclusion that I won’t be able to use the Insta360 X4, because it really needs a smartphone to unlock, which wasn’t properly communicated. So after work I went back to Yodobashi Camera, my go-to electronics store for the past almost 18 years. Never had a problem with them, because all the products I bought worked as intended right out of the box. So I went back to the cashier counter where I bought the video camera… and already ran into the first minor bump in the road – apparently I hadn’t paid for it in the camera department, but a neighboring one, which wasn’t a problem on Friday evening, but very well on Monday evening. So I went 20 meters over to the camera department and told them about my unfortunate situation: That I had bought this video camera three days prior, but couldn’t use it, because it doesn’t work without a smartphone, which wasn’t properly communicated by Insta360 or Yodobashi Camera. But I was very careful with everything, I didn’t even remove the protective film from either of the lenses. Some air through the teeth sucking, some going back behind the counter to talk to a superior and then something like the following conversation – it’s in quotation marks, but they are not really quotes, you know… just something like that, from memory: “I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.” “But I can’t use the video camera.” “I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.” “I don’t have a smartphone. The X4 is useless to me.” “I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.” “I did proper research and I only found out about this after I opened the box and tried to use the X4.” “I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.” “I bought a D7500 last month, it worked out of the box…” “I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.” “Then take it back and ask Insta360 to exchange the X4 – you have dozens of them here, you probably have to return one once in a while anyway.” “I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.” “Are you serious? I’ve been a customer here for almost 18 years, spent millions at your store and other ones in the building that has your name. Never had a problem – and the first time I have, you are stonewalling me?” “I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.” “Really?” “I can’t sell this anymore, you opened the box. You can’t return it.”
At this point I gave up and exchanged a few more e-mails with Insta360 (“You should try to return the X4 where you bought it!” No kidding…), but their responses quickly became as useless and repetitive as the one of the guy at Yodobashi Camera – who is just a small cog in a big machine, so I don’t blame him; he’s punished enough with the lighting in the store and the uniform he has to wear all day. So here we are, after me falling for the usual misconception about (customer) service in Japan, because I rarely ever had a real problem anywhere. It’s great as long as everything is within procedures – if somebody has planned for it, it most likely will go smoothly. Service is great. When service becomes customer service though, i.e. an individual customer needs help that requires improvisation outside of the planned service… you’re basically on your own. The only thing flexible in Japan is bamboo.
Nevertheless I still have moments when I wonder: AITAH? I’m a huge believer in personal responsibility. If I make a mistake, I stand by it. I find behavior like ordering 20 items of clothes in different sizes and colors with the intention of sending 18 of them back despicable. In fact I’ve never sent anything back that I’ve ordered online, except for two USB-HDDs – and only because they didn’t work. I don’t do fast fashion, I don’t buy garbage from questionable sites like Shein oder Temu, I don’t replace electronics unless they are broken. (RIP, Nikon D7100!) I did due diligence before buying the Insta360 X4 and to this day everything in that (opened…) box is in mint condition. If I would have known about the smartphone requirement, I wouldn’t have bought the X4. It’s the reason why I didn’t buy the X2. This is actually only the second time that I tell this story to anybody, because part of me is a bit ashamed that this series of unfortunate events happened – despite all the research before buying. But spending more than 80k on a useless brick of tech isn’t exactly something to be proud of. I don’t regret much in my life, but buying the Insta360 X4 I regret. And buying it at Yodobashi Camera is something I regret, too. Maybe Amazon would have been more accommodating with returns… But I guess it is what it is – only money in the end. And no videos for Abandoned Kansai in the future. Heck, even if I would get the currently useless X4 to work, I would always be reminded of this story. Screw video cameras! Never was a fan, now I dislike them almost as much as smartphones. Which kind of closes the circle. But I’ll make sure to never ever even consider buying anything from Insta360 again – I still don’t understand how it’s even legal that they can do this. What’s next to unlock their cameras? Having to send them a voice message, swearing loyalty to Winnie the Xi(thead)? Apparently they can do anything without people questioning it… I went back to Yodobashi Camera once more though, two days ago. I spent the remaining shop points I had on presents for my nephews without having to pay a single sen – my goal was it to hit +/- 20 points/Yen, but going to exactly 0 was priceless – and so I left the Yodobashi Camera building one last time with a big smile on my face. Upon arriving back home I cut up my loyalty card after almost 18 years. It probably doesn’t mean much to a large store chain like that. But it meant a lot to me!
Thank you for reading till the end and… What has your worst experience with Japanese (customer) service been? Write it in the comments!
The Japanese countryside is riddled with ruins and abandoned things. Most of the stuff isn’t worth a second look, but if you keep your eyes peeled you can find hidden gems small and large – like this blue Mitsubishi Fuso bus. Driving from abandoned place to abandoned place obviously is the most effective way to explore as many places as possible, but sometimes it can be of advantage to take your time and walk a bit. Not while staring at your smartphone, but while enjoying your surroundings. I recently walked between two locations, when saw an abandoned bus on a small dirt road slightly up the hill. The area was roped off as it was also used as a deposit for construction material, but since it was a Saturday nobody was working and I was able to have a closer look. (Daaa-da-da-da-da-dammm!) I’m neither a car nor a bus guy. And since this bus was a random find, I obviously know nothing about its history. Only that it was blue and white… and that somebody painted over whatever was written on its side. I don’t even know the model, only that it was manufactured by the Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation – or Mitsubishi Fuso fir short, as can be guessed from the quite impressive emblem at the front. From the looks of it, it wasn’t just another random commuter bus, but more like an extra-large travel van. In any case, I much enjoyed my 25 minutes taking photos of it – and I hope you’ll equally enjoy the now following gallery.
Whenever self-proclaimed Japan experts after their second or third trip recommend places like Iwakuni, Aomori or Otaru as off the beaten tracks, I’m not sure whether to giggle or facepalm… or both. And yet even “professionals” hardly ever shine a serious light on Shikoku, let alone this beautiful retrofuturism gem at the southwestern end of Japan’s fourth largest island. Matsuyama, Tokushima, maybe the Iya Valley with a side-trip to Kochi… Which is fine by me, actually. Let the masses trample the so-called Golden Route to death and leave the quiet corners for the people who really appreciate the country, who are willing to venture off to areas with three bus connections per day. And yes, I am aware that I am trying to talk up the rarely visited parts of Japan by pointing to one of the most Instagram-able places in the whole country, but… well… shoganai, eh?
(I just hope this place doesn’t turn into a second *Okunoshima*. It most likely won’t, because it’s too far away from the nearest Shinkansen station, but I went to *Okunoshima* (the “Rabbit Island”, though it should be known as the “Poison Gas Island”, as poison gas produced in World War 2 is the actual reason for rabbits being on the island) in 2012, when it was virtually unknown to the rather few tourists from overseas back then. Early in the season, on a small boat with maybe half a dozen other people. A serene experience. A few weeks ago I passed through Tadano-Umi again, the closest train station, on my way to Kure. The train along the coast was suspiciously busy and of course a group of Western tourists, most likely Aussies judging by the accent, burst into laughter as if it was the funniest thing they’ve ever heard when another train station was announced – though they most likely misheard as the station’s name was Sunami, not Tsunami! The train got a lot quieter… and emptier… upon arrival at Tadano-Umi when several dozen travelers got off and a blob of humans rolled straight towards the harbor to educate themselves on how Japan was the only country in World War 2 to actually use poison gas in warfare. Naaah, I’m kidding! Every single new sign said Rabbit Island. I wonder how many of the tourists leave without ever finding out about the deadly past of their latest destination…)
How to get to the Ashizuri Underwater Aquarium Anyway, the Ashizuri Underwater Aquarium (天然ミュージアム・足摺海底館) or Ashizuri Underwater Observation Tower! I first heard about it a few years ago, but like I said, the thing is really off the beaten tracks, especially without a car, so I couldn’t go earlier. I visited the area as a day trip from Kochi (about 3 hours by car, 3.5 by train and bus) as I only had three days in this seriously undervalued prefecture, but it was one of the greatest days in 2024 so far – sunny 20°C, perfect weather, hardly any people around on a Friday. (Other attractions of the Ashizuri-Uwakai National Park include a large playground, several camp grounds, the Kochi Prefectural Ashizuri Aquarium SATOUMI, a glass bottom boat, and several museum – plenty for a few days actually!) I took an early Limited Express from Kochi Station to Nakamura Station, from there a bus to Shimizu Plaza Pal and then 5 minutes later a bus to Kaiteikan-mae – the beautiful train ride is a feast for the eyes and the two bus rides aren’t too shabby either, probably a bit nerve-wrecking though if you are not familiar with basic Japanese and buses in Japan. From the bus stop it’s a short walk along the coast to the Ashizuri Underwater Aquarium. Built in 1971 and opened on January 1st 1972 this unusual structure is basically a metal tube with a double-helix staircase to go under water near the coastline. At the bottom of the staircase is a room with portholes (?) to look outside and enjoy the wildlife at the bottom of the sea. Of course the sights are not as spectacular as at an aquarium where things are set up perfectly for viewers – but it’s a unique, authentic experience. Especially if you have a predilection for Showa Era retrofuturism roadside attractions. In that case I would consider the Ashizuri Underwater Observation Tower the Holy Grail. It’s absolutely gorgeous inside and out… as long as you are light on your feet as the place is not barrier-free at all, because hardly anybody cared about that five decades ago. You have to climb a couple of steps to access the bridge to the tower – and there is no elevator, so you have to face the spiral staircase both on the way up and down. Other than that the Ashizuri Underwater Aquarium is definitely one of the coolest places in all of Japan and as off the beaten tracks as it gets. I’m seriously surprised that all those western “Only I know the true soul and all of Japan’s secrets!” bloggers and Youtubers haven’t picked up on it (yet), but I thought the same thing about *Okunoshima in 2012* – and now the island is overrun by bogans and their Chinese equivalents.
Abandon it once, shame on you – abandon it twice, shame on… it? Welcome to Japan’s least loved railway station!
The one thing tourists to Japan can’t stop yapping about is the country’s railway system. It’s so clean, it’s ALWAYS on time, trains run every 5 to 10 minutes, announcements are in four languages, they’ll get you everywhere you want to go (except for Kyoto and it’s nasty, nasty buses!) and you pay a dirt-cheap flat rate! Well, as a long-term resident of Japan I’ll give them 1 out of 6. 1.5 out of 6 at best. Japanese trains indeed are clean. That doesn’t necessarily apply for the Osaka Subway (they can call it Metro all they want, to me it’ll always be the terribly crowded and quite dirty subway…), but overall and in comparison to other countries Japanese trains indeed are clean. The dirt-cheap flat rate argument you’ll hear much less often since last autumn JR adjusted their passes prices for inflation after something like 40 years, thought there are still some affordable JR Passes and commuter tickets. The claim that trains are running every 5 to 10 minutes can only come from somebody who never left the Shinkansen lines and adjacent built-up areas. Most stations I use while traveling have trains every 60 to 90 minutes, sometimes only three or four connections a day. Miss one and the rest of your plans for the day fall like dominos. Same for announcements in four languages. Sure, in hardcore tourist areas you have pre-recorded announcements in four languages – if something unforeseen happens you are usually down to one. Most regular rural lines have announcements in Japanese and English at best, sometimes Japanese only. And if you are really unlucky, you’ll get voiced announcements only from a croaking speaker, no visuals. Pro-tip: Always make note of scheduled arrival times for reference. Which of course only helps when the trains are actually on schedule. Which is not necessarily always the case. I’ve had more than my fair share of delays (and I mean real delays of up to two hours, not the usual three to five minutes in urban commuter Kansai…) – which is even worse when you rely on the often glorified punctuality of Japanese trains. In Europe you automatically include a 30 minutes buffer, so a 15 minute delay won’t throw you off – when you rely on stuff being on time, five minutes can make a huge difference! Which brings us to the final myth, that Japanese trains bring you everywhere. They don’t. The Japanese rail network has been shrinking for decades and in November 2016 JR Hokkaido announced that it will “rationalize” up to 50% of it’s network. The remaining part of the Rumoi Main Line has since been closed, the same applies for the Yubari Branch Line, which I had the pleasure to ride while it was still active. More lines in Hokkaido and the rest of Japan will follow – so when you see stuff like the train bridge to Kansai Airport being repaired within two weeks… that happened, sure – but most damaged lines are just quietly abandoned, for example the Hidaka Main Line between Mukawa Station and Samani Station; 116 of 146.5 km gone!
The Twice Abandoned Train Station was first opened in 1929 and the closed in 1975. Three years later the station was converted into a railway museum as an early attempt to keep a memory of once glorious industrial achievements – a rather unusual move in the emerging Information Age, when people moved to white collar jobs and looked down on the era of dirty hard labor. Unfortunately the museum station began to suffer from decreasing visitor numbers and old age, so after a while the station museum was open only on weekends and national holidays before closing for good in 1999.
As the Twice Abandoned Train Station is now 1) abandoned and 2) kind of in the middle of nowhere, public transport to get there wasn’t exactly plentiful. Six connections in one direction and five in the other. Of course those connections didn’t line up very well, so it was either 30 minutes or four hours on location – 30 minutes too short or three hours too long for my taste. Since spending half a day there would have prevented me from checking out another place (like I said, rare countryside connections usually have a domino effect), I decided to rush it… as much as I could, since quite a few people came to see the temple across the street that day, which meant that I had to find in a way through the overgrown back, which was out of sight. The sky being overcast didn’t help either, so I consider the exploration of the Twice Abandoned Train Station a partial success and as good as it gets when you have to plan weeks ahead to get to one of the most remote areas from Kansai by public transport. I hadn’t been to the area before and I haven’t been ever since, so I’m glad that I was able to explore the Twice Abandoned Train Station, because you never know when places like that disappear for good. Also don’t miss out on my *recent article about some special trains* and *previous transportation related explorations*.
March Madness in Japan is a bit different than it is ‘Murica – not about sports, but days off. April 1st marks the start of the new fiscal year at most companies, which means plenty of new hires, resulting in super crowded everything – made only worse by people flying around the globe to see cherry blossoms, because the ones in their own country apparently aren’t good enough! (3.08 million in March alone… FFS!) It also means that employees get a new bunch of vacation days, which is good and bad, because at most companies you can only take over the ones from the previous year. The ones you have taken over previously will vanish – but since sick days are not common in Japan and you don’t know when the rona or the flu will strike you down (which tends to result in mandatory staying home until you get cleared by a doctor!), you don’t want to take too many personal days off, because if you reach negative days, you have to live with pay cuts. Japan… Keep spending most our lives living in a worker’s paradise. People who have kids or are regularly sick for other reasons are usually not affected by this, but a lot of salarymen seek to take remaining paid vacation time at the end of March before the days vanish on April 1st.
One of them was yours truly. 2023 was rather busy for me, so I had 6 vacation days from FY2022 left as I would only be able to transfer the new ones from FY2023 to FY2024 – plus a national holiday and weekends resulted in a total of 17 days off in March. So I used the second half of March to create long weekends and did some domestic traveling. I actually logged 30 locations in March alone, everything from relaxed 10-minute-long outdoor shoots of abandoned vacation homes to intense several hour long indoor-outdoor explorations of large abandoned places. In-between I had to take plenty of public transport – and by chance I came across three trains that might be of interest to railroad buffs. (Plus a bonus one in April…)
When walking up to Kochi Station I saw the Anpanman train, which is going back and forth between Kochi and Okayama – I only had a short time before it left, so I quickly grabbed my camera and took a few snapshots while the train started to move. A week later I was going to Tottori, when by chance I boarded a train with a special Detective Conan design – not just some decals outside, but a fully designed train. Walls, floors, headrests, even the window blinds. I haven’t seen a single episode of Detective Conan, but I must admit that the train was pretty cool. No extra charge, at least I’m not aware of any. Last but not least there was a train with kagura design – a dance with Shinto origins and demon masks. I saw it one morning at the opposite platform just before leaving, so I took some quick shots again. (Bonus: In April did two day trips to the Kansai countryside and found myself on a train with Expo 2025 decals – an expected shitshow with a strangely appropriate hemorrhoid looking mascot. I’m not a fan of the creature or the event, but maybe some train buffs will get a kick out of it.)
Now that I have your attention, if you actually read this far, I would like to repeat two things I’ve mentioned before and that are really important to me: 1.) I tend to pay rather close attention to urbex in Japan. I usually know if a place got vandalized or demolished, if it collapsed or is reused. When I leave out that information in my articles or social media postings, you can be 99.9% sure that I did so for a reason. The same applies for when I use made-up names for a location. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it, including the signs that are usually all over the place – often painted in letters so large that even Brian would stop in awe. So if you have information that is not mentioned by me, please don’t post it in the comments – there is a 99.9% chance that the information is left out for a reason.
2.) NEVER EVER ask me for the coordinates of a location unless you know me well enough to do so in person or unless you have very good reasons. “I’m a lazy tourist shmock who has never done urbex before, but I REALLY want to go to that spectacular original find you just posted, because Japan is this magical wonderland where none of my actions have consequences!” is NOT a good reason. It’s a reason to ignore you – or to block you, if you didn’t get the hint the first or maybe second time. I can do my own research, so can you! I believe in you! All of you! Every single one of you!
That doesn’t mean though that I am opposed to meeting people or doing collaborations, despite plenty of bad experiences over the last dozen years or so. Blackcrows for example was a true pleasure to work with, which resulted in this amazing video:
One of the best urbex videos ever!
On the other hand, I get some really some creepy and / or entitled messages. I try not to interact with crazy or lazy, but some people are weirdos that should be banned from being online. For the first few years I had an amazing audience with 99% positive and supportive responses. Things started to go south a bit with the tourism boom to Japan in the mid-2010s – since the pandemic though people seem to just let the craziness flow. Everything from confused-stalkerish to a passive aggressive follow-up after I didn’t respond to somebody’s request to do research work for them within 36 hours during a work week. I was about to post some anonymized messages, but then again… why? Better not to trigger lazy or crazy… (If you think I’m too sensitive, please don’t forget that I live in a country where expats and immigrants discuss whether it’s a microaggression when they get a compliment about their eating with chopsticks skills… You see fewer snowflakes in a Hokkaido winter than among foreigners in the big cities.)
I don’t mean to be mean, but this blog is a one-person hobby. I take every photo, I write every single word of text, I handle my own social media accounts – there is no editor, no co-writer, or any form of contributor… and especially no management, which some of the for money urbex tourists roaming the planet use to organize their trips. I just want to have a little bit of extra fun with this, after the most important part – the actual explorations. Even the comment section isn’t anymore what it was *10 years ago*. You can basically pick any article from that era for comparison… Well, shoganai, eh? I guess those are the times we are living in now. 😦
10 years ago it felt like every second abandoned place in Japan was either a hotel or a school. In recent years it seems like more and more of them are reused as community/art centers, restaurants or accommodations – so I’m glad that I still have some unpublished explorations in my archive.
Ahhhhh, the Japanese countryside! Rice fields as far as the eye can see – which isn’t really that far, to be honest, because… Japan. Mountains everywhere. Unless you are on a plain… with the plain people. Who make the plains less plain by constructing large buildings, limiting both the number of fields as well as how far you can see. So in the end you tend to be better off in the mountains. At least in my opinion. But I’m a bit weird in that regard.
In the good old 2010s there was this one day I went to the countryside with two acquaintances, both long gone now (not dead; they just left Japan after the average 3 to 5 years…). Halfway though the day we found the beautiful old *Japanese Countryside Rest Stop* by chance, but before that we’ve explored the Kansai Countryside School. Unfortunately there is very little to say about it, except that inside photos seem to be rather rare – for some reason even Japanese explorers seem to ignore this abandoned school, probably it looks (or at least looked) rather new from outside, despite being abandoned for a quarter or a century now. I remember it not being a very relaxed exploration, because I didn’t know what to expect – the chicks chickening out and not joining me for the actual exploration didn’t exactly help either, to be honest. What the point of exploring together when I end up exploring solo anyway?
The inside was in near pristine condition, though a lot of the interior had been removed, even the tables with sinks from the science room, which was rather weird. Well, enjoy the photo gallery. And maybe check out some other abandoned schools by *clicking here*.
Abandoned Kansai 