Relics of Camp Drake in Saitama, Japan
Camp Drake was a joint US Army/Air Force base in Saitama, active until the 1970`s. It contained a hospital which handled troops coming out of Vietnam and also a communications array. Now about half of it remains, an overgrown jungle with only a few remaining buildings set back behind several layers of fencing. The other half has been eaten up by parks and a junior high school.
Tanks in a shed by the commissary.
Izu roadside haikyo
Here`s a haikyo I chanced upon almost a year ago in Izu, while haikyoing with Mike (and Jason?). It`s not particularly awesome in any way, it just has some nice peeling red and white paint, and a cool Coke fridge.
Front yard.
Izu’s abandoned Jungle theme Park #3 souvenirs
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
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
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.
Ruin of the White Root Mine
The White Root mine is old, so old that only the faintest outlines of its bones remain. Squint hard and you might see fragments of its ribcage scattered over the hillside, parts of a cracked skull just visible through the topsoil. Once it must have been huge, swathing up and down the valley and pumping out smoke, now there’s just a single slurry run and a few walls left.
I went there ages ago, on the same road trip that took me to the Gunma Ski Lift, Hume Cement Factory, and back to the Asama Volcano Museum.
Some kind of storage vat, I wager.
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