Abandoned Kansai

I moved to Japan in 2006 and I guess I use a lot of Japanese terms when writing about my haikyo adventures. See… haikyo…
To make it easier for you to understand my articles without having to explain basic terms over and over again I compiled this little glossary – I hope it will be helpful to you!

1F: first floor in Japan, ground floor in most other countries

2F: second floor in Japan, first (upper) floor in other countries

B1: basement 1 – first floor below ground

Chubu: 9 prefectures on Honshu (Aichi, Fukui, Gifu, Ishikawa, Nagano, Niigata, Shizuoka, Toyama, Yamanashi)

Chugoku: 5 prefectures on Honshu (Hiroshima, Okayama, Shimane, Tottori, Yamaguchi)

furigana: Japanese reading aid consisting of hiragana or katakana next to or above kanji

haikyo: the Japanese word for ruin (廃墟), used as a synonym for both urban exploration and abandoned places

hiragana: Japanese syllabary used to write words for which there are no kanji; characteristic are few short, flowy strokes and corners

Hokkaido: Japan’s second largest island and a prefecture on its own

Honshu: Japan’s largest island

JR: Japan Railways, the biggest railway company in Japan

kanji: logographic Chinese characters with up to 84 strokes, though most of them use less than 20; there are about 20.000 in existence, an official list of “regular use kanji” consists of 2136 characters

Kansai: 7 prefectures on Honshu around Osaka (Hyogo, Kyoto, Mie, Nara, Osaka, Shiga, Wakayama)

Kanto: 7 prefectures on Honshu around Tokyo (Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Saitama, Tochigi, Tokyo)

katakana: Japanese syllabary primarily used to transcribe foreign words; characteristic are few short straight strokes and angular corners

koban: small neighborhood police station (交番) for one to ten officers

Kyushu: Japan’s third largest island, split into 7 prefectures plus Okinawa (Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Nagasaki, Oita, Saga)

mikan: seedless and easy-peeling tangerines

minshuku: cheaper version of a ryokan, kind of the Japanese equivalent to a bed and breakfast

modern ruins: ruins of architecture constructed in recent past

omiyage: souvenir – usually local sweets you give to family, friends and colleagues when returning from vacation

onsen: hot spring, sometimes translated as spa, especially when part of a hotel, ryokan or minshuku

ruins porn: derogative or glorifying synonym for urbex photography – depending on the context…

ryokan: Japanese inn, traditionally outside of bigger cities along highways or in onsen towns

Shikoku: Japan’s fourth largest island, split into 4 prefectures (Ehime, Kagawa, Kochi, Tokushima)

Tohoku: 6 prefectures on Honshu (Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata)

urbex: short for urban exploration – this blog is all about it, the exploration of (mostly abandoned) man-made structures

Yen: Japanese currency