Ruins of the USAF base Camp Drake in 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…
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…
Burnt Down House haikyo
When I went on the wedding haikyo shoot a few weeks back we stumbled upon this burnt down house. Normally I`d bypass it in favor of the target- in this case we were looking for the Hume factory, but that…
Haikyo Pachinko Hall
Last week`s haikyo wedding shoot at the Volcano Museum was supposed to only be the first of two locations. We scarpered out of there at double-time to make it to the Hume Cement Factory in Saitama, a place I visited…
Exploring an Abandoned Japanese Castle-Shrine
Japan is riddled with shrines, both in cities and out in the countryside, huddled in the basin of wintry valleys or perched precariously on top of mountains- often at points of raw natural beauty and power. From time to time…
Ancient Ruins- 100 cliff-tombs of the Jomon period
The Hyaku Ana Cliff Tombs in Saitama are ancient, easily some of the oldest ruins in all of Japan, dating back 1300 years to a time of almost pre-history- such that very little is known about them at all. They…
The hotel one man dug out of solid rock #1 exterior
The Gan Kutsu Cliff Face Hotel in Saitama is the relic of a dream, one man’s vision to carve out a massive hotel in the sheer rock face, working alone with only a chisel for 21 years until the day…
Memories of Nichitsu 4. The Dr.’s brain in a jar
Nichitsu is a tiny little village huddled in a chilly mountain pass, far from the nearest population center. Come an emergency the Doctor’s office would have been the only ER, so its few rooms were crammed full of equipment, now…
Nichitsu 3. A fire truck in the ghost town
Nichitsu Ghost Town stretches for around a kilometer, from the semi-functioning mine shacks at the mouth of the last tunnel, up past the Junior High School, the heavily dilapidated wooden apartments, and buildings stacked off the steep hillside on concrete…
Nichitsu 2. Elementary school in a Ghost Town
At the dead-end of a blast-hewn road snaking up through the mountains north of Tokyo, imprisoned by sheer moss-rocked walls looming overhead like rotting Gothic colonnades, the Nichitsu mine ghost town lies in wait, wreathed in a low mist and…
Japan’s ropeway that died
Scrunched up behind thickets of winter-boned brush off the banks of a man-made lake, the last remaining carriage of the Okutama Ropeway hangs slack in its berthing perch. Once a completely false folly, a gaudy ride of a few minutes…
Demolished remnants of the Tai-Hei-Yo Cement Plant
The Tai-Hei-Yo Cement Plant Haikyo in Chichibu, Saitama, was once one of Japan’s biggest producers of concrete, a massive complex woven through with miles of piping, studded with huge firing kilns, silos, 30-story smoke-stacks and immense clinker vats. Throughout its…
Nichitsu 1. The Ghost Town’s Junior High School
The abandoned Nichitsu Mining Town sits cramped into a narrow valley at the head of a long and buckled road in the mountainous western edge of Saitama. It was once a thriving company town with hundreds of families, the women…
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