Furin Hotel in Chiba Prefecture Photo: Shotaro Honda Moore
travel

5 of the creepiest abandoned places in Japan

9 Comments
By Randiah Camille Green

We crept around the hallways of the love hotel quietly as walls sagged and floorboards bent beneath our feet. There was no lovemaking to disturb, though—the hotel had been abandoned for at least 10 years. It was one of Japan’s many haikyo or ruins, lusted after by urban explorers.

I’ve crawled my way into a few decaying buildings back home in America, but nothing compares to urban exploring in Japan. Though obviously dilapidated, Japan’s ruins remain frozen in time like an alternate reality of the last day they were occupied. Hotels with medieval-themed decor still intact and amusement parks with rusted games sit in place as if one day someone simply got up and walked away from them.

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A shooting game from the abandoned Western Village amusement park in Tochigi Prefecture Photo: Randiah Camille Green

Taking pictures of abandoned buildings as a hobby sometimes gets a bad reputation for exploiting someone’s misfortune or tragedy for the sake of an Instagram aesthetic. For that reason, it’s important to know the history around these spots, and not to disturb anything you may find.

Here are some of the most interesting and totally wicked haikyo in Japan.

Furin Love Hotel (Chiba)

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Does this room turn you on? Photo: Randiah Camille Green

Ten themed rooms for lovemaking are available at the Furin Hotel in Chiba’s quiet countryside. Choose from a traditional ryokan (Japanese inn) style or Greek deco room complete with Grecian pillars. My personal favorite is the medieval room decked out with full-scale armor, sexy red curtains, and a grandiose chandelier.

Not much is actually known about this haikyo, but it is one of the most popular amongst urban explorers for obvious reasons. Now it sits in a sunken state of disrepair with collapsed ceilings making half of the rooms inaccessible.

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Sleeping Venus. Photo: Randiah Camille Green

It’s too bad it was abandoned in 2010 because I would have liked to spend a night here myself. Perhaps sex isn’t quite the lucrative business in a countryside town with an aging population.

Click here to read more.

© GaijinPot

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9 Comments
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Does anyone know about the laws in Japan surrounding visiting these places? I'd love to go check them out but don't want to break the law.

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These haikyo are slowly becoming extinct, even Tokyo used to be littered with them but within the past 10 years they've all been torn down.

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Any foreigners looking for thrills will be thrilled to know that they could be detained in the local koban for a couple of days after exploring buildings like those in the article...

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Does anyone know about the laws in Japan surrounding visiting these places? I'd love to go check them out but don't want to break the law.

Its basically trespassing, the writer of the article has technically admitted to committing criminal offences in entering them without permission. While these properties are "abandoned" in the sense that nobody is using them and they have become dilapidated, they are still actually owned by people, corporations or governments and random members of the public aren't allowed to just barge their way in.

The pictures are neat, but articles like this really should contain a disclaimer about the legal risks that go along with this type of hobby.

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When the Japanese navy soldiers retreated to their underground headquarters, the Americans flooded them with poisonous gas.

I always thought the US didn’t use poison gas during WWII.

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I always thought the US didn’t use poison gas during WWII.

That was my understanding too. There is some discussion on the topic at the link below.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14633/did-allied-forces-use-chemical-weapons-in-okinawa-during-world-war-ii

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I would worry about structural safety than anything else.

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