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 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.

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Japan’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’.

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Japan’s abandoned Jungle theme park #1 outside

Japan’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.

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