Izu’s abandoned Jungle theme Park #3 souvenirs

August 18, 2010 · Posted in Haikyo, Izu, Shops, Theme Parks · 13 Comments

Across the road from Jungle Park was this smashed-up restaurant/souvenir shop. I`ll guess it wasn`t actually connected to the theme park, though it probably survived on the tourists who came there. Inside it felt inhabited, with clothes hanging on rails to dry, but I didn’t run into anyone. The area was very still for most of the time I poked around, with hardly even any cars going by.

‘Kotobu’ (the sign on the front) may be the stem of ‘Kotobuki’ which means ‘Congratulations’.

Izu’s abandoned Jungle theme Park #2 inside

August 9, 2010 · Posted in Haikyo, Izu, Theme Parks · 12 Comments

Jungle Park was easily the biggest green-house I’ve ever been in, and boy was it hot inside. H-O-T. And very humid. Within minutes I was soaked to the skin, and any time I had to climb something I was panting with the exertion. You can probably see that on the video a few times.

Wandering through its long tail-like corridor to the main jungle hub, I of course wondered where all the humidity was coming from. It’s sealed off from the outside, and has been closed for 7 years. Why isn’t everything inside baked and dead?

Giant’s greenhouse.

Izu’s abandoned Jungle theme Park #1 outside

August 2, 2010 · Posted in Haikyo, Izu, Shizuoka, Theme Parks · 14 Comments

Izu’s Jungle Park is an immense abandoned green house, an indoor botanical garden sheltering nearly 10,000 square meters worth of sweltering tropical habitat. It was built in 1969, and its peak of operation came in 1973 when it received 750,000 visitors per year. By 2003 over 10 million people had passed through its vast and humid acreage, but its facilities were showing their age and fewer and fewer people were coming each year. It was closed in the fall of 2003, and has lain fallow there like a giant white tent for the past seven years.

Jungle Park`s main entrance.

Kyushu’s dying theme park- Ceramic Land

July 21, 2010 · Posted in Haikyo, Nagasaki, Theme Parks · 17 Comments

During Japan’s real estate Bubble in the 1980′s, theme parks were the investment to make. They couldn’t fail. Sink millions into expensive construction, land, and man-power, and ride the surging economy to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All those decades of post-war militaristic industrialism had finally paid off, and people were finally taking more leisure time and traveling further afield to enjoy it- you couldn’t go wrong with a theme park.

Except of course, you could. The Bubble burst like an over-ripe peach and all the wacky ideas that before had seemed so bright- The Russian Village, Gulliver`s Kingdom, Sports World, now were black spots on the company ledger that had to be redacted from public view.

Glorious pylons in back echo the building`s form.

The beautiful ruined tubes of Sports World

September 18, 2009 · Posted in Haikyo, Izu, Theme Parks · 10 Comments

Sports World is probably my favourite haikyo in Japan. In an upcoming top ten list of ruins in East Japan I’m putting together, it will more than likely be number 1. It’s just so awesome. It’s massive, 20 years abandoned but relatively intact, and set in a really beautiful forested mountain area. There are creepy screaming monkeys/birds at night, models on fashion shoots by day, and all manner of ways to entertain oneself clambering, clowning, and investigating the rest of the time.

Blue tubes.

The sadness of Namegawa Island

July 3, 2009 · Posted in Chiba, Haikyo, Theme Parks · 25 Comments

Namegawa Island is a big failed bird theme park, one that up until fairly recently held its own against the twin Disneys standing astride the Chiba peninsula, past which any bird-aficionados would have to run the gauntlet to reach it. It sits perched on a precarious jag of forested coastline, completely blockaded from the mainland by a wide swath of mountains stretching from edge to edge, accessible only through tunnels that are now thoroughly gated and barbed.

namegawa111

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