The hotel one man dug out of solid rock #2 interior
Takahashi Minekichi was a rural Japanese strawberry farmer with a vision. For 21 years he carved the beginnings of a grand hotel into the solid rock wall of a cliff face on his land, digging out the contours only he could see. He did it all alone, using only a chisel, until the day he died in 1925.
It was never completed, and no rooms beyond the lobby and kitchen/shrine were ever dug. No-one ever stayed there, but still it remains to this day, thoroughly fenced off and out of bounds.
Inside the Gan Kutsu cliff face hotel, grand staircase.
The abandoned resort of Saurabol on Jeju island
Jeju island at the southern tip of South Korea is (apparently) famous for three things- wind, rocks, and beautiful women. I didn’t see many of the latter, but can attest to both of the former, plus a fourth- haikyo resort hotels. Without really going out of our way on a recent holiday there, SY and I stumbled across four abandoned resorts, two of them pretty grand. All of them had been deserted mid-way through construction, leaving only the bones of their underlying structure.
The Saurabol central entrance.
Ruins of Tama Lake 4. Black and White
The Ruins on Tama Lake changed little since the last time I came to visit. Perhaps the wooden huts of the Red Blossom restaurant have canted a little further towards collapse, and the walls of the Akasaka love hotel were holed and splintered a little more. A new fence has gone up, with warnings of CCTV cameras watching 24/7. Wires dangle from the mock cameras, now only effective as scarecrows to the masses.
Red Blossom huts slide down the hillside in slow motion.
Hotel Queen Haikyo
The Hotel Queen is another abandoned love hotel on the banks of Lake Tama. I first saw it the first time I went out there to shoot the Akasaka and the Red Blossom about 2 years ago. At the time it looked semi-abandoned, with a chain roping it off. I tentatively strode over the chain only to be blasted by a motion sensor alarm. I froze like a deer in the headlights, saw a nearby open door, shoes on the ground beside it, and decided not to push my luck any further. I cycled off, heading for the real meat.
Little dude models for us in the complex office.
Peaceful Haikyo of a Motor Lodge
I don’t know anything about this haikyo- no history, no past claims to glory or modern haunting. Like the Sun Hills Hotel Car Park before it it’s just a place with some beautiful shapes, light, and decay. Nobody goes there, though access is easy. Nothing is there, so there is very little evidence of vandalism, besides the usual broken windows and occasional weak bit of graffiti. For all that, I really liked the place. The light was tremendous, the architecture and lines of the structure very strong, intriguing. The main hub was a circular tower, with spiraling staircases, floor-to-ceiling windows letting in a flood of light, and a sea-shell roof-top that spun up like a winding road to the apex.
Winding stairs in the shell-like motor lodge.
Skeletal hotels on the Sinai Peninsula
The Middle East was the cradle of civilization, once lush and verdant lands ravaged by over-farming, over-population, and ensuing desertification. Modern cities like Dubai in the UAE seek to prolong their existence via their last resource, oil, building vast and bizarre structures in the water and on land in hopes of bringing in business people like tourists to a theme park. It may work. If it doesn’t, this is what it will look like.
Cactus Hotel
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