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…
Top 5 Ruins of the Sex Industry
In ruins the hidden secrets of sex are laid bare. All our most intimate truths come out in the wash. The den of our fornication will rot and mold will form on the sheets where we grunted out our last…
Ruins of the Queen Chateau Soapland, HDR
It was my second time to visit the ruins of the Queen Chateau. It’s a bizarre abandonment, a giant soapland in the midst of a cluster of still-functioning soaplands presiding over them like the towering castle in the suburbs in…
Burned ruins of Japan’s only strip club
The Akeno strip club haikyo is something of an oddity in Japan, as the only actual strip club I’ve seen here. Of course there are similar venues; hostess bars, soaplands, love hotels, but they each cater to a slightly different…
Terrifying tales of the Yui love hotel
The Yui Grand Love Hotel is an abandonment with a more sordid past than usual, if urban legend is to be believed. According to the story, a gang of bosozoku riders (noisy yakuza-ish motorcyclists) kidnapped a schoolgirl into one of…
The Pearl love hotel, overgrown with brambles
The Pearl Love Hotel Haikyo in Tochigi is a wreck in camouflage, deeply nested underneath a blanket of scraggy brown vines. Rooms lie in embers, grown through with ferns; once-bohemian beds, chaise longues and chandeliers lie scrapped, dropped, and despoiled…
The Grand-daddy of all Love Hotels
The Hotel Royal haikyo is the grand-daddy of all love hotels, streaking 7 empty stories up into the big blue sky, a giant vermillion flag on the lakeshore calling out to all and sundry in a mega-watt alto- ‘Need some…
Akasaka Love Hotel
The Akasaka Love Hotel Haikyo reminds us of the importance of that old adage: ‘location location location’. Situated at the far end of a strip of Love Hotels on the lake’s ring road, it’s clear this place suffered for lack…
Ruins of the Queen Chateau Soapland
Japan’s Queen Chateau Soapland is at once a grand but squalid folly; a ruin rising 5 fairy-tale stories into the sky, cornered with towers and capped with bright red tile, representing an era gone mad with indulgence, audacity, and hopefulness….
