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Urbex Trip To Okinawa

2012/06/18 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Urban exploration in Okinawa? Not exactly my first association when I think of the former kingdom of Ryukyu. For me it would be more like sun, beaches and… Karate Kid 2 – a movie I’ve never seen, or at least I can’t remember seeing it, but in Germany it had the tagline “Entscheidung in Okinawa” (something like “Decision in Okinawa”) and I guess that stuck with me ever since. Okinawa = Karate Kid – but I always thought it was the third one, not the second one…

When my haikyo buddy *Michael Gakuranman* and I went on a *road trip to southern Honshu* earlier this year we were talking about future expeditions. Michael mentioned that he went to Okinawa just a couple of months prior and that he explored a huge hotel he really wanted to re-visit. So he suggested a haikyo trip to Okinawa. And I was skeptical. Going to Okinawa to revisit a hotel? I knew right away which hotel Michael was talking about since it is one of the few famous abandoned places in Okinawa (Okinawa really isn’t famous for urban decay, not even amongst urban explorers), but him saying that he wants to stay a whole day there didn’t exactly seal the deal. But I am currently re-discovering Japan as a tourist (I travelled a lot in spring!) and the chances to go to Okinawa are limited, so what the heck. Let’s go to Okinawa and do some urbex! It would surely beat the beaten tracks of urbex in Kanto!

A couple of years ago the concept of budget airlines finally reached Japan and if you book early you can get really good deals. To make sure that we both arrive and departure at around the same time and we both would get reasonable rates Michael was kind enough to take care of the booking – 10.800 Yen for the roundtrip Osaka-Naha-Osaka; booyah! A Shinkansen train ticket Osaka to Hiroshima costs about the same – one way…

Late May isn’t exactly the best time to go to Okinawa since May and June are two out of three most rainy months down there, but again… why not? It’s Okinawa and I’ve never been there. The places we planned to explore sounded kind of okayish on paper, but I was more interested in Okinawa itself. The local atmosphere, the local architecture, the local food. Biggest surprise: shikuwasa (pronounced something like sheek-wasa), a Okinawan citrus fruit and the basis for all kinds of food and drinks – juice, cake, wine, mochi, sodas, chiffon cake, syrup (for kakigori), fruits chews, … In the humid pre-summer heat the most refreshing taste I ever had the pleasure to enjoy. Another popular local fruit is the pineapple. Close to the city of Nago are actually two pineapple theme parks close to each other – separated by the Okinawa Fruits Land. Michael and I visited the Nago Pineapple Park on one of the three days we spent in Okinawa. Not much of a park it features one of the tackiest rides possible – automatically driven carts through a pineapple field, telling you everything you (never) wanted to know about pineapples in horrendously pronounced English. And that was it for the park part – we basically paid 600 Yen to enter a gift shop. One of the most awesome gift shops ever though. Here you could buy (and sample!) all kinds of pineapple and (some) shikuwasa related products. Wine, cookies, chocolates, prize-winning cakes, dried fruits, different kinds of fresh pineapples, pineapple charcoal soap (!) and of course the usual gift shop stuff like plush dolls, key chains and whatnot. Awesome place, expensive though – I nevertheless loved it.

Over the course of our visit Michael and I managed to enjoy a good mix of urban exploration and tourist stuff, although Okinawa isn’t exactly famous for urban exploration. Luckily the urbex locations turned out to be way more interesting than they looked on paper, including an original find – one location freaked me out so much that I got fed up and left, one of the worst urbex experiences I ever had. So in the end we saw three abandoned hotels, two abandoned cactus parks and one abandoned restaurant island on the course of three days. As for touristy locations we visited the already mentioned Nago Pineapple Park, Shuri Castle (awesome!), Nakagusku Castle, the Underground Naval Headquarters of WW2 (overrated – it almost always makes me cringe a little seeing Japan presenting WW2…) and of course Kokusai Dori, the main tourist / night life street in Naha, Okinawa’s capital.

I didn’t plan to write about this trip so quickly, but last weekend opened up out of nothing and the East Asian rainy season (tsuyu) hitting Japan basically rendered it useless for outdoor activities – and overall I loved the trip, so it was the next best thing to get this series of articles started. The weather was constantly changing, but sunny most of the time. The food was awesome (I’m still not a fan of goya though…) and the places we visited were interesting. Life in Okinawa seems to be much more relaxed that in mainland Japan. For example: Taxi drivers in Osaka wear suits and white gloves, taxi drivers in Okinawa wear kariyushi – basically the Okinawan version of the Hawaiian shirt. And what’s not to love about an island that has strong reservations about Americans and Japanese alike? 😉

And finally here’s an alphabetical list of the upcoming articles about this haikyo trip to Okinawa:
Dolphin Restaurant Island
Himeyuri Park
Lequio Resort Hotel
Nakagusku Hotel Ruin – The Background Story
Nakagusku Hotel Ruin – The Exploration
Okinawa Cactus Park / Okinawa Seimeinooka Park
Sunset View Inn Shah Bay

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Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, House, Japan, Okinawa, Restaurant, Sacred Site, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 | 4 Comments »

Clubhotel Messel

2012/06/12 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

What do you do when you get thrown off your horse? You get right back on! And that’s what Sebastian and I did after we ran into some trouble at the *Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne*. Since Sebastian came up with the (almost) deserted US Army base it was my turn to select a place to explore – and I chose the Clubhotel Messel a.k.a. Clubhotel Sehr / Clubhotel Seher.

At the time of my visit the place was virtually unknown to the internet. It was obvious that plenty of vandals, arsonists and paintball players were there before me, but it was almost impossible to find any hard information about the place on the net – luckily that change earlier this year when the German urbex community, usually more interested in photos than the historical background of abandoned places, took care of that situation.

It seems like the Clubhotel Messel (named after the municipality of Messel near Darmstadt, usually known for the UNESCO World Heritage site Messel Pit where all kinds of fossils were found) was not only a single hotel, but a conglomerate of businesses, all part of the frivolous nightlife industry. The nightclub “Broadway-Bar” and the hotel “Je t’aime” were right next to the “Swimming Pool / Sauna Club d’Amour” and the “Nightclub d’Amour” – basically one big brothel complex, one of the biggest in the Rhine-Main area. Since all establishments were owned by a guy named Wolfgang Sehr the place was also called Clubhotel Sehr or, misspelled, Clubhotel Seher. The special attraction of the Clubhotel was a mini zoo including a pair of cheetahs – the cages are still in the forest! I’m not exactly sure when the place opened, but I guess it grew kind of organically and was in full bloom in the late 70s and throughout the 80s. In January of 1988 it was mentioned by leading news magazine Der Spiegel in an article about a scandal regarding nuclear waste. A company called Transnuklear Hanau (a subsidiary of Nukem – I’m not joking!) illegally imported 1942 barrels of nuclear waste from Belgium and of course there were bribery and other manipulations / irregularities involved – one of them was a bill to the amount of 14010 Mark (roughly 7000 Euros) after some managers of the nuclear industry had a fun night at the Clubhotel. (The article mentioned a nightclub called “Mon Bijou” and a fine dining restaurant named “La Chandelle“ – probably both part of the Clubhotel complex.

The Spiegel report was the beginning of the end of the Clubhotel, although the details are vague since everything happened before the age of the internet. It seems like the German State wasn’t very fond of the local sex businesses and started to shut them down one after another – either in the late 80s or early 90s. Some of the brothel owners went to jail for procurement and promotion of prostitution; and according to an article by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in late 1994 Sehr was convicted of those crimes…

When the brothel complex was abandoned but still in good condition the Zeitung für Darmstadt (Newspaper for Darmstadt) reported in 1993 that the State of Hesse had plans to reconvert the place into a *deportation prison* for 250 illegal aliens. These considerations were terminated abruptly when parts of the club hotel complex burned down to the ground on January 25th of 1994 as the Zeitung für Darmstadt reported in early 1994. It seems like the then owner, most likely still Sehr, tried to commit insurance fraud to make up for the millions he lost when the place was shut down. (The guy definitely went to jail – I’m just not sure if it was for one or both of the alleged crimes.)

Later in the 90s the Clubhotel made the news when paintball players occupied the premises and actually started to do minor construction work. The rural district Darmstadt-Dieburg intervened and a court of law decided that the “Magic Boys Rhein Main” needed to find another location for their colorful war games… (The small building next to the big outdoor pool was their safe house and Gotcha related graffiti are still all over the place.)

For more than a decade all kinds of people came to the Clubhotel for all kinds of reasons. Some people played paintball, others airsoft. Some homeless people looked for shelter in one of the smaller buildings that weren’t affected by arson and of course photographers came to… well, do what photographers do. It seems like for a while artists lived on the premises and in summer of 2011 Sebastian and I had a quick look. Only to find a rather uninteresting burned out hotel and some vandalized smaller buildings. In the early 80s the Clubhotel must have been quite a sight – nowadays it’s just another unspectacular rotting place in the woods. Luckily it has a story worth telling. But maybe this patch of land in the middle of nowhere will find new beauty and glory soon. On March 26th of 2012 a public auction of the property by court order took place and on May 13th Echo-Online reported that the (new?) owner of the site is looking at plans to build a new hotel – probably for the whole family this time, not only for dads…



Posted in Abandoned, Europe, Germany, Hesse, Hotel / Ryokan, House, Love Hotel, Restaurant, Sex, Strip Club, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne

2012/06/05 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

A couple of weeks before I went to Germany to visit family and friends last year I received an e-mail from Sebastian, a reader of this blog. He told me about exploring a rather recently closed US Army base in Darmstadt – half an hour away from where I was staying for my vacation. I really love abandoned military installations, so we continued talking via e-mail and agreed to meet up to have a look at the Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne (CFK) together.

The Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne (Cambrai-Fritsch Barracks) in Bessungen, now part of Darmstadt-Eberstadt, was built from 1936 to 1938 as two barracks next to each other – the southern part was known as Cambrai-Kaserne (named after the French city of Cambrai where Paul von Hindenburg had his headquarters during World War I and where the first tank battle in history took place in 1917), the northern part was called Freiherr-von-Fritsch-Kaserne (named after Generaloberst Werner von Fritsch, Nazi Germany’s Commander of the Army at the time). Most of the buildings on the premises were named after locations where famous WWI battles took place, like Verdun or Flandern.
The Fritsch-Kaserne opened on October 12th of 1938 and was home to the 1st Battalion of the 33rd Artillery Regiment, part of the 33rd Infantry Division. Later that month the 3rd Battalion moved into the Cambrai-Kaserne.
During the final days of World War II the US Army took over the Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne in March of 1945, making it the home of the 22nd Signal Brigade, the 233rd Base Support Battalion and the 440th Signal Battalion. Lots of service and recreational institutions were located at the CFK in the decades to come – AAFES Food Court, American Red Cross, Andrews Federal Credit Union, Darmstädter Catering Center, PX (post exchange), SATO Travel, Shopette, U.S. Post office, USO and standard facilities like a motor pool, a gym, a movie theater, a sports field and a bowling center.

When I met Sebastian on a warm, sunny summer day he told me right away that the CFK was closed, but not really abandoned. The high barbed wire fences were in exceptionally good condition 3 years after the Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne was shut down in 2008 – and Sebastian also mentioned that security guards were still patrolling the outskirts of the premises a couple of evenings per week. Well, we met in the morning, so what could happen, right? Let’s get this infiltration started! Like the *Federal Armed Forces Depot Pfeddersheim* the CFK is now the responsibility of the Institute for Federal Real Estate (Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben / BIMA) – they have to decide what to do with the 25 hectare (250.000 square meters or 2,7 million square feet) big area. Most likely it will be reconverted into housing for 2500 people, but German bureaucracy is slow and of course nothing has been decided yet. Not in summer of 2011 and AFAIK not in late spring of 2012. But while the BIMA obviously doesn’t care anymore about the depot in Pfeddersheim they seem to smell money when it comes to the CFK – housing for 2500 people, that’s serious real estate! And that’s why the keep the area in good shape by hiring gardeners and plumbers to take care of the premises. All the buildings we tried to enter were locked, hardly any of them were damaged by vandalism or graffiti.
It’s an absolutely mind-blowing experience to explore closed US army barracks, especially with a rather tight security system like this one. The weather was amazing that day and the video material I shot turned out to be nice, too. It was a perfect exploration until… well, we were less than 30 meters away from our top secret entrance / exit when it became clear that infiltration is for pros and neither of us was Solid Snake. I will spare you the details, but like running into security at *Nara Dreamland* this wasn’t exactly a fun experience. No legal consequences since we could convince the people involved that we were just harmless photographers, but this was pretty much the day I realized that urban exploration and urban infiltration are two different things – and I decided that I will limit myself to UE and abandon UI.
Sebastian and I were lucky that day, but entering the Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne without permission can have serious, serious consequences, so I highly recommend to stay away or to take photos through the fence.

To all the American (ex-)soldiers reading this article, most of them probably stationed at the Cambrai-Fritsch-Kaserne: When I was a pupil in the 80s my elementary school was way ahead of its time and had a friendship program with the Benjamin Franklin Village in Mannheim. I have nothing but pleasant associations with that exchange program and I consider this exploration a “Thank you!” for the kindness I experienced during that time (I think we went bowling as a big group and then had lunch at our exchange partner’s home, which is a pretty big thing when you are 8 or 9 years old and barely understand each other’s languages!) – I hope I was able to bring back some fond memories of your time in Germany!

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



Posted in Abandoned, Communications, Depot, Europe, Germany, Hesse, House, Military, Transportation, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2011 | 159 Comments »

Yashima Cable Car – Lower Terminus

2012/05/30 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Being a mountainous country Japan has lots of cable cars and ropeways. And it seems like every single one of them was built in the late 1920s / early 1930s. A lot of them were demolished after just a couple of years in the 1940s to support the war efforts of Imperial Japan (every piece of metal counted…) – amongst others the *Mount Atago Cable Car* and the *Rokko Ropeway*. The Yashima Cable Car (YCC) had a bit more luck. Opened on April 21st 1929 it too was suspended as a nonessential line on February 11th 1944. But although some material was taken away (I’m not sure what exactly though…) it didn’t mean the end of the YCC: On April 16th 1950 the Yashima Cable Car opened again for business. And business was good thanks to the famous Yashima Shrine on top of Mount Yashima, about a kilometer away from the YCC terminal. I guess it got even better when some businessmen decided to make Mount Yashima a full-blown tourist attraction (*you can read all about it here*), but when the plan fell through the Yashima Cable Car was in trouble, too. On October 16th 2004 operations were suspended again, but it took almost a year (August 31st 2005) until the line was officially closed and abandoned.
According to a tourist guide book first published in the 1980s the cable car ran from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., charging 1160 Yen for the roundtrip. It seems like prices went up and service hours were cut down, so in 1999 the cable car ran every 20 minutes from 8 a.m. to 5.40 p.m., charging 700 Yen one way and 1300 Yen for a roundtrip.
At the time of my visit the lower terminus of the Yashima Cable Car (屋島登山口駅, yashima tozanguchi eki – Yashima Trailhead Station) stood locked-up and abandoned on the foot of Mount Yashima near the trailhead up the mountain. The road leading there was almost as abandoned – I could vividly imagine how good business must have been 20, 30 years ago for the now closed restaurants and souvenir shops. Right next to the station were a taxi stand and a metalworking company, making some noise and keeping an eye on the inaccessible station building. The 858 meter long cable car track was accessible though, with car #1 parked right at the platform. And it was beautiful! On the one hand it was hard to believe that the place had been abandoned just six years ago, on the other hand there were no signs of vandalism and everything had just the right amount of decay – and the beautiful weather on the day of my visit didn’t hurt the atmosphere either…

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hiking, Japan, Kagawa, Shikoku, Transportation, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2011 | 3 Comments »

Onsen Town Theater

2012/05/23 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

Onsen Town Theater

Hot Spring Theater – that’s what was written in four kanji (温泉劇場, onsen gekijo) at the front of the building. And this was clearly a euphemism in many ways. First of all: The small building didn’t look like a theater at all. Which isn’t a surprise, because “hot spring theater” is common code for a Japanese strip club in an onsen town. So the only play on the stage of this theater was happening between the hand of “actress” and the rest of her body… I guess what set the Onsen Town Theater apart from a classic strip club was the fact that the stage looked like a theater stage and didn’t extend into the audience. Full frontal! The seats by the way were gone, so basically all we had was a dark empty room and a dull stage in a rather inconspicuous building. If it wouldn’t have been for some signs stored in a room next to the entrance *Michael* and I might have missed the stage and therefore the purpose of the building. Smaller signs at the counter of the main entrance announced the rather steep admission charge of 2.600 Yen and the fact that you had to be 18 years old to enter. I’m still not sure though if the Onsen Town Theater really was a strip club or maybe rather a brothel – or both. The building had a second floor and up there were not only a couple of small rooms and a seedy looking waiting area. Right at the top of the stairs was another counter with a surprisingly low and small opening with curtains – and behind the counter I saw quite a few paper slips looking like receipts. Did the performing ladies live up here? Or did they offer extra services? I guess we’ll never know…

And with this little mystery my report about the *road trip to southern Kyushu* ends. Right on time, because tomorrow the Gakuranman and I will leave for another road trip. Urbex in Okinawa – here we come!

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

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, House, Japan, Sex, Strip Club, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Noga Hotel

2012/05/14 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

„The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.“

Well, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sir, Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. But you’ve most likely never been into urban exploration… As an urban explorer there is one other thing you have to fear and most urbexers do fear: watchdogs. It took me more than 150 explorations to finally run into one, but that one proved to be an insurmountable hurdle. Not only for myself, but also for my haikyo buddy *Michael*.
On the way up to the Noga Hotel we stopped to take a couple of photos from the foot of the mountain as it was already early afternoon and we most likely wouldn’t have the chance to take some on the way down. Little did we know that those would be the only photos of the Noga Hotel we’d take that day…

Halfway up the mountain we were stopped by a gate blocking the street – decorated with four huge signs telling us why we shall not pass. A seemingly endless list starting at private property up ahead (so what, this was a public road…) and ending with the local cities authorities trying to prevent illegal waste disposal and forest fires; well, who could argue with environmental reasons that are pleaded to keep people away from an abandoned hotel that is falling apart? Right, we could, so we opened the gate and continued driving, but soon we decided that it might not be a good idea, since an unlocked gate means that whoever decided to put it there actually wants people to pass – which meant that we would most likely run into somebody at one point or the other. So we went back down the mountain and walked up again. A very good decision, because just a couple of 100 meters after the point where we turned around the car we found a second gate. Not just a gate, more like a checkpoint. I was walking a couple of meters ahead of Michael when I saw the control point and it took just a few seconds for a watchdog to bark as if there was no tomorrow. So I ran. Although going to the gym 4 times a week I haven’t been running that fast since I was caught by the security guard at *Nara Dreamland*. Luckily just down the road was a fenced off deadlock; a fence to prevent cars, not humans. So we ran down that road to hide from whatever might have followed us and waited. And waited. And waited. Until Michael decided to have a look at the checkpoint himself – I preferred to wait at the hideout. While Michael was away I heard another big dog barking, probably from where the hotel was – Michael on the other hand only heard some animal scratching as he told me when he came back. Which was at the exact same moment when a van on the way down passed the fence of the dead end road, causing us keep our heads down for another couple of minutes. While I was willing to admit defeat and move on to another location Michael really wanted to get to the hotel, although it was getting late afternoon already; either passing the checkpoint or straight ahead up the mountain through the forest, path or not. Having been lost in the mountain before I strongly objected to the latter idea, so we agreed that Michael would first check if somebody from the van was waiting at our car and then come up again to have a really close look at the checkpoint. Maybe the dog was gone?
About two minutes after I received a text message that the car was clear 4 more vans passed my position on the way down – I tried to call Michael, but it was already too late. When he reached me out of breath several minutes later he told me that the guys in the vans ignored him completely. Neither for the first time nor for the last time on our *road trip to southern Honshu* I asked myself the question when you can consider a place really abandoned. Or if abandonment is the basis for urban exploration. The grey area between exploration and infiltration – and that a place somebody hires security for is not really abandoned by the word’s true meaning. But I guess that’s part of the beauty of that hobby, too. Everybody defines those lines for themselves. The same applies for graffiti. To me they are a form of vandalism when put onto abandoned buildings (I like them as art on designated areas or canvas!), and I guess I’m also more conservative (or cautious – or cowardly?) when it comes to explorations as I’m trying to avoid trouble; except for *Nara Dreamland*: I visited that place against better judgement way too often!

Against better judgement I also agreed to walk up to the checkpoint again as Michael was eager to try his luck as a dog whisperer – or preferably talking to a security guard, if there was one. We were about to get back to the main road when the sound of motors made us hide again. Four more cars went down the mountain and we finally agreed that we won’t make it to the Noga Hotel that way that day. But maybe on another day or sneaking up a different way…

Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, Hiroshima, Hotel / Ryokan, Japan, Urbex, Visited in 2012 | 2 Comments »

Top 5 Reasons Why Golden Week Sucks

2012/05/04 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that I usually don’t stray much from urban exploration, but this week inspired me to a little rant about one of Japan’s holy cows: Golden Week. Still related to urban exploration as it massively affected my explorations this year…
What is Golden Week? Golden Week is a rather massive accumulation of public holidays in Japan in late April and early May.
April 29th: Showa Day / 昭和の日 / shōwa no hi (being dedicated to Emperor Showa / Hirohito who reigned from 1926 to 1989 – his controversial role in WW2 is still disputed…)
May 3rd: Constitution Memorial Day / 憲法記念日 / kenpō kinenbi
May 4th: Greenery Day / みどりの日 / midori no hi
May 5th: Children’s Day / こどもの日 / kodomo no hi (widely known as Boys’ Day / 端午の節句 / tango no sekku – have you ever seen photos of those colourful carp banners? They are related to this day…)
With that many national holidays close to each other you have to take two or three days off and can be absent from for a whole week (or as a Japanese friend counts it: taking off 9 days) – and Japanese people, usually known for being reluctant to take off days from work even if they are sick, do exactly that in large numbers. In fact so many people take off days from work during Golden Week that you actually kinda have to justify yourself if you don’t do it. Or as a Japanese proverb says: the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. You really don’t wanna stick out…
This sudden increase of spare time for a lot of people, glorified by the term Golden Week, of course comes with a couple of detriments that are widely ignored since… well, it’s friggin Golden Week and everybody has to love it! Like New Year’s Eve parties and Christmas with the whole family…
So I will say publicly what most Japanese wouldn’t even dare to say on the quiet: Golden Week sucks! Big time!
Most of the points on the list are interacting with (or are depending on) each other, so the order is kind of interchangeable.

5.) Forced paid vacation days
When you are an employee of a Japanese company in Japan you usually don’t get a lot of paid vacation days. Between 10 and maybe 15 per year the most – a ridiculous amount to the 25 to 36 (!) I’m used to in my home country of Germany. There are no sick days either. So even if you have to go to a doctor you have to take half a day off to see one on your own time and partially on your own dime (co-payment is 30% with the standard health insurance – of anything! Consultation, medication, …). While a lot of Japanese people jump on the idea of taking two days off to create a week of not going to work others are reluctant to do that – because they actually have work to do, because they don’t feel like going on vacation, especially when everybody is going (see #4, #3, and #2), because… whatever reason. So some companies use the opportunity to flush out those two or three vacation days by “recommending” their employees to take them off. And by Japanese communication standards “recommending” means “ordering”. Last year the company I work for used the opportunity of Golden Week to install new ACs after recommending everybody to take days off, making it virtually impossible to not follow the recommendation. Sure, I could have made a fuzz and insisted on moving to floors where no installation work was going on – but that would have been pretty much like pissing in the face of an LA cop after he stopped you for drunk driving…

4.) Prices increase massively
A lot of people use the free week to travel – visiting family and going on vacation. Since prices depend on supply and demand the costs for hotels, train and airplane tickets, rental cars and in some case even food rise significantly. JR charges a special “high season” surcharge for seat reservations and hotels tend to charge holiday prices even for the non-holiday days of Golden Week – but special prices are not a rarity in general; and those are not special discount offers…

3.) Everything is crowded
No matter where you go, everything is crowded. Hotels are fully booked often weeks in advance. The non-reservation cars of Shinkansen superexpress trains are so crowded that JR employees ask travellers not to get on even before the train arrives at a station – and that happened to me at 6 a.m.! You have insanely long waiting lines in front of restaurants and at amusement parks; that’s crazy busy even by the standards of a country where the first opening of a Coldstone Creamery ice cream shop created waiting lines of up to two hours for weeks!

2.) No spontaneity
In daily (work) life I often have the feeling that Japanese people can’t plan. Hell, some colleagues have the job title of “Planner” and they wouldn’t be able to plan their way out of a paper bag. But that’s not entirely true. Japanese people can plan if you give them enough time to do so – hence the intervals of as little as 2.5 minutes on Tokyo’s Yamanote Line, a train loop line in the city centre of Japan’s capital.
What most Japanese people have a hard time with is improvising – when things don’t go according to plan a lot of them are in deep trouble. So I guess Golden Week really caters to the Japanese way of living. You plan it weeks or even months ahead of time and it doesn’t really matter that there is absolutely no chance for spontaneity – everything is set in stone anyways.
I’m a person that is extremely well organized at work and I’m fairly adaptable to unforeseen situations; especially since it’s part of my job. In my spare time I like to mix up things a little bit. When I plan an urbex trip I have an idea of the locations I want to see, but I always have alternatives ready, just in case I need or want to change plans. Usually I don’t book hotels in advance and I don’t make seat reservations on trains as I feel it would lock me down too much. What if I want to stay at a location shorter or longer? Or switch orders for whatever reasons? I like to keep it flexible. Which really backfired this week and inspired me to write down what I was thinking for years: Golden Week sucks!
I went down to Northern Kyushu to explore a couple of locations I was longing to see for months or even years. When I arrived in my beloved Sasebo I was told that there were no rooms available. At all. Not a single one for one night. I was aware of the risk, but it always worked out so far, so I asked the lovely ladies at the local tourist information to phone around after I went to the usual suspects myself. After more than a dozen calls and to the growing frustration of my helpers they finally found a ryokan on Oshima with a room available – Oshima was on my way to revisit Ikeshima, so it was a perfect match. My Japanese isn’t great, so I only spoke English at the tourist information, but I understand a little bit of the local language. After the tourist office lady told me that she found a room I heard her telling the ryokan staff in Japanese that was American (which I’m not, but I guess every white person speaking decent English is automatically classified as American) and if that would be okay. And all of a sudden the room situation was difficult (muzukashii, むずかしい). If something is “difficult” in Japan it basically means that it is not going to happen – the reason doesn’t matter. It’s difficult and nobody wants to deal with difficult situation, so that’s it. While “yes” usually means “I understand” and not necessarily “yes, that is what we are going to do”, “difficult” is the polite version of “no”; or whatever is considered polite in Japan…
Not having a room for the night thanks to a racist ryokan with the last available room in all of the Sasebo area (yes, I’m playing the racist card here – politically correct or not! Unless you lived in Japan for a while you have no idea how xenophobic Japanese people can be. If you are polite in English and racist in Japanese about 6 billion people worldwide won’t understand what you are saying…) I decided to cut my exploration plans from 4 days to 3 days by skipping Ikeshima. So I went back to Hakata Station in Fukuoka, the most populous city in Kyushu. The tourist information centre there was way less helpful and didn’t even try. No rooms in Fukuoka, probably nowhere in Northern Kyushu. That’s what they told me and ended the conversation. So I decided to go back home – after getting up at 4.40 in the morning, standing in crowded JR trains for more than 4 hours (on the way down to Kyushu alone!) and spending around 35.000 Yen on train tickets I learned the hard way how much Golden Week sucks, especially if you dare to try it the oh so hated spontaneous way… and that there are no available hotel rooms in Northern Kyushu, at least not if you are a foreigner in Japan; which really, really disappointed me as I love Japan. Otherwise I wouldn’t go into my seventh year of living here soon…

1.) No escape
You can’t escape Golden Week. Even if you are smart enough to stay at home and not to go on spontaneous trips. Well, maybe if you live in some mountain village you won’t be affected, but I’m sure they have special Golden Week shows on TV, too. But everybody else is affected negatively by Golden Week in one way or the other. Especially smaller businesses close during Golden Week, which means that the neighbourhood bakery is most likely closed. So are mom and dad restaurants if you need a decent meal during lunch break; same goes for the local waterhole. Supermarkets most likely close earlier or even completely. If you wanna go anywhere on the weekends involving Golden Week those places will most likely be busier. You just can’t escape it…

Sure, Japan is a rich country and in the end all those things are only minor annoyances to be filed under “First World Problems”, not tragedies of epic proportions; but they are nevertheless annoyances that make the term Golden Week rather misleading. I remember a colleague once telling me in a different context that “you can’t polish shit”. Well, I guess in Japan(ese) you can – and the turd of this golden calf is called Golden Week!

Posted in Urbex | 17 Comments »

Yamaguchi New Zealand Village

2012/04/27 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

When you think of Japan which other country comes to mind?
Probably Korea since it’s a neighboring country and both countries share an inglorious common history. China, of course, a major influence for centuries – from city planning to food. Most likely the United States as no other country had more impact on Japan in the past 70 years. Maybe Germany due to 150 years of more or less intense friendship and a similar post-war history.
Japan and New Zealand? A rather odd combination. Surprisingly *Michael* and I visited not only one, but two New Zealand themed amusement parks while on a *road trip in southern Honshu*. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the *Hiroshima New Zealand Farm*, a closed but not abandoned theme park in Hiroshima prefecture. This time I’ll present you the clearly abandoned Yamaguchi New Zealand Village – same concept, same company, but without the shadow of a doubt a “lost place”; BTW: I really dislike the term Lost Place, which is used for urban exploration locations in Germany – not as bad “Handy”, which is used for mobile phones (!), but nevertheless a term that makes me cringe.

Arriving at the huge deserted parking lot of the New Zealand Village, it was pretty clear that we wouldn’t run into gardeners or other caretakers. The wooden handrail leading up to the entrance area was getting brittle and all kinds of plants grew without any attempt to tame them. Opened in July of 1990 after spending 1.8 billion Yen (currently about 16.5 million Euros or 21.7 million Dollars) the park’s attendance figures peaked in 1991 at 428.000 – in the following years the numbers dropped to about one third of that per annum before Farm Co. Ltd. put an end to it in 2005 by closing the park. Initially the 30 ha (300,000 m2) large New Zealand Village was put on hiatus for up to three years with the intent of re-opening it again one day, but that never happened. I don’t know if somebody took care of it for a while like they do at the New Zealand Farm (which is in its fourth year of closing), but nowadays the New Zealand Village is clearly abandoned…
(Just for comparison: *Nara Dreamland* peaked at 1.6 million visitors a year and closed when the number was as low as 400.000 – Universal Studios Japan in Osaka welcomes about 8 million guests a year.)

Exploring the New Zealand Village couldn’t have been more relaxed. Located in the middle of nowhere Michael and I enjoyed a wonderful sunny day on the copious premises.
The entrance area was dominated by a gift shop called カンタベリー (Canterbury), vandalized, but still stocked with quite a few examples of fake food Japan is so famous for – in this case all kinds of sweets. We found replicas of mini cakes, both Western and Japanese (mochi), all made of plastic and therefore still nice to look at.
In close proximity was the Jersey Factory that produced and sold homemade bronzer… sorry… handmade butter! And pretty much next to this place with a name that has no connection to New Zealand was a huge building that had New Zealand all over the place: Restaurant Rotorua, Newzealand Farm, Kiwi Country. Why give it one name when you can give it three? Or four, since all to the left it said “Main Bazaar”.

This food dominated commercial zone of the New Zealand Village, which overall had way less of a village feeling than the New Zealand Farm, was followed by the wide, open landscape I knew from other versions of the nature themed parks. And I loved it! I usually don’t feel very comfortable in abandoned buildings, but open areas like mining towns and amusement parks I really enjoy (if they are really abandoned), especially on sunny spring days!

What made the New Zealand Village in Yamaguchi different from those in Hiroshima and Shikoku was the variety of strange pedal-powered vehicles. Cars, bikes and really unique constructions – they were scattered all over the park, a plethora of rental… thingies. I took photos of many of them and maybe one day in the future I will publish a special picture set about them.
Another thing that made this installment of the New Zealand parks special (but not in a good way!) was the already mentioned presence of vandalism. It wasn’t “ZOMGWTFBBQ!?” bad, but since vandalism is always uncalled for it was nevertheless sad to see. Call me old-fashioned and naïve, but I like my abandoned places easy to access and naturally decayed. Luckily the amount of vandalism decreased the further we got away from the entrance, so by the time we reached the stables and Sheep House with its museum of 19th century farm equipment and a couple of taxidermy items in the making, vandalism was nothing but a bad memory.

What really bugged me about exploring the Yamaguchi New Zealand Village was the time pressure. Like I already mentioned, this was part of a road trip to the south of Honshu and the schedule was kind of tight. A place like this deserves a whole day of exploring and taking pictures, probably with some hours after sunset for some special photos – a luxury not available to us. So when Michael and I left after 3 hours (which is generous for most places – *Sekigahara Menard Land* I left after about 20 minutes…) it was with a bittersweet aftertaste, amplified by a bunch of beatniks who entered the parking lots just before we left. Us driving away was accompanied by the sound of burnouts in the distance…

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Addendum 2014-07-11: According to a friend of mine all the buildings have been demolished – R.I.P.!

Posted in Abandoned, Amusement Park, Animals, Asia, Chugoku, Haikyo, House, Japan, Museum, New Zealand, Restaurant, Taxidermy, Urbex, Video, Visited in 2012, Yamaguchi | 21 Comments »

Moriyama Auto Camp / Mount Noro Speed Park

2012/04/20 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ganne Fortress

2012/04/12 by Florian / Abandoned Kansai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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