Abandoned Kansai

The abandoned Coastal Wedding Venue is one of my favorite explorations of 2019 – and one of my favorite solo explorations of the past few years.

When I started Abandoned Kansai more than 11 years ago I named it that on purpose. Abandoned Kansai. Not Abandoned Honshu or Abandoned Japan. Abandoned Kansai. Because back then I had no intention to explore outside of Mie, Shiga, Kyoto, Nara, Wakayama, Osaka, and Hyogo. Heck, even Mie and most of Wakayama seemed so far away and inaccessible. Hundreds of explorations in all 47 Japanese prefectures later I just hope that it is not too far away when a new and extraordinary looking location pops up on the internet, because… usually it is. And of course the Coastal Wedding Venue was no exception. First it took me a while to find it, then it took me a while to get there, because not only was the wedding venue far away from Kansai, it also was on top of a mountain in a rather remote tiny little town – easy to access is different, especially when flying solo and therefore relying on public transportation. But thanks to a serious amount of patience and tons of dedication I finally made it there one a sunny autumn day as beautiful as the view from the main balcony of the venue.

Unfortunately there is little know about the Coastal Wedding Venue, which consists of about half a dozen buildings, including a chapel, a hotel and a restaurant for the main reception, as well as a swimming pool and several outdoor areas of various sizes, now mostly overgrown. It seems like the place opened in the late 1980s and closed about 25 years later – despite or because it’s kitschy design with countless white European style statues outdoors and gigantic Asian style vases and sculptures indoors.
After more than half a decade of neglect and vandalism the venue already was in rather pitiful condition when I explored it 1.5 years ago. The buildings were ransacked and in parts severely damaged, the outdoor areas were hard to navigate due to uncontrolled growth – it wasn’t a fun exploration, but it was a gorgeous one, high above the sea at one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline I’ve ever seen in Japan. The predominantly white venue was very easy on the eyes, despite the dilapidated condition it was in. A lot of shots were hard to take, especially the one of the chapel and the pool from the balcony along the main street – but like my frontal shot of the *Hachijo Royal Hotel* it turned out to be one of my favorite photos ever. I had high expectations for the abandoned Coastal Wedding Venue… and they were fulfilled overall. Unfortunately both vandalism and decay seem to progress at record speed, so it’s only a matter of time until this place will only continue to live in the memories of the few who had the opportunity to document it at the right time.

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There are two or three styles of hotel rooms in Japan – if you know those, you basically know them all. Yet (almost) every abandoned Japanese hotel has something special. A rooftop bar, an interesting shared bath, an indoor shrine, a pool area with slides, a vast garden… or a room filled with boxes containing cut off cat paws!

The Cat Paw Hotel was an original find I made at the height of my exploration career in 2017. At first it was just a mark on a map in the outskirts of an onsen town, far away from the StreetView cars. The grey spot also could have been an apartment building… or worse: still in use. But after so many years of exploring you at least have a good gut feeling whether or not a place is abandoned, so when I had the opportunity to visit the area a year later on my last big exploration trip with my buddy Hamish of course I took advantage of it.
At first sight the Cat Paw Hotel was just a random abandoned hotel like so many others. Large lobby, vandalized rooms that looked the same, big party rooms that only differed in size, a somewhat boring bar with a stage and a jukebox, an emptied souvenir shop – even the yellow, green, and black shared bath (where somebody took a dump in the sauna; at least go outside, you animals!) wasn’t that spectacular. What set the Cat Paw Hotel apart from every other abandoned hotel I’ve explored was a room Hamish called me to. “You have to see this!” is something I’ve heard quite often, but barely ever was it that true. In the back of the hotel, at the end of a corridor with guest rooms, were two storage rooms for the gift shop. One where all the cheaply made plastic junk was once stored (not anymore; ransacked, too). And another one filled with boxes upon boxes of what looked like cat paws to me. Now, I’m not an animal expert, so cat paw is / was my best guess. And when I posted a photo a while ago on *Facebook* nobody had a better suggestion. Which is curios, because to the best of my knowledge cat paws are not a good look charm like… for example… rabbit’s feet. Especially in Japan, where cats are really, really loved! And while rabbit’s feet can be rather easily harvested as their meat is quite popular in some parts of the world, hardly anybody eats cats unless they have to. There also were no signs of them in the gift shop, so why would this hotel would store countless boxes with probably thousands of paws? Paws that didn’t have attachments for key rings… or even packaging for that matter. Really, really strange…

But memorable, and when it comes to explorations, that’s an important factor. I for sure won’t forget the Cat Paw Hotel – and you probably neither. We’ll all forget the dump in the sauna, the weird shared bath and the large dining room… but the cat paws we’ll remember. And tell our friends about it. And hope, that the next exploration will be as memorable!

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Welcome to yet another original find! This time we’ll go deep into the mountains to explore what turned out to be a large textile mill!

One of the best things in life, other than to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women, is to explore a previously unknown abandoned place you found yourself without the help of others – something I take much pride in since my very first days of exploring, because let’s be honest: every shmuck can ask or even pay for coordinates and do the traveling involved, but finding and exploring a new place… that’s special!
A while ago I spotted a rather big rusty red roof amidst a thick forest. Not too far away were a couple of still inhabited houses and next to one of them I assumed was a now abandoned road that seemed to lead towards the roofed area. Unfortunately the area was rather blurry and of course no StreetView car had ever graced the area with its presence. But I guess almost a decade of “reading” GoogleMaps paid off again and the layout was exactly as expected – which didn’t make the exploration any easier though. The uphill road to the large corrugated iron construction had turned into an overgrown muddy mess over the decades… and the “building” itself still only sticked out on satellite photos because of the massive amount of ground it covered. At first sight the whole thing seemed to be some kind of storage facility. We found several numbered garage like bays, some empty, some filled with random stuff that could have been part of a factory, but also been owned by private people. Frustrated by the heat, humidity, overgrowth and inaccessibility I was ready to call it a day and move on, when my exploration buddy realized that the wall that we were standing next to was actually a corrugated iron door – it blended it perfectly. After years and years of not being opened the thing was rusty as heck, but fortunately unlocked.
Inside the “Mountain Textile Factory“ was in really bad condition. Whole walls were missing, the roof was leaking at countless spots and yet the whole thing was surprisingly gloomy on that rainy day. It looked like they just shut down everything and left, half of the machinery still stocked with material and a porn magazine in a drawer; yes, the good old Japanese urbex rule – no 80s location without a porn stash… Unfortunately it wasn’t only a rainy day, but also late in the day, so it was getting dark quickly.

Overall though I’m super happy with this exploration: It started out underwhelmingly, but turned into a lovely surprise, it was an original find, and one of the yarn bobbin photos is absolutely fantastic IMHO. A perfect addition to the *Japanese Garment Factory* exploration a while ago…

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Hatsumode, the first shrine visit in a calendar year – another Abandoned Kansai tradition…

Up to 3.5 million visitors on three days some shrines can have. That’s a recipe for disaster! This year apparently plans were made to prolong the traditional year end winter break (yes, Japan has a traditional shutdown around New Year’s Day every year, even without a pandemic! Much to the dismay of millions of salarymen who have to spend time with their alienated families and equally as many housewives who can’t go luxury purse shopping for two or three days in a row… lucky are the few who are able to visit their parents in the middle of nowhere and feel like a child again for a couple of days), but of course those plans were scrapped quickly, because… Japan. It is dominated by the almighty Yen. Advertising everywhere, shopping opportunities everywhere. Only a money spending citizen is a good citizen!
I remember being in the middle of that millions of visitors per shrine hatsumode nightmare twice in my life – once when I met friends (who have several kids now, which means they moved on to the next phase of their predetermined life in Japan…) and once when my sister came to visit. Ever since then I prefer abandoned shrines, especially NOT at the beginning of winter.
Hence the Half-Abandoned Shrine in this edition of “Hatsumode on Abandoned Kansai”. This one I visited in autumn of 2019 with a Japanese buddy of mine. It’s located in the countryside, next to fields, a forest and a fishing pond. Upon arrival my buddy took on a conversation with two elderly hobby farmers. One of them started to guide us around and soon we ended up in front of a cage with four young wild boars – the boar piglets were clearly not happy about the situation they were in, and they would have been even less if they’d understood any of the conversation the farmer and my friend had; I understood only a little more, but it was enough – “nabe” and laughter… (Nabe is a Japanese hot pot dish, especially popular on cold nights!)

The farmer also told us that we weren’t the first people to look for the shrine, which apparently is popular amongst Osakan university students getting drunk there in summer, as it is widely considered a ghost spot – and when I look at the pathetic suits I have to deal with on a daily basis, I can imagine that getting drunk at a “ghost spot” in the countryside in their early 20s really is the most exciting thing they’ve ever done in their lives… Anyway, we moved deeper into the forest, along an annoyingly muddy path, and finally hit the shrine area, which indeed looked half-abandoned – decaying and falling apart, with a small abandoned hut; a stark contrast to the fresh cut flowers somebody left there recently. Fortunately the photos turned out to be much more interesting than the location really was – and since it was technically only half abandoned I could reveal the exact location… but then again, I’m not another one of those shitty guide books, so let’s move on to the next location – or look back at the *Shiga Shrine*, which I thought was much more interesting in every regard!
Happy, happy, happy 2021 everyone!

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The abandoned Sea Shell Museum was on the top of my list of places to visit for quite a while – here is what I found when I finally made it there…

It’s always dangerous if you let your imagination fill the blanks of missing information as it tends to use the most positive outcome possible, while reality tends to do… the opposite – all you online daters out there know what I mean!
About three years ago I first saw the abandoned Sea Shell Museum on a Japanese blog and I was fascinated! There were only a handful of photos, but they looked amazing… and outside pictures of the building made it look gigantic, so I imagined it to be much like the *Takeshima Fantasy Museum*, an active sea shell museum in the outskirts of Nagoya – at first I even thought it was the exact same place as it was closed for a few years between 2010 and 2014.
Phew, was I wrong! Not only was the abandoned Sea Shell Museum in a different part of Japan (which I found out after about 1.5 years…), it was also much smaller and a lot less colorful (which I learned the hard way another 1.5 later – yes, it took me that long to find a reasonable way to explore that damn thing!). While the Takashima Fantasy Museum features a vast area of colorful and imaginative seal shell sculptures, the abandoned Sea Shell Museum only had a rather small display… which wasn’t that colorful. Both places have a museum part, which are about the same size, but make up for about 10% of the space at the Fantasy Museum and a whopping 90% of the space at the Sea Shell Museum. Objectively not bad at all, unique and super interesting actually, but not what I had dreamed up in my mind based on the photos I first saw. Expectations are the worst – never have them! They are barely ever surpassed, only mildly satisfying when fulfilled, and more often than not you set yourself up for disappointments…
Opened in 1973 and in business till the late 00s the now abandoned Sea Shell Museum was on the second and third floor of a rest stop by the sea, while the first floor was used as a restaurant and omiyage shop. Now the whole building is decaying rapidly, despite the lack of blatant vandalism – there is some, but surprisingly little, considering that the place isn’t exactly the secret anymore it was three years ago.

I was hoping for a Top 20 location, but the abandoned Sea Shell Museum would have a hard time to even make it on my Top 200 list. It was still a good location, but the whole exploration was rushed, the museum was much smaller and less artistic than expected… and the mix of dark corners, bright light coming in through a few openings, and reflective display surfaces made the whole place kinda hard to shoot. Overall the *abandoned sex museums I’ve visited* were much more interesting – and a lot of *abandoned schools* had similar items left behind. Add the time and effort (borderline hassle) involved in exploring this admittedly unusual museum, and I’m sure you’ll understand that I’m glad that I was able to finally cross it off my (relatively short) list of famous places to explore. A revisit is highly unlikely though, so please enjoy the following gallery.

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Geeks, freaks, and nerds rejoice – I finally made it to the abandoned Game Boy Mailbox!

The abandoned Game Box Mailbox can be traced back to four years ago, when a Japanese angler was looking for a fishing spot in the mountains and instead found a supersized original Game Boy, once used as an advertising display in Japanese stores, converted into a mailbox. Unlike most non-urbexers (and some bad apples within the community) the guy actually cared and didn’t blurt out the location to the world – and so even some well-connected and respected Japanese explorers haven’t been to this little hidden gem. It took me a few years, too, but when I finally made it there on a beautiful autumn day I took pictures from pretty much every angle… because there was not much else to see or do nearby. Somebody put a regular mailbox into the strictly decorative plastic case (none of the buttons are or ever were functional – also the proportions were more than just slightly off!) and used it as such. Since the thing hasn’t been cleaned in quite a while and the nearby house also is in questionable condition it’s pretty safe to say that the Game Boy Mailbox really is abandoned – though there were indications that the house is still used occasionally, maybe as a weekend home.

For most people the Game Boy Mailbox is probably just a grey plastic case, but as a huge Nintendo fan I had the time of my life and took pictures of that thing from pretty much all possible angles. Sunshine, warm autumn day, bamboo grove in the background, autumn leaves surrounding, a remote mountain road – and a now rare piece of video game history. Everything came together perfectly! And if you like (arcade) games as much as I do, you might wanna check out my article about the abandoned *Arcade Machine Hotel*!

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Abandoned hotels can be a challenge as they tend to consist mostly of identical rooms – fortunately this one featured a somewhat interesting dining area and some really old vending machines…

The Old-fashioned Japanese Hotel looked like it was originally built in the 1960s and then expanded two or three times. A kinda charming maze of hallways with rooms in nearly pristine condition – nowadays I barely ever take photos inside of abandoned hotel rooms, but some of them were just too pretty to ignore! The highlights though were the dining area, where either some staff or previous visitors set up meals at several tables, and the three old, barely hanging vending machines for toiletries. I really love those old things!

Overall a nice little exploration for a nice little write-up. I hope to be able to go back to weekly articles soon, but it’s autumn in Japan now, 15 to 20 sunny degrees in a lot of areas, already winter in others, so I’m quite busy traveling these days; a real pleasure without the hordes of overseas tourists clogging up trains, hotels, and sightseeing spots – which are all still busy thanks to a rise in domestic tourism, but the atmosphere is just vastly different and much more enjoyable. Every once in a while I even throw in a more or less spontaneous exploration – more about those on the usual social media channels like *Facebook* or *Twitter*…

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