The Palace of Culture was a typical institution of the Eastern bloc. The huge buildings were the meeting point for people to enjoy all kinds of recreational activities like sports and arts – and of course they were used for political indoctrination. The PoC usually included a cinema (some of them with several screens), a concert hall, dance studios, a swimming pool, study halls, a boxing ring, rooms with a variety of instruments, an area with tools for all kinds of do-it-yourself stuff and many, many more things – and of course Pripyat had a Palace of Culture, too, being one of more than 137,000 in the Soviet Union in 1988…
Energetik, the local Palace of Culture, was located directly at Pripyat’s center square, Lenin Square, and nowadays is one of the most visited locations in the world’s most famous abandoned city. One reason is that Energetik is on the way to everybody’s favorite Pripyat motive, the amusement park’s ferris wheel – the other is that the building offers a lot of variety on a relatively small space. Crossing Lenin Square Maxim was raving about how beautiful the place must have been 30 ago, given that the huge open space once was the home of a good part of the previously mentioned 33,000 rose plants.
I, on the other hand, was just fascinated by the unique, sad beauty that makes Pripyat what it is today. Struck by awe I entered the Palace of Culture and didn’t even know where to start taking pictures. Anywhere else in the world exploring this building would have taken at least half a day, but I somehow had the feeling that I would have that much time – in the end I had about 50 minutes…
Pripyat’s Palace of Culture is actually in pretty bad shape. Like most other buildings in the zone there isn’t a single window still intact, so the forces of nature – up to 40 degrees Celsius in summer, down to minus 20 in winter – did quite some damage in the past; and having tourists visiting the place every other day doesn’t help much either I guess. Most of the rooms were severely vandalized (a long time ago though!), the cinema barely recognizable. Bushes and little trees were growing inside of some rooms and many of the mural paintings were crumbling away…
Exploring the different kinds of rooms was an amazing experience, but one moment stuck with me in a special way. It happened when I walked through a hallway towards what I assumed was the main gymnasium in the building. As I entered the huge room I looked outside the gigantic front of window frames and saw the famous ferris wheel 100 meters away in the background. Unexpected and absolutely mind-blowing… still gives me goose-bumps when I think back now.
Sadly only a couple of minutes later Maxim made us hurry-up for the first time – the amusement park was waiting just for us…
(If you would like to know more about my trip to the Zone Of Alienation please *click here* to get to the “Chernobyl & Pripyat” special. For a map of the area please *click here*.)
Posted in Abandoned, Europe, Map, Museum, Pripyat, School, Spa / Onsen, Sports, Ukraine, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Zone Of Alienation | 2 Comments »
When people talk about the ruins of the Zone Of Alienation they usually say Chernobyl, but mean in fact Pripyat. As I already described, Chernobyl appears to be a rather normal countryside town, except for the fact that it’s populated just temporarily by its inhabitants.
The real ghost town in the area is called Pripyat, named after the local river that provided the nearby nuclear power plan with water. Founded in 1970 it was planned and built with the purpose of housing the people working at the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station, now known as the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Prior to the disaster it was the home to almost 50,000 people with an average age of just 26 years in more than 13,400 apartments in 160 buildings. The city had 15 primary schools, 5 secondary schools and 1 professional school, a hospital for 410 patients, 25 stores, 27 eateries, 10 gyms, 3 indoor swimming-pools , 2 stadiums and 35 playgrounds. At that time Pripyat was famous for its 33,000 rose plants and almost 250,000 shrubs – a green paradise about 100km north of Kiev. It was a city for privileged people with high incomes; the local police station nevertheless looks scary to this very day…
While the town of Chernobyl benefited from the east wind on the time of the disaster Pripyat got hit directly. To get to Pripyat you have to pass a bridge across train tracks, now called the “Bridge of Death” – a couple of children watched the spectacular lights during the accident standing on the bridge while the wind blew the radiation in their direction; they were amongst the first people to die… It nevertheless took authorities 36 hours to start the evacuation of Pripyat. To speed it up they told the population they should bring only necessary things as they would be back after three days – Pripyat is a ghost town ever since.
Nowadays, after almost 25 years (the anniversary of the disaster will be in April) it is relatively safe to enter Pripyat. Since the isotopes released during the accident were rather short-lived (and due to the work of 800,000 so-called “liquidators”) the radition in Pripyat barely ever exceeds one microsievert per hour – one exception would be the basement of the hospital were were strongly advised not to enter. Aside from natural decay the already mentioned liquidators were the main cause of destruction / vandalism in Pripyat. When new buildings in the not so severely contaminated Chernobyl were constructed, the planners weren’t able to provide enough furniture, so the liquidators took it from Pripyat since it wasn’t needed there anymore. So while most buildings in Pripyat are still standing a lot of them are actually quite empty, some vandalised by frustrated workers – other than that you can find a couple of graffiti all over the town, done by a French guy a couple of years ago. Other than that it’s 25 years of natural decay…
On our 15 minute ride from Chernobyl to Pripyat Maxim, the guide, asked us what we wanted to see first and since we had no specific plans we asked for a “Best Of” tour with spontaneous adjustments once in a while. We made a quick stop at the Pripyat City Sign right outside of the city where we could also have a look at some trees that died from the intense radiation at the time of the disaster (the so-calld Red Forest) – right next to them an abandoned building of the forest authority.
Pripyat itself, fenced off and guarded by another post who, once more, checked our permission papers, is pretty much reclaimed by nature. The streets are free since there are almost daily tours to the city, but they are in horrible condition – no road builders in Pripyat for 25 years… Most buildings are completely surrounded by trees and bushes, some of them are not even visible anymore from the streets.
The atmosphere in Pripyat is truly unique – very quiet, very sad, you can almost hear your own thoughts. Since we had our private guide and driver we were able to visit places to our liking. Luckily Maxim was a very relaxed guy who gave us enough freedom to roam; actually I spent at least half of the time by myself, although Maxim was always in sight or at least in calling distance. From an urban exploration perspective Pripyat is the ultimate location. In every other place of the world each building would be a one day exploration on its own. But Pripyat is so much more. It’s not just abandoned buildings, it’s history. It’s not an investor running out of money, it’s not a movie set – it’s the real thing. Catastrophic events happened there 25 years ago and pretty much everybody, even unborn at the time, knows what you are talking about when you mention “Chernobyl”…
Okay, this was the last wordy posting with few pictures about the Zone Of Alienation. From now on it’ll be all about the locations I’ve visited during the two days in the zone, in the same order I’ve actually visited them – with lots of spectacular photos.
(If you would like to know more about my trip to the Zone Of Alienation please *click here* to get to the “Chernobyl & Pripyat” special. For a map of the area please *click here*.)
Posted in Abandoned, Europe, Map, Pripyat, Ukraine, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Zone Of Alienation | 5 Comments »
After half a day of sightseeing in Kiev (most of it while rain was pouring) my second day in Ukraine started the main event: The trip to the Zone Of Alienation.
Meeting point was a hotel in the city center and my contact person was easy to find since a rather large group of about 25 people gathered on that sunny Saturday morning. Luckily I didn’t have to join the day trippers since I booked a 2 day tour, joining two guys from Switzerland, Sebi and Michi. If you do the day tour for about 160 US-$ you get the standard program: Transport by bus to Chernobyl, quick introduction about the history of the place and a lection about how to behave in the zone and then the well-known locations Sarcophacus, Amusement Park, Swimming Pool – maybe one or two more, like the Palace Of Culture or a School; always with the group (= always somebody in your way when trying to take a picture) and no time to improvise. A 2 day trip (about 500 bucks, depending on the group size – it can be considerably more if you travel alone) is way more relaxed and in-depth. You basically have your own guide plus a driver, transportation is by mini van, you can choose where you want to go and if you want to stay longer at a place it’s usually not a problem. Also included are an overnight stay at the hotel in Chernobyl and several meals.
We were supposed to see a documentary about the Zone Of Alienation during the two hour drive from Kiev, but since the mini van was lacking the necessary equipment Maxim, the guide, told us to get some rest since the day will be packed with information and places to see – but to me the drive from the big city to the middle of nowhere was interesting since of course it showed quite a different side of Ukraine. Even 20 minutes outside of Kiev the country is rural. Really rural…
The Zone Of Alienation begins 30km away from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant with a road block guarded by special units of the MVS (Ministry of Internal Affairs) and therefore the area is partly excluded from the regular civil rule – which is kind of scary considering that even normal MVS units have a dubious reputation according to Wikipedia, though you don’t need to have a look at Wikipedia to know that you don’t wanna mess with anybody inside of the zone.
Chernobyl itself is actually quite unspectacular – a small, wide-spread town with rather low buildings (two or three stories) that once housed the people cleaning up after the nuclear disaster; even before the catastrophe Chernobyl was actually quite a small town (14,000 inhabitants) since most of the employees of the power plant lived in the newly constructed city of Pripyat (50,000 inhabitants) – closer to their place of work and way more modern. Pictures of abandoned, rotting buildings taken in the ZOA are almost always taken in Pripyat, not Chernobyl – but since people associate the name Chernobyl with the power plant, they naturally assume that Chernobyl must be the decaying city. The most interesting fact about Chernobyl is that all the piping is actually above ground since the old water pipes were unusable after the disaster and the new ones had to be easily accessible. Nowadays only 500 people live in Chernobyl. Almost none of them permanently, most of them guarding or guiding – or supporting the guards and guides, like the hotel and kitchen staff or the people running the two supermarkets in Chernobyl.
Arriving in Chernobyl we went directly to the hotel to check in (i.e. dropping our bags in a room of the container building) and then met up with the day tourists for the introduction meeting. Maxim later told us that in 2009 10,000 people visited the zone, by July of 2010 it was already 8,000 for that year. About 1,000 scientists and journalists, the rest all kinds of people; from teenage game freaks in camouflage outfits to senior citizens who can finally visit the former “Evil Empire”. While the tour was organized by a private company, our guide was actually a state employee with the State Enterprise Agency of Information, Internal Co-operation and Development “Chornobylinterinform Agency”, which is part of The Ministry of Ukraine of Emergencies and Affairs of Population Protection from the Consequences of Chornobyl Catastrophe – gotta love the old fashioned way of naming institutions!
After the introduction meeting we were told that we would have lunch first to get some strength for the things to come. We were guided to a room next to the kitchen and it felt a bit like what you can read about the guided tours to North Korea – the mid-sized room was filled with tables covered with lots of food, but us three were the only ones eating; Maxim and the driver were nowhere to be seen. So we sat down and dug into the great salad, sausages and bread. A hearty meal, and being used to Japanese portion size a pretty filling one, too. But then a waitress came in and brought us some borscht – the salad actually was just the salad, not the whole meal… and of course the borscht was just the soup, not the main dish – that was some meat and mashed potatoes! So after having our 3,000 calories lunch we finally made it back to the van to start our trip exploring Pripyat and Chernobyl – the meal, prepared on location from produce delivered from outside of the zone, was great by the way and one more reason to book a 2 day trip instead of going with the 1 day option.
(If you would like to know more about my trip to the Zone Of Alienation please *click here* to get to the “Chernobyl & Pripyat” special. For a map of the area please *click here*.)
Addendum 2012-12-19: The Chernobyl Hotel mentioned in this article is NOT the the Countryside Cottage Chernobyl Hotel just outside of the Zone Of Alienation in Orane! When I was visiting Pripyat and Chernobyl I was able to stay overnight at a container hotel in Chernobyl…
Posted in Chernobyl, Europe, Map, Ukraine, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Zone Of Alienation | 6 Comments »
“Which location will be next?”
That’s the question you always deal with when doing urban exploration – what’s next? Living in Japan offers a variety of gorgeous abandoned places as you can see on this blog and others – but when I planned my yearly summer trip back home to Germany it opened a whole new continent to be explored. Well, kind of, since urbex takes quite some time and the purpose of my summer vacations is to catch-up with family and friends. Nevertheless I was looking into some explorable locations, but with the exception of a daytrip I soon realized I had to go on a vacation while on vacation – maybe Berlin and its relics from the Cold War? I looked into possible dates and prices and I soon came to the conclusion that I could go big… should go big. Gunkanjima is without a doubt the most famous abandoned place in Japan – but on a global scale there is nothing even close the Zone Of Alienation, including Pripyat and Chernobyl, famous for and created as a consequence of one of the worst catastrophes in the history of mankind: the nuclear disaster of 1986.
I’ve seen reports on TV about the Zone Of Alienation before and a little research on the internet brought to daylight that you can book tours to Chernobyl via an agency called TourKiev / SoloEast – it’s even easier than booking a flight… All you need to do is select a date, give them your birthday as well as your passport number and pay cash on the morning of the tour. Couldn’t be easier.
Exactly four weeks later I arrived in Kiev on a flight from Frankfurt with Ukraine International Airlines – one of the worst flights I ever had, it felt like straight from the communist 80s… Kiev Airport on the other hand felt like a European version of Africa. I have to admit that before my trip to Ukraine I mainly traveled in Western countries, so after growing up in Germany and living in Japan for four years it was kind of a cultural shock to me. Luckily I booked a taxi via the hostel I stayed at, so at least I had somebody waiting to bring me to the city center of Kiev after it took me more than an hour to go through customs. But while the hostel’s homepage stated that I can pay the taxi driver either directly or via the hostel, in Euro or in the local currency hryvnia of course the driver, who didn’t understand a word of English, didn’t know about that – he wanted hryvnia cash, which I didn’t have. Arriving at the hostel the young lady running the place reluctantly paid the driver and then right away yelled at me for not having any hrynia with me… “Welcome to Ukraine” I thought. (After that rough start we actually had some nice conversations, especially since I unexpectedly ended up at the hostel after I came back from Chernobyl.)
The trip to the Zone Of Alienation went very smoothly and will be the topic of more than a dozen postings in the near future, so I will skip that part for now.
Coming back to Kiev I had to learn that there was no tourist information in Ukraine’s capital, neither in the city center nor at the main train and bus terminal, so my plan to spontaneously get a reasonably priced hotel, maybe even the airport hotel, fell flat. The fact that hardly anybody spoke English didn’t help either (and I thought Japan was bad in that regard…), so I ended up spending another night at the hostel, enjoying a warm summer evening in the city center (where an open air techno party was going on all day) and taking a taxi to the airport at 5am.
Visiting the Zone Of Alienation was by far the most interesting vacation I had in the last ten years and I guess only my first visit to Japan in 1998 had a bigger impression on me. Not a trip I can recommend to everybody, but to me it was just fantastic!
(If you would like to know more about my trip to the Zone Of Alienation please *click here* to get to the “Chernobyl & Pripyat” special. For a map of the area please *click here*.)
Posted in Europe, Map, Ukraine, Urbex, Visited in 2010, Zone Of Alienation | 3 Comments »
Doing urban exploration it’s hard not step into the trap of chasing only after the famous locations like Gunkanjima or Nara Dreamland – everybody has them (for good reasons), so you kind of gotta have them, too. But it’s important to stay open minded and not just look for the big ones when doing research. Because if you are really dedicated and incredibly lucky every once in a while you will stumble across a hidden gem that will blow your mind unexpectedly. Ladies and gentlemen: The Tokushima Countryside Clinic…
I saw the Tokushima Countryside Clinic (徳島田舎診療所) on a small Japanese travel blog about half a year ago. Although its location is quite remote I was able to pin it down. Jordy knew about the place, too, and was even more eager than myself to see the place (I was actually only moderately excited about it beforehand), so we decided to go there first thing on the second day of our road trip to Shikoku – abandoned hospitals are hard to find, but Japanese countryside clinics are almost unknown. Up till now the secret Doctor’s Shack was the benchmark for that type of haikyo, but over the last couple of years it lost quite a bit of its former attraction as it’s not that secret anymore and suffered a lot from vandalism. With the discovery of the Tokushima Countryside Clinic I’m sure its reputation will go down in no time…
I’ve been to several famous locations in Japan and I enjoyed most of them, but this really unknown find came with almost no expectations and therefore captured my heart in no time. Big but quite unremarkable from the outside I entered the TCC through the only room of the building partly collapsed, the former front desk. While Jordy instinctively went to the pharmacy part to the right (which had a sign that straight-up said “If you want medicine you have to pay cash!”) I had a look around on the first floor and finally settled in the treatment room. Abandoned about 32 years ago (as Jordy found out later talking to some locals) the TCC offered an almost endless amount of items and angles. There was so much to see it didn’t get boring for a second, from syringes and rusty needles over patient files to medical books and instruments – and since the partly boarded-up place had hardly any visitors during the last few decades the atmosphere there was just amazing.
I thought maybe 20 minutes had passed when Jordy suggested after 1.5 hours (!) that we should switch rooms. So I went over to the pharmacy, wondering if it was really a good idea to take pictures in a room filled with all kinds of odors. I was setting up my tripod in the narrow pharmacy, but it took me another 10 minutes or so to realize that there was another tiny room behind it, filled with hundreds of bottles, flasks and cardboard boxes full of more medicine and chemicals. Whenever I thought I’ve seen everything there was more. Like when Jordy asked me half an hour later if I had seen the study room behind the examination room – of course I hadn’t! I shot in that room for more than one and a half hours and didn’t even realize there was another (opened) door… So I made my way over to the study room and took some more pictures of books, test tubes and other stuff.
The rest of the TCC was a mansion-like estate with a beautiful huge living room set in complete darkness (harboring a gorgeous house shrine) and a spacious kitchen including a brick-built oven. The sleeping rooms must have been on the second floor and in another building that was also used as a storage.
Overall the Tokushima Countryside Clinic is a haikyoist’s dream and I have to admit it totally blew my mind – it’s unique, it’s in great condition, it’s virtually unknown and I had almost no expectations when going there. I spent about four hours shooting (due to the difficult but interesting lighting conditions exposure times went as high as 30 seconds) and I guess I could have spent another four if there wouldn’t have been other locations on the schedule for that day. The TCC is without a doubt my favorite location in Japan so far and I guess it’s the perfect opportunity to finally present you my favorite location worldwide – so next week I’ll finally start the long overdue series about Pripyat and Chernobyl…
I decided to publish the photo set of this location in black and white to stress its unique atmosphere; finally a simple form of post-production – *please have a look at the color version here*.
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Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hospital, House, Japan, Shikoku, Tokushima, Urbex, Visited in 2010 | 12 Comments »
Right next to the Young People’s Plaza and Museum was a building named 大見山荘 according to the kanji above the entrance – the ‘Ohmi Lodge’ or ‘Big View Mountain Villa’. Sadly there is hardly any information about the place available, but it’s safe to say that it was opened and closed along with the close-by monument and museum, providing accommodationto people who wanted to stay in the area overnight while avoiding the costs of the luxury hotel a couple of hundred meters down the road. With about 20 guest rooms, a conference room and a restaurant room the Ohmi Lodge must have been perfect for school trips – nowadays the abandoned building is almost completely empty, tagged with graffiti and without a single undamaged door or window. Luckily the architecture was quite interesting, so I decided to dedicate the Ohmi Lodge its own posting on this blog…
Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Urbex, Visited in 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Growing up in Germany education about history is almost omnipresent, both in school and on TV. Most people know about the proud events and people of the past – Arminius defeating the Romans, Charlemagne unifying Europe, Ludwig van Beethoven becoming one of the greatest composers of all time, the German Revolution of 1848, … there are too many to name. But people also learn about the darkest time of German history – the years 1933 to 1945; those 12 and a half years out of thousands of years of German history actually make up for about a third of the school’s history classes, most of the rest being used to educate students to be good democrats: the ancient Greeks, the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution and similar events are all taught with a purpose.
After studying Japanese history and living in Japan for a couple of years it strikes me that Japanese schools handle history a bit differently. It’s all about the proud samurai past, World War II takes up only a couple of pages in history school books, downplaying events like those in Nanking 1937 by calling them incidents – while the rest of the world uses terms like “massacre” or “rape”. Popular places to remember World War II in Japan nowadays are Hiroshima and the Yasukuni Shrine… remembering losses Japan had to suffer, not so much remembering the misery Japan spread all over Asia from 1931 to 1945.
Until a couple of years ago there was another rather huge memorial accessible to the public: The Young People’s Plaza (若人の広場), dedicated to the young people who lost their lives in World War II. Designed by the famous architect Kenzo Tange in 1966 and opened in 1967 this impressive monument with an appendant museum is towering 25 meters high over the once so strategically important straight between Shikoku and Awaji Island. In 1995 the Young People’s Plaza was closed down due to dwindling visitor numbers and irreparable damage caused by the Great Hanshin Earthquake earlier that year. An important part of the centerpiece, an eternal flame placed right at the concrete sculpture once protecting it, was removed since then.
The museum, beautifully embedded into the breathtaking landscape and located on the way to the monument, was once filled with items left behind by the students who went to war, countless pictures and information boards telling their stories. It seems like the museum was boarded up in 1995, but as with all locations like that you will always have people trying to make their way in. Worried about the exhibits all 2000 items of historical value were donated to the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, which is part of the Ritsumeikan University, in 2004. Nowadays the museum is almost completely empty and a rather spooky place…
Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Monument, Museum, Urbex, Visited in 2010 | 5 Comments »
The information I had about the first destination of my little road trip was little – but at least I knew what it was beforehand and I’ve seen a picture. The second destination was just a grey building on a map. No picture, no information about it, not even the certainty that it was really abandoned. But it was on our way to some other locations, so we thought it couldn’t hurt to have a quick look. The quick look turned into a 2 hour long shooting of a hotel once called “Jumbo Club Awaji Island”. I tried to do some research on the place after I came back, but I couldn’t find anything (neither with the Romaji nor with the Japanese name), so I have no problems calling the hotel by its real name. If the calendar hanging in the kitchen is any indication on when the hotel was abandoned then it’s save to say that it happened in 1996 – just before the internet boom.
Once boarded up and fenced off the Jumbo Club hotel now is an easy walk in location if you don’t get spotted by neighbours and close-by companies. Nevertheless we didn’t rush into the place but approached it carefully since there was an intense stench clearly noticeable from the outside. We entered cautiously and my fellow explorer, who foolishly spearheaded the exploration with audacity, froze in shock right after he entered the lobby – never before was a harmless poster of a beautiful woman more scary. But that didn’t slow down his drive at all and just minutes later he found the reason for the stench – it seems like the Jumbo Club Awaji Island is now very popular amongst cats, one panicking in the first room he tried to enter. My fellow explorer closed the door to let the fury furry fella calm down and we explored the rest of the building. Which wasn’t nearly as exciting as those first few minutes…
The Jumbo Club Awaji Island turned out to be a normal tourist hotel with Japanese style rooms, Western style restrooms and some nice public bathrooms with a great view. Although the holes in the barricades outside made us expect a totally trashed place the hotel was in fact barely touched. An emptied fire-extinguisher here and some… no, actually no “some” – pretty much all the other damage could have been a result of 15 years of natural decay. All the rooms I’ve entered looked extremely clean, as if you could move in right away – except for the two or three that were inhabited by some birds for a while and therefore were covered with feces. The main kitchen on the first floor didn’t make a trustworthy impression, but who wants to clean up after the last dinner when nobody will ever use the kitchen again anyways? Other than that there was no vandalism: No trashed rooms, no ripped out fixtures, no signs of arson, no broken china scattered all over the place.
Overall the Jumbo Club hotel was an unspectacular but pleasant surprise. I’ve never been to an abandoned hotel in that remarkable condition and the beautiful weather outside made it a relaxed exploration. Oh, and just in case you wonder: Before we left my fellow explorer opened the door of the first room again, but the cat already found its way out…
Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hotel / Ryokan, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Urbex, Visited in 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Okay, let’s kick off the travel series with a rare, but unspectacular location: The N# Nursery School. (Sorry for bleeping the name. This haikyo isn’t well-known at all and I don’t wanna be the guy who reveals too much about this untouched place.) I saw it only once on the net so far – luckily it came with a map, so it was easy to find…
Sadly the map didn’t come with any information. So all I can tell you is that the 1983 built nursery school is located in a very remote area within a beautiful landscape that was in full bloom even in late November; and that all the doors and windows were locked, so I was only able to take some outside pictures. Which wasn’t too much of a loss since the rooms seemed to be empty anyways, judging by looking through the windows. Luckily the N# Nursery School came with a small playground and the weather was very pleasant too (sunny 20 degrees Celsius), so shooting the location was a nice relaxed warm up for the things to come…
Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hyogo, Japan, Kindergarten / Nursery, Urbex, Visited in 2010 | 4 Comments »
Recently I went on a three day road trip to Awaji Island and Shikoku. Fellow urban explorer Jordy came down to Kobe, we rented a car and off we went. Since Jordy likes to drive and I like to do research we combined our powers to go to some places off the beaten tracks. Pretty much all of the locations will be English speaking firsts, some of them are even barely known to the Japanese haikyo community – including two original finds: A pachinko parlor with all the machines and a hotel called shangri-la. In addition to that we went to an abandoned monument (with a museum right next to it), another hotel, a nursery school, a restaurant with a spectacular view, an abandoned and very countryside elementary school, a spa built on a cliff and, most important of all, an abandoned doctor’s house that makes the previously posted Doctor’s Shack look like… well… a shack.
Please enjoy the preview pictures below – a series of articles about the trip will start ASAP, most likely by the end of this week.
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- F# Elementary School
Posted in Abandoned, Asia, Haikyo, Hospital, Hotel / Ryokan, Hyogo, Japan, Kansai, Kindergarten / Nursery, Kochi, Pachinko, School, Shikoku, Spa / Onsen, Tokushima, Urbex, Visited in 2010 | 16 Comments »
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