I've been itching to get out exploring for weeks ... with my work deadlines behind me it was finally time for my next adventure. The weather was immaculate. Making what I thought would be a dark little adventure, a summerlike stroll in the countryside. Another 6 hours of walking in total ... I could've come here by car if I wanted to. But I prefered to explore on foot, and at my own pace. I'll need some time for my blisters and cuts to heal though. This was the first place I found.
A nameless and unidentifiable mountainside building. This road was full of factories and industrial estates ... so this would have been part of that industry at some point. There may have been some kind of factory production going on at the bottom level at some point, but there wasn't enough remaining machinery to piece anything together. I made my way to the back entrance through 50 metres of bushes. Entry to the top level would've been possible if I was willing to traverse the trecherous floorboards. But I could see the building had mostly been cleared out, making it an unworthy risk. On to the next location.
The ryokan was also next to a huge dumping ground, my last stop of the day. Around twenty vehicles of various types were dumped here ... some used for graffiti practice, some completely absorbed in the undergrowth. I took some time out to peruse the smashed up bus.
I tried unsuccessfully to capture the whole area in one shot ... but you can see the rough size of the area here. As with televisions, you have to pay to dispose of your refrigerator in Japan. I've observed that people here are usually honest and law abiding in most areas of society. In remote Haikyo-strewn locations there is usually a lot of dumping though. Mountainsides littered with televisions. Nothing quite like this though. If anyone needs an argument against the current disposal laws, then this is the place. I continued my way through the bushes and brambles. Computers, bicycles, animal corpses, baby toys. All of them thrown off the edge of the road, to tumble down the hill and slowly rot.
Like several of my fellow explorers I’m reaching a point where all known Haikyo spots of interest in local or neighbouring regions have been visited already … forcing further trips afield and more expensive excursions. I do however believe there are more interesting Haikyos out there waiting to be discovered, so this week was a kind of test of my ability to find something new. On Monday I was able to find a decent hotel ruin in Nagano, but was foiled by security vans and was unable to enter it. This was Friday’s explorations.
Stumbling upon a site out of pure luck is the most unreliable method of finding a ruin. Word of mouth is much better ... but in the absence of new leads I went out to Shizuoka to see if the Wonder Museum Haikyo was still standing. 5 hours later and I was stuck in the middle of a mountain. My bus ride into the countryside had taken me too far and I now had more than an hours walk to get back to where I wanted to be.
Discovering a nameless abandoned resort is hardly a massive find, but it was an exciting little adventure for me on the day. I noticed its dilapidated tennis
courts from higher up the hill but didn’t look any further at the time.
Twenty minutes later I was tempted to explore the back entrance, which
lead to three greenhouses, some ruined structures and some abandoned
but still powered buildings.
Fast forwarding past an exhausting walk down the mountain and (with a bit of local assistance) I see the Wonder Museum in the distance. Nothing in my way now ... except, a group of local labourers camped out in front of the only entrance. I U-turned suspiciously in front of them and was forced to come back later. Whether they’d been paid to be there it or were just hanging out I wasn’t sure. The alternative way in was a tad painful but kept me away from the group out front. I was in.
I'd been meaning to pay a visit to Trick Art Museum in Japan, how odd my first visit should be a ruin. The insides were mostly cleared out, but what remained of the art inside was intriguing. The Haikyo was in extremely close proximity to a local school, no doubt because of this the ruin
seemed like it was a popular hangout for local vandals. The building had been burned
and trashed for everyone's amusement ... and at this rate shouldn't be around much longer.
From the staff quarters you could walk right out onto the roof ... a view I would've enjoyed much longer if I wasn't in plain view of all the surrounding farmers. I took a brochure of the museum as a memento (there were hundreds of them lying around) and took some quick pictures of the exterior just as a new construction crew pulled up outside.
I finished the day on a high ... stumbling upon the real tourist attraction of the local area (a waterfall) after following a trail of abandoned touristy buildings.
Sanzhi’s abandoned holiday resort was truly an oddity, a space-age inspired complex that earned the nickname ‘UFO village’. An eccentric architect known only as “Old Taro” is believed to man behind the design, although it owes an obvious debt to the pod houses of Finnish architect Matti Suuronen, made in the 1960’s. With construction on the site beginning way back in 1978, millions of Taiwanese dollars were poured into the project but design problems and construction conflicts left the village in limbo in 1980. After failed attempts to revive construction years later the site was abandoned for good in 1989. Since then the area had been a curiosity for photographers & travellers and has been used in the occasional feature film.
2 hours of travel by bus, train and by foot and we arrived at the site on a blazing hot day. The demolition of the village was apparently ordered to make way for a new, attractive holiday resort for tourists. Such plans may be far off in the future, or may not materialise at all … as there was were no signs of re-development. Just an enormous flattened area of wasteland.
Relatively close to Sanzhi though I spotted a sizeable abandonded
So, that was it? We’d found a large interesting ruin and couldn’t get inside to take even one photo. The owner of the dogs was in one of the rooms somewhere, and the dogs would make a move on us if we came any closer. I had wanted to share the experience with Sky, but for her own safety it was best for her to stay on the perimeter. We moved round the back and shielded by a loud gust of wind I managed to jumped through the undergrowth into a side entrance. I didn’t know where the dogs were by now, and was fully expecting them to race around the corner to attack me. I made it up the first set of stairs safely.
The rooms were all trashed. Thankfully though they hadn’t been cleared out, with plenty of leftover curios to photograph. With a thin metal pole to protect myself in one hand and my camera in the other I nervously made my way around. Most of the rooms had no windows left. The wind bashed cables, curtains and wreckage all around me as I explored, convincing me there was someone nearby.
Amongst the rubble was this photo of a hotel back in its glory days. At first I thought it was this building, but it has no apparent connection. It does gives you some idea of the time period this place was abandoned, as do the scattered cassette tapes and cracked books that were lying around.
As you can see there was some thick undergrowth to get through. I entered what I thought was the best path, making the time-honoured mistake of not checking the whole area for an easier entrance. The undergrowth became thicker and denser and was a real struggle to get through. The payoff in the end was very little. All three houses had been cleared out, with no clues as to what the buildings were used for. Insects attacked me, scary unknown creatures hissed at me at deafening pitches and creepy lizards darted around the buildings. Dirty, sweaty and cut up I emerged over the far side through an easy exit ... which (had I entered it) would've spared me all of my cuts and scrapes.
It was time for another weekend of adventure. Namely, getting up at 4.30am, travelling for hours deep into the mountainous landscapes of Izu … to finally meet up with my fellow explorers around 9am. I’d missed out on the first day of Mike Grist’s road trip, but I was free and able to join the second day of exploration around Izu, provided I got up crazily early.
The idea of Haikyo as a ‘fun’ activity still takes a bit of getting used to for me. I go for the fear more than anything else, which usually mutates into paranoia and (combined with the right soundtrack) takes me to a dark place I often wish I hadn’t gone to. But this trip was plain fun. Mike Grist, JC & Canadian Mike were great company to have on an pretty extensive journey around Izu. The first place we headed to was a Haikyo I’d previously been searching for online, days before. Finding addresses/maps for ruins is always frustating business … so imagine my reaction after failing to find it, I see the elusive building completely by accident, on my train journey there.
A seminar house is a kind of a summer school for University students. Draw what conclusions you may from an educational institution such as this becoming a ruin … I didn’t spare it much thought as we drove back up the coast to find it. After getting lost on a nearby mountain for some time we found the entrance and headed inside.
It was a big place, with many rooms to explore … the first floor had the crumbling dining area and kitchen, with the classrooms and the tatami floored guest rooms on the upper levels. Most guest rooms had enjoyed some cheap, chu-hi and cigarette fueled parties … as witnessed by the leftover trash and a mystery human turd on one of the sofas. Nice.
I could’ve spent much longer exploring there, but everyone had finished their tour of the building as I was on the second floor. I am officially the slowest Haikyoist around.
We could see from the entrance yard the site was semi-live ... so we were prepared to run into somebody at some point. It was one of several mines in the area, this one (Seigoshi) was a former gold mine thought to be abandoned around 1987. There were a number of buildings to explore scattered around the mountainside. A fair amount of trecherous clambering was involved to get around, particularly at the building with the abandoned mine cart.
We went back to the main building last and this proved to be the most interesting. Mysterious looking store rooms, boxes labelled 'TNT' and even a computer room awaited us after we each found our way over the fence.
I'd seen numerous posts about Izu Sports World before, seeing it with my own eyes I was blown away at the sheer size and scale of the ruin. This is definitely one place all explorers should see before it finally gets demolished. To its detriment though the place has seriously been graffitied to fuck. The newly added Taro Aso stencil looked cool, but the majority of it was an eyesore and took away the ruin atmosphere.
I didn't know exactly how much there was to see here until it was almost time to go. I managed to see most of the main buildings ... the Sports World accomodation, then only a quick survey of the water slides at the far end of the park. It wasn't a long standing ambition of mine to explore a women's changing room, but I did that too just for the crack. If I had a bit more experience I would've realised the advantage of capturing the ruin during the sunset ... but Mike did a great job for me this time.
The Hotel Royal or Hotel Yui in Chiba is a ruin with a particularly dark history. After unsuccessful days as a love hotel, then a restaurant-slash-Hotel this establishment fell into disrepair, then became used for other purposes. Namely desperate people came here to die and most famously an innocent schoolgirl was kidnapped and eventually strangled here by a group of young miscreants. All of which has made the ruin famous in the local area for all the wrong reasons. According to internet folklore the ruin is so popular amongst ghost hunters that (and I paraphrase) “people queue up outside the hotel at midnight to listen to the ghostly screams inside”.
Michael John Grist has been to some creepy ruins in his time, and for this particular Haikyo I was glad to have some company. Mike was kind enough to take care of driving duties on the day, and after an early start we found the hotel in no time.
The sign on the main tower was missing, and it was slowly being swallowed by undergrowth … but there she was. Good as old. On the ground floor all of the doors and some of the walls had been taken out, making it a significantly less creepy open-plan exploration. No-one seemed to be around, so we were safe for the time being. What’s left behind … the photos and the small pieces of peoples lives is really what makes these experiences for me.
The second level was a lot more interesting. The familiarly kitsch, brightly coloured Japanese love hotel rooms … this time smashed up to within an inch of their lives. Without exception every window was smashed, every bed was broken, every door had a hole in it and the insides of every cupboard had been booted in. As much as I hate such mindless vandalism you’ve got to give them some weird kind of credit for their consistent application of destruction. Plenty of people left their name tag graffitied on the wall, and I was most amused to find a floppy disk the size of a 12-inch record sleeve.
The burnt out rooms at the far end of the Hotel were by far the most atmospheric. If rooms exist in any living sense then their dark, damaged remains are their cremated bodies. Some fool will eventually burn the hotel down properly, but for now it’s in one piece.
Entry to the park was in short: an ordeal. There was a main gate with a tunnel which led straight into the park, but that was throroughly barb wired up. That entrance aside, the park was protected so effectively on all sides by mountains it defied belief. If there were any doubts about our commitment to this adventuring lark though, we showed how serious we were willing to get that day. Crawling through the far side barb wired entrance, battling our way through the undergrowth, scaling the muddy mountains …
It was hard not to think of Lost when exploring the park. All the surroundings were straight out of the show …the tunnels, the tropical trees, the strange objects on the horizon which stuck out of the trees. Even though the park failed to deliver much in the end there was always the feeling that some great discovery was around the corner. For us explorers it was disappointing to see what could’ve been. The park hotel, amusement rides, stalls and decorations. Somebody got detailed orders to demolish anything and everything in sight, leaving only the empty animal enclosures, some tunnels and behind the scenes-type rooms. Both me and Mike have our own lists of types of ruins we want to visit. This was a unique one, and worth the visit, but left us needing a shower more than any of you can imagine.
I got up at the crack of dawn to visit Lake Sagamiko ... a place I'd previously visited a few months earlier to see the Hotel Royale. Having been driven through the area on the way to Nagano in Golden Week I'd seen at least two places I knew were potentially worth a visit. After a long walk around the lake I found 'Something' ... a snack bar which was most definitely abandoned, but not yet a ruin. 0 for 1.
The second place was the not so glorious remains of the Hotel Sagamiko. Like the last time I saw it, the doors were left wide open ... what the hell? What I didn't see the last time was a rather eager guard dog ... who was very well-trained to attack & alert the neighbours about intruders.
After making a not so subtle exit I started a long walk along the main road. I found a creepy looking set of abandoned but empty apartments, then continued a long walk off with no particular direction in mind. After 2 hours of random, mapless exploration I entered what looked like an interesting place.
"Jehovah No!" exclaimed the first of many, many signs up around the village. I couldn't read anything else on the signs other than 'Jehovah' so I was intrigued as to what the hell was going on.
Some rooms suffered from some kind of infestation,
so I headed on up to the room to find a mini golf area. There was
suddenly quite an increase in the passing human traffic ... were they
coming to see what I was doing ... or was I ok? I usually get the
jitters doing this alone, so I moved outside to document the stacks of
abandoned objects.
I'm a light guy, so I felt confident the old scaffolding wouldn't be a problem. Putting one foot almost immediately clean through the floor taught me otherwise. I could scramble back up, but it became clear this was genuinely trecherous. The slow trickle of passerbys however become an entire ... school. What luck. There was a high school way up the on the hillside ... and almost every single student walked by the house shouting "What the fuck! There's a strange guy over there!" or words to that effect. I had more than 20 minutes of that to put up with, but the interesting collection of objects outside made up for it.
After leaving the Pension House I ventured back into the village and asked an old man about the Jehovah signs. He was a man of few words, but he explained that there were a Jehovah's Witness' building in their peaceful village. I know the Jehovah's Witnesses aren't popular as such but in a country that's ok with a group like Sokka Gakkai, are they really so bad? Japan is a pretty tolerant place ... so to see signs saying "Jehovah's GET OUT" with skulls on it is quite shocking. That was it for the day. I think I walked around 7 hours in total and my bones are still aching. Crazy I know, but you never know what surprises are in store out there.
It was my first time on a motorbike. And despite my best efforts to be cool, I was holding on for dear life! The Hotel was a short ride from the station, the easy part. The front of the Hotel Royal however was thoroughly boarded. The sides ... safely locked or barb wired up. Getting inside was going to take some creativity. We eventually had to go down the fairly treacherous hillside to get in ... it felt like a proper adventure, right from the get go.
The first place we gained access to was the generator room. Nothing special there, so we had a look around the rear of the building. Lots of junk around, old slot machines, shoes ... but no open doors. Some of the first floor windows were already smashed in, so we eventually had to clamber up and in through one of them. Some of the back rooms had some light in them, the main lobby though was pitch black.
My digital camera started to die on me, (awful timing!) so I lead the way with my torch while Brian was in charge of documenting everything. Among the curiosities in the lobby were a pair of mystery panties on a red couch and a curious metal fire-escape/shute.
There was eventually a photo board of all the different rooms you could select, so we used that to find the most interesting rooms.
In the halls and stairwells there were lots of random junk from previous explorers. Random unmarked Video cassettes were surprisingly creepy (Ringu anyone?) and some entire floors were covered in slime from from left-over cleaning solution or god-knows-what. We decided to start from the top level, which turned out to be the staff area with a kitchen, dining table and storage area.
Even for a love hotel there was a disturbing amount of pornographic videos around. Even more disturbing were the titles of the videos 'Vestal Virgins', 'Anal Adventures' ,'The Horny Dog'. With the internet it's obvious these things exist now, but for an 80's era hotel it was a little bit shocking that
It was a voyeurists gold-mine of personal belongings too. Pictures of the owners friends and family left behind on the floor, along with Laser Discs (Teen Wolf!) and 80's TV/audio equipment.
Weirdest find of the day was a bottle of Chinese alcohol with a decomposing Gecko inside of it.
They sure don't make clocks like this anymore.
I found a key on the floor so (Silent Hill stylee) I put it in my pocket in case I needed to use it later. As we started explored the many rooms in the towering hotel, keys were something we most definitely needed. One by one we checked each room, only to find every single one locked with a sturdy metal door. I tried my key on almost every door, but no dice. Half way down I found another abandoned key, obviously from another frustrated explorer. It dawned on us that we might not be able to access any of the rooms at all ... when we reached a floor with a balcony and managed to squeeze in through the window of a room at last.
This room was also pilled up with stacks of porn, with maps/blueprints of the hotel rooms making it even more Silent Hill-like. As a designer and a 80's geek I was bowled over by some of the 80's designs we found, like this phone. There's no room in any design book or museum for phones like this, but I lurve these kind of stuff.
Upon my suggestion we headed back down to the lobby area to see if there was place where all the keys were kept ... and sure enough there was. Jackpot! Some of the keys were missing ... and there were no room numbers on each one so we had no idea if these were the right keys. The most interesting room featured a giant rainbow-coloured column of light in the centre, so we grabbed the key for that room and several others.
All the keys worked! It was quite difficult to photograph, but here was room 701 (sadly with its rainbow column not lit-up). As my camera was refusing to take pictures half of the time I left it mainly to Brian (with his vastly superior digital SLR) to take shots of the rest.
Since the Hotel had only been closed for a matter of years (2006, I recall) there wasn't much in the way of dilapidation ... a lot of the remaining rooms were in extremely good condition and therefore had no real-interest value. After that we found the entrance to a sewer below, but had already seen most of the interesting points in the hotel. All of this exploring, had taken several hours ... so after taking a few more shots of the exterior it was time to say goodbye to the Hotel Royal. Going with a fellow-explorer definitely took away some of the fear-factor that comes from exploring buildings in the darkness, making it more of a feel-good, (rather than feel-creepy) adventure!
I've done a lot of exploring in my time off recently. Finding ruins here is relatively easy, but the majority of them are (naturally) extremely well boarded up, closed off, and or bolted shut. So, it's only really from tip-offs that it's possible to find anything. One of which was the idea to check out a sleepy city in Chiba. Me & Kozue took the bus there on a day with glorious sunshine ... the perfect day for sometime outdoor exploration.
It wasn't long before we found something. We wandered into the main shopping/business district and found a very thoroughly boarded up Garden Centre (above). I took one photo, much to the suspicion of one man walking past. It was pointless hanging round anymore, so I happily strolled off ... in the distance I looked back to see the man bring out all of his workmates from the neighbouring building to come out and point at me. I gave them a friendly wave, and they waved back.
After a brief stop for lunch we found an abandoned factory and a snack bar on the same street. Both were in pretty plain view of a busy road of traffic, and close to a large police station, so we gave up on that part of town. The next two hours yielded no finds of any kind ... so it became a very real possibility that the whole day would turn up absolutely nothing at all. I'd deliberately stayed away from the main road in our route as I thought (in all my wisdom) that the main Haikyos are never located on the most populated roads. Well, I was wrong again ... as soon as our path met up with the main road the excitement from being surrounded by ruins kicked in.
This Izakaya hadn't been abandoned for very long ... so it lacked the fascination that comes with stepping back in time to a dated & dilapidated location. Looking at calendars is a great way of identifying exactly when buildings are abandoned. From what I could make out the calendars here hadn't been changed since either September 2005 or 2006. The back room was obviously still being used for storage, even if the owners had done a runner on their business, leaving all of their bills in a large dusty pile in the entrance. They had some interesting ornaments and some questionable taste in posters.
The main Haikyo I found from the day was the Garage. At first I thought it was just an empty forecourt, but some exploration out the back found a whole host of other things. Kozue thought it best to leave me my own to explore at this point, so I headed on in.
The side office was wide open and full of overgrown plants and car parts/repair kits. The calendar was from 2003, and as there was no sign of vandalism I'm guessing it's been a good few years since anyone has been here.
This place was creepy. A pitch-black bunker which was some kind of repair centre for vehicles. I had my torch, so I was feeling brave enough to venture inside. Nothing much there after all, some random car seats and spare parts.
The door to the garage itself was hanging open, but it was pretty dark inside, so difficult to take any photos of any real quality. The light was starting to go, so I had to keep moving. Just two doors down was another Haikyo with the front (and side) door wide open. Too good to be true...
Junk House as I've dubbed it, was full of junk. It was probably a shop of some kind but I have no idea what kind. And I can't even start to explain all the crap that was in there. As I got my camera out to start taking pictures a blue van noisily rushed down the road and skidded up outside the house. I'd been found out. I'm not a big fan of cowering in the darkness but that was my best option at the time. The problem was that there almost no space to hide behind anything, so I stuck out like a big sore thumb. The jig was obviously up, so I noisily clattered out of the house and legged it down the road. Paranoia sometimes gets the better of me. And with no chase in sight it was just as likely the van had pulled up to access the building site opposite the house. Either way, I headed off in a different direction.
My next weird find. These were (in their day) 'Deluxe' box-sized mini hotel rooms located just off from the local highway. Now, they look bunkers of torture, bright red with rust and graffited to hell. The (locked) front doors were the only entrance, and the lack of any rear or side windows/light sources made them look even more suspicious.
I may never have guessed what the hell this place was. I could get inside, but there were only two small areas and a mysterious looking old-style machine. An unmanned rice polishing place is the answer. More modern versions of this were dotted around the area ... guess people in the countryside really like having their rice whiter than white. Time was almost up so I made one last attempt to go into the junk house, in complete darkness now.
By torchlight I discovered some weird shit in that place. A giant teddy bear, photocopy machine and this guy!
From what I could tell this was the real deal, a stuffed dog. Probably the owners' beloved pup, decked out in some hideous clothing and with it's wrists bound together. W e i r d. I attempted to look around the shop some more, but there was so much stuff on the floor I could barely walk. I finally got properly stuck, knee deep in crap in the first room, so I called it a day and headed back to the station to find Kozue. It was difficult to tell if some places were abandoned during the day, but walking back along the dark roads there were at least 10 maybe even 20 more places along the main road which were completely discarded/deserted. One wrecked, old, wooden house was in the middle of being rebuilt, but as the builders had gone home I could enter the house thanks to the lack of a side wall. There were plenty of interesting nicknacks, but with my camera batteries dead I couldn't document any more.
All-in-all Chiba was a very drama-free Haikyo experience. Nothing mind-blowing this time ... but if I can make it back a second time I'm sure I can find something more interesting, like the abandoned Pachinko parlour I've been tipped off about.
People were very sensitive about me walking around town. Even on some normal streets when I wasn't doing anything some people came out of their shop or restaurant just to check what I was doing. "We don't like strangers 'round here!"
The Nagano Haikyo exploration story ends on a weird note. The light was going and it was almost time for to meet back up with Kozue again. But the Haikyo rush left me wanting more ... and as I was becoming braver with the places I entered I was determined to find one last, great ruin to finish off my experience.
I made the long walk back along the Haikyo road ... the places I didn't get the chance to see inside calling me. I had found more than 10 abandoned snack bars in the town centre. But they were all in populated buildings, so was no way to make it happen. My explorations down a back alley led to the discovery of a discarded Super Nintendo ... then an interesting looking building.
At first I couldn't work out what kind of place it was at all ... I wandered around staircase after staircase with a flashlight finding only store rooms, bedding in the hallway and the occassional mosaic-ed bathroom. There seemed to be a main room ... but when I opened the sliding door more than a crack, some force seemed to move the door closed again. I thought for a second that there could have been somebody inside... then remembered how another sliding door I tried to open earlier had given me similar difficulties. Your mind doesn't half play tricks on you in these places! The maze-like hallways were dark and creepy. Dead rodents on the floor, flooded in places ... the ceiling completely collapsed in one area. I managed to open a door at last and finally concluded it was a Ryokan.
Unsatisfied with the rooms I'd found I decided to try and enter the main room one more time. Someone had put a small heater to block the other set of sliding doors, so I moved it and stepped inside. A perfectly preserved room. Wow. Kotatsu heater on the floor, large photographs of family members hung on the walls and belongings left exactly as if somebody was still living there. This was going to make a great photograph. Then I noticed the phone. Two red numbers flashing on the panel ... the phone line still connected. I was not alone. The force that had shut the door before was human, and it was time for me to get the fuck out of there. In the darkness hid an old woman ... I didn't see her face, she didn't speak a word ... but we'd met each other. A ruiner and a trespasser. I shouldn't never have entered that building. I can only imagine how scared she must have been.
