Special: Nara Dreamland

As Nara Dreamland (奈良ドリームランド,) is getting more and more popular I guess it’s about time to dedicate a special page to this place I love and hate so much – just to organize all the blog entries I wrote about it so far. Pretty much every big haikyo page and even some foreign urban exploration blogs cover this amazing abandoned amusement park, but usually you get some pretty daytime pictures from inside the park and that’s it. I’ve been to Nara Dreamland three times so far (during daytime and nighttime), spotted security twice and got caught once. And I not only have explored the park itself, but also the overlooked and underrated hotel on the eastern parking lot.

When I started my urban exploration adventure in the fall of 2009 one of the first places I stumbled across on the internet was Nara Dreamland. It’s big, it’s famous and its location isn’t really a secret. People were mentioning security, but of course I had to see for myself, so I went to Nara in December of 2009; as one of my first 10 explorations actually. Since I approached from the south I first walked along the southern road surrounding Nara Dreamland and to the unspectacular western parking lot. From there I went to the eastern parking lot with the huge parking garage and explored the strange looking hotel. During that exploration I spotted a security guard on his scooter from the hotel’s observation tower. Since it got late already I called it a day and didn’t enter the park itself. A couple of days later I started this blog, publishing other material first.

In early February I went back to Nara Dreamland, this time with my haikyo buddy Enric. We entered the park and within half an hour I got caught by security – an incident that caused me to write a little rant. Days later I was still pretty upset about how I was treated by the security guard, so I wrote what I considered a risk free article about Nara Dreamland, using only pictures I took from public roads. After that I made my peace with the events and I didn’t even want to write about it anymore. Several months and quite a few picture sets by other blogs later I finally decided to publish the material I shot in December: The Eastern Parking Lot and Parking Garage as well as the Hotel. Still no shots from inside the park. And to be honest: I didn’t plan on going back to take some.

But then in early September I got an e-mail from Tokyo haikyoist Michael John Grist, asking me if I want to tackle the Dreamland again. And against all reason I said yes, so we went to Nara Dreamland together in late September of 2010. Starting at around 1 am we explored and shot the place at night and then gave it a second round right after sunset to get some daylight shots, too, leaving before security even showed up.

Being back to where I got caught half a year earlier wasn’t a pleasant experience, but quite fulfilling as I was finally able to slay my haikyo nemesis.
There will be more about Nara Dreamland soon as I was lucky enough to go back there in February when the place was covered in snow for half a day – you don’t want to miss those unique photos!
On October 21st 2011 I added a *Nara Dreamland FAQ* with lots of background information on Japan’s most popular abandoned amusement park, on February 2nd 2012 *Nara Snowland* followed.
For a look at the area around Nara Dreamland on GoogleMaps, including some fancy icons linking to articles on Abandoned Kansai and videos on YouTube, please *click here*.

And to round up this sum up I will re-post some of my favorite shots I took at the abandoned amusement park Nara Dreamland – for more pictures and detailled information please have a look at the articles linked in this text. (詳しい情報と写真は、テキスト内の上記のリンクをクリックして下さい。)

(And since I expect this article to be a quite popular one, especially with first time visitors: You can follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter and *like this blog on Facebook* - and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)

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