All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum – and many, many more! Plus: 8 days / 7 nights in North Korea!
Urban exploration is a dangerous hobby. How dangerous it really is I found out at the Daieikaku, a rather big abandoned ryokan south of Osaka. I was literally and figuratively one step away from my demise…
The Daieigaku was the first location Damon and I went to together back in 2010. Later we continued to explore the *Gion Love Hotel*, the Ferris wheel *Igosu 108*, the *K-1 Pachinko Parlor*, the *Tsuchikura Mine* as well as the *Kasuga Mine A* and *Kasuga Mine B* – but first the Daieikaku, a hotel that turned out to be quite hard to get to.
Back then I had done all my explorations using trains, but the Daieikaku was too far away from the closest station to walk to, so we had to take a bus. Which is a hassle in pretty much every country, especially if your command of the local language is… sub-par. Sometimes it’s close to impossible to figure out schedules and stops. When I wanted to get to a place near a university campus in Hokkaido last year it took the local tourist information at JR Sapporo Station 15 minutes to figure out which bus to take – and I knew the name of the bus stop I wanted to go to! Figuring out which bus to take to the Daieikaku wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t the only problem: The Daieikaku was located at a slope on the other side of a river, but the bridge leading to the ryokan was completely overgrown. Even in autumn with weakened flora we weren’t able to get to the other side, especially without being seen by locals and day visitors. So we crossed the river via another bridge, climbed up the slope and got to the back of the Daieikaku at the level of the third floor. Instead of taking some steps down to the ground floor we entered through a smashed in window right where we were. Starting up there was as good as anywhere else we thought…
Big mistake! The first room was one of those tatami party rooms you have in pretty much every hotel in Japan. Thanks to open doors and windows everywhere in the Daieigaku the place was in rather bad condition with leaves all over the place. I went to the side of the building, looking for a staircase. Found it, passed it and opened a door… a restroom. I went inside to have a closer look, but although the floor looked a lot more solid than the one in the tatami room it didn’t feel like it. Halfway into the room I had a very, very bad feeling, so I went back to the hallway, down one floor via the staircase, opened the door to the restroom below the one I just entered and… it was gone! There was no friggin restroom! Only one wall with some urinals hanging mid-air! And the bathroom I was in basically was attached to the rest of the building by its walls. I guess I don’t have to mention that the floors below were gone, too, so if I would have walked further into the restroom two minutes earlier (or probably just would have stayed where I was) there would have been a good chance that I would have crashed through a thin layer of tiles and wood three floors down to my death. After I recovered from that realization I went straight to Damon to warn him about the death trap on the third floor. Luckily he didn’t put himself in danger, so we continued our exploration without further incidents, although we continued to take risks every once in a while – especially Damon, who was exploring the hotel like a honey badger. Through tiny broken windows with shards left, up and down rotting wooden stairs, … Which lead us down to the onsen part of the ryokan, a part of the hotel I probably wouldn’t have gotten to if I would have gone there on my own, especially after that little shock right at the beginning. There we saw some major cracks in the ceiling and the wall, which didn’t exactly help to ease my mind – parts of the Daieigaku already collapsed, so being in the middle of the building with unstable floors above and below wasn’t exactly the place I wanted to be in. But the former lobby didn’t look any better. We first saw it from 2F and looked down – staircases gone, walls caved in… The whole building was in worse than dilapidated condition and I guess every single step could have been our last!
Looking back at the exploration of the Daieikaku I have to say that we were terribly naïve and really lucky. The term “Daieikaku” means big glorious building and it is often used for restaurants serving a charcoal grilled meat dish called yakiniku – and while the ryokan Daieikaku was indeed a big building it was everything but glorious. It was a deathtrap and by far the most dangerous location I have ever explored. It also was rather unspectacular overall, that’s probably the reason why I never wrote about it, almost forgot about. Back then I just did a pre-selection of my photos, deleting only the worst, so I had to go through almost 150 of them to make a final selection for this article – and it actually makes me wanna go back there. Three years ago I shot without a tripod and the Daieikaku was pretty dark in some places, though it was a bright and sunny autumn day. Furthermore several earthquakes hit Kansai since then, including the Tohoku Earthquake that caused the Fukushima Incident and a recent one that struck Awaji Island. Plus Mother Nature had 30 months to do additional damage… Well, we’ll see – if time allows I’ll stop by there again to give you an update on what happened to the Daieikaku. For now I hope you’ll enjoy the photos I took during my visit. I’m sure you are eager to see what the collapsed bathroom looked like…
“Flash? I don’t use flash! Most photos look ugly when using flash!”
In February of 2010 I had no clue what my dear friend *Enric* was talking about. I had my first DSLR for 3 months and I had no clue about photography either. But when I was using the flash of my D90 in the darker corners of the Kasagi Sightseeing Hotel my now truly missed buddy got really upset. I didn’t think much about it, to be honest. I just picked up urban exploration and photography as a hobby, and I was happy about every decent shot I was able to take. Flash or not…
Who cares? Just let the crazy Spaniard talk! — Gosh, was I ignorant. But I really had no clue what I was doing. Couldn’t have known a good photo from a bad one even if Ansel Adams would have hit me in the face with a picture book! I continued the learning by doing process and half a year later I bought an ultra-wide angle lens and a tripod – and I guess my photos improved massively since then, probably because I barely ever used flash again. But whenever I do, I remember Enric’s words at the Kasagi Tourist Hotel…
I don’t know why it took me more than 3 years to write about the Kasagi Hotel; this is actually one of the oldest unpublished locations I had on my hard-drive – and the other ones are way less interesting! It’s probably because of the name… or its rather convenient location in walking distance of a train station… Guess which one! Although I have to admit “convenient” and “walking distance” is relative. It’s convenient and in walking distance for urban explorers. If you arrived as guests with suitcases you better took a taxi!
Although one of the most popular abandoned places in Japan for many, many years there is not much information floating around about the Kasagi Hotel. It’s widely known as a ghost spot, since rumors have it that the owner committed suicide by arson – half of the Japanese blogs writing about the place admit that they didn’t dare to enter. Or care to find out more about the hotel’s history. So here’s some information I got from reading a dented sign near the entrance and that is nowhere to be found on any Japanese blog: It seems like the Kasagi Hotel was famous for its onsen. The hot spring was fed by a spring 1200 meters below the hotel, rich in sodium and alkali. Staying at the hotel for one night including two meals was 6500 Yen, onsen only was 1000 Yen, onsen and one meal 2000 Yen.
Enric and I didn’t mind those suicide stories to scare away children and walked straight in, past the barricade that once prevented nosy people from entering; but of course it was ripped apart by some vandals by the time of our arrival. We mostly ignored the smaller storage buildings to the right and headed straight for the hotel, squeezing past another barricade made of conjugated iron, a lot more solid, but nevertheless wide open even for foreigners.
The ground floor was a pitiable sight. Half destroyed by arson and littered by bent and rusted iron it offered a sample of the general condition of the Kasagi Hotel. I guess that’s the downside of the hotel’s fame and location: It was vandalized like hardly any place I’ve been to before or after – graffiti, arson and ripped apart walls, floors, ceilings… you name it. Even two staircases were completely ripped apart, although it looked like that was done professionally and with heavy machinery; especially since there was barely any rubble left. The whole floor was dark and gloomy, with holes in the wooden floor spared by the fire. The hotel kitchen also became the victim of flames, underlining the spooky first impression.
A concrete and graffiti stained staircase in the back lead to the upper floors, but the door to the second one was blocked by a huge welded metal plate. Somebody built an improvised metal ladder from 1F to 2F, but I preferred not to climb it – especially since 2F suffered as much damage from vandals as all the other floors. Except for the ground floor and the top floor all the floors looked pretty much the same with different kinds of destructions: On one floor the toilets were completely intact, on other floors you could still see parts of the wallpaper, while on another floor the intact walls gave a good impression how big the rooms really were – the whole building was one big puzzle.
The Kasagi Hotel was one of the first 20 explorations I did and therefore everything was extremely exciting. Looking back years later it was one of the more unspectacular locations I visited; except for the view. The view was fantastic, especially from the terrace on the roof top and from the corner baths, which allowed free sight on the Kizu River ten meters below the ground floor of the hotel.
One word of warning though to all the people planning trips there to have a look themselves: I wouldn’t do it! About a year ago I went there again for a quick revisit. More about that trip later this week or early next week…
Mukainokura is probably the most famous ghost town in all of Japan as it was featured in many books and by many websites. It is also quite easily accessible by ghost village standards – it’s less than 10 kilometers away from the next train station (more like 6 km actually) and you can drive right up to it if you have a car. And since it’s on top of a hill in the mountains of Shiga prefecture, there are millions of potential visitors from all over Kansai.
Mukainokura was the first ghost town I ever visited, back in the spring of 2010 – and the last location I ever visited with my colleague and dear friend *Enric*, since only weeks later his fugue kicked in and he left the company we both worked for back then.
Spending a sunny spring day hiking with a friend in the Japanese countryside is as good as a day can get in my book. And so Enric and I passed several beautiful temples, shrines and rice fields on our way to the mountains. Back then there was way less information about Mukainokura on the internet, including GoogleMaps, so of course we overshot the side road taking us to the deserted town by a couple of kilometers. After walking back on the beautiful valley road along a small river we finally hiked up the mountain. Almost 200 meters height difference on a length of about 700 or 800 meters – I can see why that village was abandoned! The location was beautiful, but going up and down that slope on a daily basis must have been a pain… Which applies to a lot of villages in the area, about a dozen, all abandoned. Mukainokura is just the most famous one.
Mukainokura was founded halfway through Japan’s most famous era, the Edo Period (or Tokugawa Period), in the early 18th century. Back then people were living off agriculture and by producing charcoal. Growing slowly for one and a half centuries Mukainokura was home to 95 people in 1880, living in about 20 houses. Although in the 1920s the production of ogatan, Japanese charcoal briquettes made from sawdust, brought a more advanced source of income to Mukainokura, the number of inhabitants decreased quickly when gas, oil and electricity replaced charcoal everywhere in Japan after World War 2 – and younger people moved from mountain towns to the big cities in the plains. Mukainokura had:
52 inhabitants in 1960
43 inhabitants in 1965 (12 households – 17 male, 26 female)
10 inhabitants in 1970 (3 households – 5 male, 5 female)
3 inhabitants in 1975 (2 households – 2 male, 1 female)
2 inhabitants in 1980 (2 households – 1 male, 1 female)
0 inhabitants in 1985
After more than 25 years of abandonment there was not much left of Mukainokura. About a dozen wooden houses (half of them completely collapsed, the other half partly), scattered across an area of several hundred square meters, connected by tiny paths, short staircases and terraces. More than two dozen winters with heavy snowfalls left the remaining houses in a dilapidated state – beyond repair actually. Nevertheless a couple of houses were still accessible and full of everyday items like magazines, china, photos, bottles, boxes and cans.
I guess in 2010 Mukainokura had more visitors than in 1980. During our two hour long visit Enric and I ran into four different groups having a look at the abandoned town. From a elderly couple that might have been born here to an early twen couple wearing designer clothes – the guy behind the wheel of the sports car showing his trophy girlfriend the spooky dark side of their home country… All of them were driving up the paved road, not walking, like us and for centuries the inhabitants of Mukainokura did.
The two most vivid memories I have of Mukainokura involved nature though. When Enric and I strolled through the ghostly remains of the village Enric spotted a wild monkey in the forest. It was ignoring us completely, minding its own business – sadly I wasn’t able to get a photo of the furry fella. Right before we were leaving Mukainokura we were following signs to the Ido Jinja, the “Well Shrine” (井戸神社). Turns out that this shrine near Mukainokura’s well is quite famous till this very day, featuring signs that were clearly put up after Mukainokura was abandoned (one was dated, 1991, others looked even newer). The shrine was (and is) accompanied by a Katsura tree 39 meters tall and 11.6 meters in girth, according to the sign 400 years old. A wonderfully tranquil place and the perfect location to stop by before heading home…
The Mt. Hiei Artificial Ski Slope is an abandoned ski resort near the top of Mount Hiei on the border between Kyoto prefecture and Shiga prefecture. Famous for its Enryaku Tempel and the Kokuhoden Museum this holy mountain was once thought to be the home of gods and demons in the Shinto belief system. Interestingly enough the predominantly religion on Mt. Hiei has always been Buddhism. The monk Saicho founded the Enryaku-ji in 788 as the first outpost of the Tiantai / Tendai sect and it remained the Tendai headquarters till this very day, although it was famously destroyed by Oda Nobunaga in 1571 to vanish the rising power of the local warrior monks, killing about 20,000 people (including civilians) in the area. The temple was rebuilt soon after and is one of the main tourist attractions in Shiga prefecture today, accessible via two cable car lines, several beautiful hiking trails and a toll road for cars, motorcycles and busses.
Along the “Kitayama East Course” lies the Mt. Hiei Artificial Ski Slope, probably the most visited haikyo in all of Japan. On an average day during the hiking seasons in spring and autumn you’ll never be alone in the area as people are constantly passing by – about half a dozen hiking trails meet here and a close-by cable car station, serving the longest funicular line in Japan, attracts hundreds of people a day. Most hikers barely notice the abandoned ski lift and ski slope, hardly anybody peeks through the broken windows of the gear rental store or has a look at the undamaged closed restaurant. Why wasting a thought on that ugly stain when the surrounding nature is of such beauty? Because beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and though the ski resort on Mount Hiei was rather small it nevertheless offers a few neat angles now that it is abandoned.
Wanna know some facts about the resort? Okay, this is what I was able to find out: The Mt. Hiei Artificial Ski Slope was opened in 1964 and on November 1st of 2002 the newspaper Kyoto Shimbun reported that the ski resort was closed for good after a hot summer in 2000 and a way too warm winter in 2001 – followed by a year of temporary closing; which explains why both the restaurant and the rental store are still stocked with all kinds of items. In the almost 40 years of operation the already mentioned facilities welcomed customers for both a summer and a winter season. In winter a combination of natural and artificial snow (provided by a snow gun) offered fun for the whole family, in summer grass skiing was the business of choice. A lift transported guest for a distance of 170 meters so they could enjoy the pretty short slope of up to 200 meters with a vertical drop of 38 meters.
Oh, before I forget: The nearby “Garden Musem Hiei”, a flower park, once was an amusement park with a haunted house, a small Ferris wheel and a viewing platform, but I guess it was converted quickly enough to never been considered abandoned.
And that’s it for now from Mount Hiei. For now, because the ski resort was actually my second urbex trip there and my fourth or fifth overall – I really like Mount Hiei! Next time I’ll take you there I’ll either show you an abandoned rest house on a steep slope or a mysterious construction I’ve never seen anywhere else on the internet…
And now to something completely different – an abandoned driving school in Japan. Well, since it’s abandoned and in Japan I guess it’s not that different, but how many abandoned driving schools have you seen? Especially since it’s so much more than just a driving school, at least by what I’m used to.
In Germany a driving school more often than not is a two room “office”. One small real office room and a bigger seminar room where the driving instructor is having his lessons several times a week. Not much more space needed, because German driving schools tend to be small, at least when I got my driver’s license more than 15 years ago. The one to three driving instructors usually are out on the road, because that’s where the real money is for them. Pretty much all driving school cars in Germany are manual / stick-shift cars – probably because there is only one license (no separate automatic-only license!). Most cars in Germany, except for taxis, have manual transmission anyways. A lot of Japanese people are surprised when I tell them about it, even more so when they find out that you don’t have to renew your driver’s license in Germany. It’s lifelong unless you mess up by violating traffic rules too often.
In Japan (and probably your country) the situation is a bit different. First of all: Most cars in Japan have automatic transmission, which kind of makes sense since traffic here can be nerve- and ankle-wrecking. So when you enter a driving school you have the choice between a “general” manual license and a “limited” automatic-only license. And a surprisingly high number of Japanese people actually have a automatic-only license – which feels totally wrong from my German point of view since I would never give up that kind of control over my car; to me shifting gears manually is part of the fun and it (usually…) reduces fuel consumption. Even worse: In Japan you have to renew you license every 3 years, which costs time and money – if you managed to not violate any traffic laws for 5 years you get gold status and have to renew your license only every 5 years. But it gets worse! New drivers have to put a yellow and green sticker to their car denouncing them as beginners. If you are a senior citizen age 75 or above you need a orange-yellow sticker – guess why. (None of that bullshit in the land of the Autobahn!)
The biggest difference between a driving school in Germany and a driving school in Japan is what we would call a “Verkehrsübungsplatz” in German. It seems like there is neither an English nor a Japanese term, but the literal translation would be something like “traffic training location” – a place that has roads and traffic lights and crosswalks, but is on private property, separated from normal traffic; and therefore you are allowed to practice driving there without having a license (if you at least 16 years old, have an experienced co-driver with a regular driver’s license and are able to pay an hourly fee). In Germany those place are separate from driving schools and usually run by automobile clubs. In Japan those traffic training locations are part of the driving school, which is kind of ironic given the fact that Japan has oh so little space… But it gives the students the great opportunity to practice safely in a driving school car. Worst case scenario in Germany: After a couple of theory lessons and a general instruction by the driving instructor you are pushed right into traffic…
About 2 years ago I spent quite a lot of time researching new places. Nowadays you can find at least 50% of the locations popping up on blogs on one map or the other, but 2 years ago that was a dream! (Now it’s actually a nightmare since urban exploration is going to become a victim of its own popularity soon. Maybe not this year or next, but soon…) Japanese blogs have the funny tendency to obscure names by leaving out kanji in the text decriptions, just to show the full name on the photos coming along with blog entry. Happens all the time. In late 2009 I found the blog of a guy showcasing an abandoned driving school, but of course he wasn’t willing to give up the name or even the location. He just said it was a driving school in Hyogo and that the company is bankrupt now, but has a succession company with a similar name. So I did some research with Google and found out about the Daikyo Driving School and its successor. Sadly the original Daikyo school went bust before the internet got popular, so there was no way to find out about the exact locations of the old schools, just the cities they were in. Luckily the same guy was bragging about his GoogleMaps skills – showing different zoom levels of the same place, which turned out to be the driving school. The guy was pretty smart not showing any train stations and other landmarks, but since I narrowed the location of the school to a couple of towns it took me about 20 minutes to compare his screenshots with the current GoogleMaps satellite images and then I knew where it was…
Abandoned driving schools are pretty rare, especially in Japan. Usually they are rather close to train stations since their customers are depending on public transportation. But land close to railroad stations is rather expensive – and driving schools take up a lot of space since they have that huge training area, so I’m sure realtors can’t wait for them to go bust.
The Daikyo Driving School I went to was located in the same distance of 3 train stations, all about 30 to 40 minutes away by foot; forest on one side, surrounded by fields on the other three. Only a few farm houses in sight. And of course the owners of the closest one had to have a big party exactly on the day that I wanted to explore the Daikyo Driving School. Cars were coming almost constantly, parking up to the only entrance of the driving school. So I took my time circling the place, looking for other ways in, but there weren’t any. So after about half an hour I thought “Screw it!” and just went in, not sure if anybody saw me and how they would react if they did. Luckily nobody was able to see or hear me once I was inside since the driving school was slightly elevated with a beautiful view at the surrounding area.
Abandoned places in Japan have a reputation of being mostly undamaged due to the lack of vandalism – which isn’t true. My experience with urbex outside of Japan is limited to Germany and Luxembourg (*Pripyat / Chernobyl* in Ukraine is kind of a special case), but I can’t say modern ruins in Japan are in better condition overall than back home. Some are, some aren’t. The Daikyo Driving School was not. A couple of the inner walls were smashed in, the more solid outer walls were smeared with graffiti. Furniture not bolted to the ground was dragged outside and / or severely damaged, electrical installations were ripped out. Overall the building was in pretty bad shape and I was kind of surprised that the really rusty chairs and tables of the one “modern” lecture room weren’t smashed to pieces. For a rather remote and virtually unknown place abandoned for only about 15 years the school was in pretty bad shape, especially in comparison to other similar locations like the *Jumbo Club Hotel Awaji Island*. It was actually way more beautiful from the outside than the inside. Since it’s getting dark rather early in Japan the training area was equipped with floodlights, now as overgrown as the school building and most other installations on the premises.
Overall the abandoned Daikyo Driving School was a nice and unspectacular exploration, which I appreciate now, two years later, way more than back then – once you’ve realized that a lot of deserted places in Japan are either hotels or mines a unique deserted place like an abandoned driving school is a welcome change.
Pretty much a year ago, a couple of weeks after we explored the *Love Hotel Gion* and the *Biwako Tower & Igosu 108* together, I met up again with my haikyo buddies Andrew and *Damon*. Our goal was a mine in the mountains on the border between Shiga and Gifu, but we got distracted pretty quickly.
Andrew was driving along the highway when Damon spotted a big red building that looked abandoned. We turned around only to find out that the place was not only abandoned, but a pachinko parlor. 2 months prior, while on the road with Jordy, I was able to explore an example of this oh so typically Japanese kind of entertainment location in Shikoku called *Big Mountain Pachinko Parlor* – this time we stumbled across the abandoned K-1 Pachinko Parlor.
While entering Big Mountain was a piece of cake it took us a while longer to enter K-1, but after a couple of minutes we found a way in. Against all odds and to our total surprise K-1 was in similar good shape as Big Mountain. Usually abandoned pachinko parlors are boarded up and / or looted and / or vandalized. K-1 showed some signs of all three factors, but none of them to a point where it hurt the atmosphere severely. When I wrote about Big Mountain I wrote quite a bit about pachinko in Japan in general (and its importance for North Korea), so if you are interested in that kind of background information then *please look here*.
While Jordy and I were in quite a hurry and squeezed Big Mountain between the hotel *shangri-la* and the *F# Elementary School* Andrew, Damon and I were able to took our time – this time we were even able to explore the upper floor Jordy and I missed in Tokushima. Coming up the stairs I found something that made me laugh out loud: Next to a page from a Japanese porn magazine lied a gripper – you gotta love the local humor! (Or was it North Korean humor? Who knows…)
The first room we entered upstairs was the main office / surveillance room. Three big monitors once hooked up to security cameras were still in place, and so was the big safe. Business cards, prizes, furniture and other stuff were scattered all over the floor, making the room quite a mess. The kitchen across the hallway on the other side was in pretty immaculate condition and looked like it was just left the other day. I’m not exactly sure when the K-1 Pachinko Parlor was closed, but judging by the calendars and train schedules on the walls it must have been around summer 2003. (Outside on the building was still a big sign from a real estate company trying to sell the thing – if you want me to make contact for you let me know!)
The hallway itself was pretty cluttered, too. We found some pretty big shoes and lots of porn, magazines as well as videos, in one of cabinets. What is it with porn in abandoned buildings? There seems to be a mysterious connection…
Most of the other rooms on the upper floor were actually living rooms / bed rooms. Some of them looked like they were ready to use, others not so much. One of them was stuffed with countless pachinko machines and spare parts. Also worth mentioning was the relaxing area out on the flat roof. There we found a couch, a table and a TV outside. Since it was snowing I’m sure all items were useless at that point, but I could clearly imagine some exhausted pachinko parlor employees far away from home sitting outside after a tough day of work, chilling with a chilled beer, enjoying their off-hours on a nice spring or autumn evening; you know, living the life!
Before we left heading for the mine we explored a small building across the parking lot of the K-1 Pachinko Parlor. In my article about Big Mountain I explained how the pachinko balls people win are exchanged for prizes since gambling is rather strictly regulated in Japan. Those prizes usually are getting off at “pawn shops” near the pachinko parlor – and the building on the parking lot most likely was one of those pawn shops. It was accessible, but completely gutted and therefore totally unspectacular. Nevertheless it was nice to have seen one of those shops, just to make the experience complete…
*Nara Dreamland* is the current haikyo hot spot in Kansai, maybe in all of Japan. But the area including Osaka, Nara, Kyoto and Kobe is also the home of a classic urbex location: the Maya Tourist Hotel. (A.k.a. Maya Kanko Hotel, Mayakan, Mount Maya Hotel, Mount Maya Onsen Hotel, and Gunkan Hotel – Battleship Hotel / Warship Hotel; similar to *Gunkanjima*, the now also abandoned Battleship Island off the coast of Nagasaki.)
Mount Maya is one of the highest peaks of the Rokko Mountain Range that spreads from the west end of Kobe to Takarazuka (near Osaka) and is one of the most popular recreational areas in Kansai. In 646 the Tenjo-ji (忉利天上寺), a Buddhist temple, was founded near the top of the mountain at the behest of Emperor Kotoku. During the 8th century a monk named Kobo brought a statue from China to the temple – a depiction of Maya, Buddha’s mother; and that’s how the Mount Maya got its name. (The original temple was burned to the ground by a pyromaniac in 1975. The remains are still a popular destination for hikers, although the temple was reestablished further north and at a higher place.)
The Maya Tourist Hotel is located halfway up the mountain and in walking distance of the original Tenjo-ji. It should be obvious how the place got its name… Something I still haven’t figured out is why it took me almost a year to go to the Maya Hotel and another 17 months to write about it, although the hotel is basically in my backyard, just a couple of minutes down the rail on a single line (yes, no need to switch trains!).
Going to the Maya Hotel was actually my first exploration I haven’t done by myself or with a friend, but with a fellow urban explorer: Michael Gakuran. Mike was passing through the area on his way back home from a summer trip to the Seto Inland Sea and asked if I was interested in a joint adventure – and since he runs one of few blogs I actually read it was a pleasure to say yes. Michael likes his abandoned places rather high profile (who can blame him for that?) and so we pretty quickly narrowed it down to the Maya Hotel. The downside of that location: It’s right next to an active cable car station whose employees have a reputation for calling the police if they see trespassers on their way to or on the premises of the Maya Hotel (you have a beautiful view at the roof of the hotel from the cable car station). Since Mike and I are both rather dedicated explorers we decided to tackle the place hardcore style: During my research about the place I found out that there was a steep closed hiking trail up the mountain that leads there without getting close to the cable car station. To be able to take some photos on the rooftop we met at a Hankyu line station before 5.30 in the morning, hiked about 400 meters up the insanely steep, spider web covered abandoned hiking trail to finally reach the hotel; drenched in sweat and out of breath. Osaka / Kobe summers are everything but nice, the temperature barely ever falls below 30 degrees Celsius (even at night!) and the humidity is breathtaking. Especially in the morning, especially hiking up a forest trail, especially close to an abandoned and rotting hotel. Getting up Mount Maya that morning was my worst hiking experience without getting in physical danger and the third worst overall. Oh, and did I mention that I’m not a fan of alarm clocks at 4.30 in the morning? They tend to make me grumpy…
Luckily the anticipation of exploring a legendary abandoned building dominated over my morning grouchiness and so Michael and I reached the Maya Hotel in good spirits. Until we reached the entrance. Which was recently boarded up and ripped apart again. Carefully we got closer, gigantic flying insects the size of table tennis balls buzzing around and landing on us. Footsteps inside. 100%! What should we do? Getting inside? Waiting to be eaten alive by the insects? After a short deliberation we decided it would be better to take our chances with whoever was inside than with the nasty beasts outside, so we passed through the cracked open plywood and entered undaunted by death – only to find out that the footstep noises were created by dripping water. Of course we weren’t convinced right away, but after 5 minutes… well, 10 – okay, after 15 minutes we were confident that we were alone in the big hotel.
The history of the Maya Hotel started in 1929. Four years after the Maya Cable Car (officially Maya Cable Line (摩耶ケーブル線, Maya Kēburu-sen) began to transport tourists to the foot of Tenjo-ji the same company decided it would be a good idea to have a hotel up there – so they built it right next to the upper terminus. Construction began on May 15th 1929 and the Maya Tourist Hotel opened after a record time of just 6 months on November 16th. 15 years later, late in World War 2 on February 11th 1944, the Maya Cable Car was shut down as a non-essential line and the next year the hotel was forced to close, too. I’m not sure though if it was before or after the damages through air raids occurred – on top of Mount Maya were anti-aircraft guns installed and I guess taking them out damaged the hotel. Shortly after the war plans to turn the hotel into an officer’s club for the U.S. Forces fell through. In 1960 the cable car company decided to sell the severely damaged hotel and the new owner began renovations on September 1st. On August 28th 1961 the once so luxurious lodging was renovated to shine in new splendor – with parts from the French luxury ocean liner “SS Île de France” which was disassembled in the spring of 1959 in Osaka. But the grand re-opening wasn’t followed by a streak of good luck and so the Maya Tourist Hotel was forced to close its doors again in 1967, this time after suffering severe damages from a typhoon and a resulting mudslide. A final and finally rather long-term future began in 1974 when the place was re-opened again as the “Maya Student Center”. But the student center was closed in 1994 and the destiny of the Maya Hotel was sealed on January 17th 1995 when it suffered severe damage from the Great Hanshin Earthquake that killed almost 6.500 people – in the aftermath the construction was boarded up and fenced off, and its rise to become one of the most famous abandoned places (haikyo) in Japan began.
Since time was of the essence when Michael and I arrived at the more than 80 years old Maya Hotel we went right to the rooftop to take some photos outside before the crew of the cable car station would appear for work. The atmosphere was utterly eerie. Half of the mountain was covered by low hanging clouds, so at first our sight was quite limited while the sun tried to break through. I felt like in the middle of a horror film, but at the same time I knew there was an active cable car station just a stone’s throw away. A weird, slightly surreal situation. The chimney on the top of the roof collapsed a couple of years ago and was lying there like a gigantic crumbling grey cigar. Crushed through a lower roof on the southern side I saw the famous plane tire that once actually stuck in the roof. (Nobody seems to know where the tire is from and when it got onto, or better: into, the roof. It’s the tire of a B-29 Superfortress though – used in WW2 and retired in 1960.) The tranquility of the place was amazing, totally worth getting up at a time people should rather go to bed and climbing up a mountain at the worst time of the year. Sadly we had to hurry since 8 a.m., our personal roof deadline, came closer – the cable car started at 8.30 a.m. and we wanted to be out of sight with a little bit of a buffer. Only minutes after we got back inside of the Maya Tourist Hotel we heard a sound signal from the cable car station.
Exploring the inside of the Maya Hotel was almost as exciting as exploring the outside. Since the place was abandoned almost two decades ago with little renovation in the years before, there were only a few pieces of furniture left, the most striking one a red leather couch clearly not part of the original inventory As far as I know it was part of a video shooting – at least three Japanese bands used the abandoned hotel as a location for their music videos. Not to mention the countless photo shoots. Urbex, fashion, nudes – its stunning architecture made the Maya Hotel one of the most photographed modern ruins in Japan, probably in the world. Luckily most visitors carry a tremendous amount of respect for the place, so vandalism is a surprisingly minor factor. I guess when you deal with the hassle of getting to the Maya Tourist Hotel without being discovered you rather enjoy the breathtaking theater hall, the beautiful dining room and all the big and little surprises waiting for curious and careful explorers. And you have to be careful visiting the Maya Hotel! Water is running down the walls and dripping from the ceilings, broken stuff is lying around everywhere and the floors are severely damaged. Nevertheless the Maya Hotel as a whole is stunningly beautiful, magical, just fascinating. Nowadays most abandoned hotels get trashed before they get the chance to age properly – the Maya Hotel was abandoned several times and the 1920s architecture offers a completely different basis than the usual concrete blocks that look like they were designed by the same architect and interior designer.
Now I have to bring this pretty long article to an end somehow; maybe by linking to two other blogs. Michael’s “The Ethereal Void of the Maya Hotel” can be read by *clicking here*, for old photos and leaflets I strongly recommend nk8513’s blog *here* (it’s in Japanese, but even if you go there just for the picture material you won’t regret it). Well, other than that let me say that this was my last exploration before I got a wide angle lens and a tripod, so the photos are not nearly as spectacular as I hoped they would turn out to be – considering the age of this blog it’s actually quite old material. I hope the three videos will make up for it a little bit… Oh, and thanks for reading till the very end!
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The White Stone Mine (also known as the White Limestone Mine, the Fujiwara Mine, and the Shiraishi Mine – I guess it can be read Shiroishi Mine, too…) is one of the most famous abandoned places / haikyo in Japan. For years people seemed to be quite vague about its location, but ever since GoogleMaps offers high-res satellite photos of the area pretty much everyone can confirm the whereabouts after a bit of research – when I first heard about the White Stone Mine 2 years ago all I saw was a greenish brown mush 4 hours away by train, plus another 70 to 80 minutes by foot. Not worth the hassle, especially since I had many 100% confirmed places rather close-by back then. And I was still an urbex noob after all. In autumn of 2010, almost a year after my discovery, Michael Gakuran told me that he wanted to revisit the mine with some friends of his and asked me if I wanted to tag along (you can read all about his first trip *here*). Michael and I met twice before for some explorations and it was always great fun, so I didn’t hesitate a second to join the small group.
When I started me trip to the middle of nowhere the weather was great – sunny, 15 degrees Celsius, a nice autumn day. When I arrived at the train station to meet Michael and his friends, a couple of stations before the terminal stop, the weather was still nice. Then we drove towards the mountains and all of a sudden the weather turned. Cloudy… grey clouds… When we finally reached the mine at around 12.30 (traffic can be a trial of patience in Japan…) it started to drizzle – of course I didn’t bring an umbrella. But well, after almost 6 hours I was standing in front of the biggest mine I’ve ever been to and I was looking forward to finally take some photos.
The White Stone Mine is gigantic! Close to three dozen buildings spread across an area of about 500 x 100 meters. Despite its size there is not much known about the Shiraishi Mine. It was founded by two brothers in 1921 and mining ended in 1969, supposedly after severe damage from a typhoon; the last office on the premises shut down in 1974. But the White Stone Mine was not only a limestone mine, it was also a huge chemical plant with facilities to extract calcium carbonate – a very important base substance for the paper industry. I guess in Japan calcium carbonate is mostly used for construction materials (especially cement), but also for the purification of iron in a blast furnace (at least when the White Stone Mine was still in business). Japan’s cement industry is actually huge – Japan still is the #5 consumer, #4 producer and #3 exporter of cement in the world. Japan’s coast line is famous for its sheer endless amount of concrete tripods and when you go hiking you can see surprisingly many concrete roads in the middle of nowhere – it seems like politics and the cement industry are heavily intertwined…
Exploring the White Stone Mine was exciting, sadly we were running out of time quickly. The sun goes down early in Japan, especially on a late October day in the mountains, even more so when it’s raining. Michael was a great experienced guide who was able to point out some of the best and the worst spots of the gigantic area quickly. An area I saw maybe 30% of. Although the mine was abandoned about 40 years ago it seems like there’s still somebody taking care of the premises: Michael pointed out differences to what he saw half a year prior (tarps covering wooden buildings here, new “Keep out!” signs there…) Although we kind of rushed through the lower area of the mine it already got dark by the time we reached the big silos up the slope. When we got back to the car it was already pitch-black outside and raining heavily. Nevertheless it was a great trip and totally worth the long train ride. A train ride I have to do again one day to explore the other 70% of that gorgeous mine… To be honest, I think it will take at least a full day to explore the whole area, maybe two or three days to shoot the whole mine properly. I doubt I’ll have time for that, but the White Stone Mine is definitely one of the few places I would really like to revisit! Even for (half) a day…
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Haikyo HDR photos or not… that was a big questions two years ago.
From the start I wanted to keep Abandoned Kansai simple. A blog instead of a homepage, photos directly out of the camera instead of massive post production – resize to 1024*680, URL in the lower right corner. That’s it. No cropping, not filters, no nothing. I actually shoot in JPG, for almost two years not even in the highest resolution. All the photos published on Abandoned Kansai are done that way. After some positive comments I started to take a few photos in NEF, just in case; maybe 2 or 3%, not one of them I ever opened. When I got a tripod, I started to use the bracket function of my D90 at maybe every fifth location – again just in case. After a while I played around with a freeware HDR program, just for fun. While I like the aesthetics of tone-mapped HDR photos I still consider them mostly a gimmick. Nevertheless I decided to publish some of my experiments – below are two samples, *for more haikyo HDR photos please click here*.
(Updates will be announced on *Twitter* and *Facebook*, not on the main page.)
# What is Nara Dreamland?
- Nara Dreamland is an abandoned amusement park in Nara, Japan. It was closed in 2006 and abandoned without getting demolished – which makes it quite a unique urbex location since all the roller coasters, merry-go-rounds, souvenir shops, arcades and other attractions are still there. (Although it’s up for discussion if the place is really abandoned. It’s closed, that’s for sure, but the owner of the park obviously still cares about it to some degree…)
# Where is Nara Dreamland?
- That’s the kind of questions I usually don’t answer. But since NDL has entries in four language versions of Wikipedia, three of them giving away the exact location of Nara Dreamland, I can as well link to *my own map at GoogleMaps*. The address was / is:
Nara Dreamland
1900 Horen-cho
630-8113 Nara
But just because you know where it is I wouldn’t recommend going there. You might wanna read the next question(s) before rushing out…
# Does Nara Dreamland have security?
- YES! Some people got lucky and didn’t run into security at Nara Dreamland, I got away with plugged feathers – others got roasted and served to the police. The whole park is surrounded by fences, most parts with spikes and / or barbed wire. Warning signs once asked people to call the police if they see somebody suspicious, now the latest signs I saw announced a fine of 100.000 Yen, about 950 Euros / 1300 Dollars! Furthermore there were reports that the guy patrolling there tries to blame caught trespassers for vandalism to get more money out of them. And vandalism becomes more and more of a problem…
# Is there any vandalism at Nara Dreamland?
- Sadly yes. Lots of it. When I explored Nara Dreamland for the first time in December of 2009 there were barely any signs of vandalism. Almost two years later there are graffiti at the former pachinko parlor at the Eastern Parking Lot. The Parking Garage’s staircase is completely sealed now and the Hotel is boarded up again. Inside the park you can see how people smashed the control station of a merry-go-round – the fire extinguisher still on top of broken glass. The Main Street USA clone with all the souvenir shops has barely any undamaged windows and several doors were kicked in, even of buildings that were clearly just a false front. It’s actually pretty sad how fast the place goes down the drain.
# I’ve heard Nara Dreamland is a rip-off of Disneyland in Anaheim. Is that true?
- Definitely. Disneyland was opened in 1955, Nara Dreamland followed in 1961. You have copies of the Sleeping Beauty Castle, Adventureland, Main Street USA, Autopia, Skyway, Tea Party Cup Ride, Submarine Voyage, Flying Saucers, the monorail, the fire station, a pirate ship, double decker omnibusses, vintage cars, and a train station (called DreamStation). Even the entrance looked the same! Of course the layout of the park was very similar – aerial shots make them look like twins. And of course there is the story of Kunizo Matsuo, the man behind Nara Dreamland.
# Can you tell me more about the history of Nara Dreamland?
- Sure. After World War II Japan’s industry was booming. People worked hard and needed some places to relax. The United States were not only occupiers, but also the helping hands for the reconstruction of the country – and the new role models. In the second half of the 1950s a Japanese businessman called Kunizu Matsuo, president of the Matsuo Entertainment Company, visited the States and the brand-new amusement park Disneyland in Anaheim near Los Angeles – and was quite impressed. Something like that would be perfect for Japan, he decided. He became a mediator for the Japanese Dream Sightseeing Company (JDSC) and had direct contact with Walt Disney. The plan was to bring Disneyland to Japan – not to Tokyo, but to the old capital Nara (710 – 794), the cradle of Japanese culture. Matsuo also was in direct contact with Disney’s engineers to create the Japanese version of Disneyland. But Nara Disneyland never came true. Towards the end of the construction phase JDSC and Disney couldn’t agree on license fees for all the famous Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Donald Duck and Goofy – so the Japanese side created their own mascots and abandoned the idea of Nara Disneyland. I have no idea how JDSC and Disney settled in the end (I’m sure JDSC had to pay quite a bit of money for Disney’s “help” even without getting the permission to use Cinderella & Co.), but while Nara Dreamland opened in 1961 it took Disney another 20 years to finally open Tokyo Disneyland on April 15th of 1983. Coincidentally (?) this year marked the beginning of the downfall for Nara Dreamland – the number of visitors began to decrease and JDSC including Nara Dreamland was bought by the supermarket chain Daiei in 1993. Eight years later, in 2001, Universal Studios Japan (USJ) opened in Osaka, just about 40 kilometers away. USJ annihilated Nara Dreamland and the once so glamorous place was forced to shut its doors on August 31st of 2006.
# What were the names of the mascots at Nara Dreamland? And are there famous non-Disney characters present at Nara Dreamland?
I’m sorry, but I have no idea about the mascots. All I know is that there are two of them, a male one and a female one. I don’t even know if they had names…
As for other characters: There are no specially themed rides, but Anpanman is pretty visible at Nara Dreamland. (In case you don’t know Anpanman: He’s the most popular fictional character amongst Japanese age 0 – 12 for 10 consecutive years. Anpanman was created by Takashi Yanase in 1968 as a manga character, but spread to other media quickly (including movies, animated shorts, a TV show and dozens of video games). Nowadays Anpanman is everywhere – imagine Hello Kitty, but popular with girls and boys…)
# Why was Nara Dreamland closed?
- A declining amount of visitors for many, many years – and most of all Universal Studios Japan. By the time USJ opened in 2001 Nara Dreamland already was a rundown theme park decades after its prime. Universal Studios Japan on the other hand was brand-new and high-tech, probably the most modern amusement park of its time. Tokyo Disneyland started the struggle (yes, even though 400km away TDL was direct competition for NDL!) and Universal Studios knocked it down – Nara Dreamland didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell… (Surprisingly enough *Expoland* in Osaka wasn’t affected that much by USJ and closed mainly because of bad press after a 19 year old university student from Shiga prefecture died on a roller coaster in 2007 – and Hirakata Park (also known as HiraPa – ひらかたパーク / ひらパー) between Osaka and Kyoto still doesn’t show any signs of giving up…)
At the height of its success Nara Dreamland welcomed 1.6 million visitors per year, when it closed the number was as low as 400k. Universal Studios Japan on the other hand had 11 million visitors (!) in its first year of operation…
# What was Nara Dreamland’s main attraction?
- Nara Dreamland’s main attraction was (and still is!) the Aska roller coaster (木製コースターASKA, Mokusei kōsutā ASKA), a wooden coaster built by Intamin and opened in 1998. The track was 1081 meters long and reached a height of 30 meters. The trains consisted of seven waggons for four guests each (two rows with two seats). They reached a speed of 80 km/h (almost 50 mp/h) and accelerated with up to 2.8g. Aska is named after Asuka, a city close to Nara – from 538 to 710 it was the capital of Yamato, one of the earliest states on Japanese ground, and the location of many imperial palaces as well as important temples and shrines, some of them still in existence today.
I took a video walking along parts of the abandoned Aska roller coaster – you can check it out on *Youtube*.
# Was it expensive to visit Nara Dreamland?
- The signs at the abandoned Nara Dreamland indicate that it was a pay-as-you-go amusement park (as was Disneyland when it opened in 1955!) – which means that you had to pay a low entrance fee, but then additionally for every single ride. So basically it was up to you how much you spent there. Sadly I never paid much attention to the prices, so let me have a look at some photos and see what I can come up with… Parking was 200 Yen for bikes, 1.200 Yen for cars and 2.000 Yen for busses. Bobsleigh (ボブスレー), the steel roller coaster modeled after Disney’s Matterhorn Bobsleds, was 600 Yen and a haunted witch cave put a hole of 300 Yen in your pocket. As for food: A beer was 500 Yen, chuhai was 400 Yen, takoyaki were 300 Yen, yakisoba was 400 Yen and the Family BBQ Set was 3.200 Yen. I don’t know how much the entrance fee was, but if you get caught by security now it costs you a whopping 100.000 Yen!
# I’ve heard there is a Yokohama Dreamland. Is it related?
- Well, there was a Yokohama Dreamland – it operated from October 1st 1964 to February 17th 2002 and closed, not really surprisingly, because of financial issues. It was located in the Totsuka ward of Yokohama. Unlike Nara Dreamland it was completely demolished – and replaced by a prison. And to finally answer the question: Yes, it was the sister park of Nara Dreamland with a similar layout, similar attractions and the same branding.
# Is there an official homepage?
- There was: http://www.nara-dreamland.co.jp/ (I didn’t make it clickable as it doesn’t work anymore anyways – save your time…)
You can find a copy *here*. (2003, Japanese only)
# How often have you been to Nara Dreamland?
- Never when it was still open and 5 times since it was closed.
# Do you have any plans to go back?
- Concrete, solid plans? No. Security there is the main reason for me not to go anymore. I know people visited the place without getting caught, but I made my own experiences and they were not all pleasant…
# Do you have material for more articles about Nara Dreamland?
- Yes! As of October 2012 I have material for at least half a dozen articles, including some very unique photos…
If you have any unanswered questions about Nara Dreamland please let me know – I might update this posting every once in while. A lot of the information given here was only available in Japanese so far, some stuff I came up with by actually going to NDL – so if you use material for your own articles please be so kind and mention / link to this FAQ. Thanks a lot!
All of the following photos were taken in 2009 and 2010, most of them previously unpublished. The photos I took this year will be published in two separate articles at some point in the future.
(If you don’t want to miss the latest postings you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the*video channel on Youtube*…)
