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Ruin of a century-old Japanese prison

Kyu Nagasaki Prison was built in 1907, one of five `ultra-modern` Meiji-era prisons built throughout Japan. Its Victorian design is attributable to a research mission to study European prisons conducted by the Meiji government. Within its five meter-high red brick wall, a five-pointed prison block held up to 800 high-security prisoners. The prison went out of use in 1992, becoming  a haikyo. 15 years later the wall and most of the interior complex were demolished after complaints from the growing number of housing developments being built in the surrounding area. Now only the abandoned front gate and gatehouse remain.

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10 Abandoned Chairs

The haikyoist must be prepared to sit in any chair at any time, due to the extreme fatigue caused by walking around a bit. Walking around a bit though is not the only trial haikyoists must undergo, there are also such tribulations as- having to step over a bit of wire or maybe do a bit of climbing, having to repeatedly make comments like- `dude I`m so creeped out right now`, and having to keep a third eye peeled for ghosts, all of which can be pretty draining. The skill of sitting in just about any chair to recoup lost HP is a necessity.

Here’s a range of 10 ruined chairs from around Japan.

Shin Shu Kanko hotel lobby

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Top 5 Ruins of the Japanese Sex Industry

I’ll be doing a series of haikyo articles on the website Atlas Obscura over the next few weeks/months. We`ll start with 5 ruins from the Japanese sex industry, and move on to other topics like ghost towns. At the same time as he’s putting them up on the Atlas- I’ll be putting them up here.

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Boyou Hotel Haikyo- Demolished

A few weeks back I took the bus down to the bottom of the Chiba Boso Peninsula in search of the Boyou Hotel. I got to take the sub-Tokyo Bay Aqualine for the first time, which was cool, but I felt too ill to enjoy being on the Umi Hotaru. I had some kind of food poisoning from the Mexican place El Torito in Ikebukuro. I ended up staggering around the small seaside town looking for a place to lie down. The hotel was gone, demolished, so I settled in a culvert of rock looking out at the empty ocean and sky.

I ended up riding the next bus back, in misery for 3 hours with nausea and fever. Kind of a fail day on all fronts, though for some reason I didn’t feel too bothered. It was nice just to get out and go down to Chiba I guess, even though I was sick.

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Asama volcano museum 3- Return to the ruins

This was my second time to go to the Asama Volcano Museum. The first was on my first haikyo road trip back in 2007- back when I was packing only a cameraphone to shoot with and cared far more about the explore than I did about the photography. It was an amazing place to ‘discover’ for ourselves, our nerves on high wires the whole time as the ethereal music rang out from the rooftop. In the two intervening years the balance of my interests has changed, with photography coming to the fore, perhaps naturally, over exploring. The Asama Museum has been shot pretty extensively though, and it’s becoming a challenge to see it in a new light.

From the fore, in HDR.

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Asama Volcano Museum 2- History of the Haikyo

The Mt. Asama Volcano Museum was a mould-breaking facility opened in 1967, offering insight into the life-cycle of the most active volcano in Honshu (the main island of Japan), and into the area of volcanic rock surrounding it known as Oni Oshi Dashi (exiled demons). Its opening ceremony was attended by then-Crown Prince Akihito (now the Emperor) and his young wife Crown Princess Michiko (now the Empress). It was the beginning of an exciting new era for Japanese science. It has since been voted one of the top two haikyo in Japan.

The main facility under construction.

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