The TV show LOST is all about ruins.? The island itself is a living museum, a place where the relics of millennia-old statues rest side by side with downed aircraft and underground research stations, all of them abandoned fossils of our cultural evolution.
A huge part of the show`s appeal has been the Indiana Jones-esque exploration of these ruins. It`s one of the reasons I`m such a big LOST fan. Click through to relive the adventure.
For a while I was doing a weekly roundup of all the haikyo explorations I knew going on around the web. I haven`t done it for about 6 months because it seemed that the fast pace of exploration had died down somewhat and there was little to report on. Now, after that long break, there`s a lot to report on again. Maybe you`ll have seen these on their individual sites already- if not, enjoy.
Towards the end of World War 2 the Japanese military created and employed the `kaiten`, a manned suicide torpedo designed to blow up American ships with great accuracy. At that point in the War Japan had suffered severe losses, was experiencing rapid decline in its industrial capacity compared to the US, and American troops were closing in on the home islands. Surrender was out of the question, so Kaiten (along with kamikaze planes) were brought in to help tilt the balance.
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.
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.
The magazine Outdoor Japan is currently running an article introducing haikyo to their readers, written by me. It’s titled ‘Forgotten Places’, and is the first of what should be a series of articles covering various ruins around Japan, focusing on the adventurous side of exploring them.
Outdoor Japan is a bimonthly bilingual magazine for anyone interested in outdoor sports, events, and activities in Japan. They usually cover things like mountaineering, skiiing, snowboarding, hiking, and so on. Haikyo is a first for them- so we’re all quite excited to see what kind of reception it’ll get.
At the moment I don’t have any extra copies of this edition of OJ, but when I do I’ll offer a few as prizes in haikyo-related competitions. In the meantime, you can subscribe to OJ from their website or buy it at one of these locations around Japan. You’ll also be able to see my article online in March when it moves from the print to the online edition.
William Gibson stopped by this website about 9 hours ago and retweeted my Sex Industry in Ruins article. That is awesome. On Twitter he goes by GreatDismal.
GreatDismal RT : Love shacks: Japanese love hotels in ruins http://bit.ly/8pK10A
I`ve read a number of Gibson`s books and always been impressed. Of course I`ve read Neuromancer, also Pattern Recognition and The Difference Engine. Excellent stuff. I suppose he is very interested in all things Japanese, which perhaps help explain what brought him to my site.
In ruins the hidden secrets of sex are laid bare. All our most intimate truths come out in the wash. The den of our fornication will rot and mold will form on the sheets where we grunted out our last passions.
Sex. In life, as in death, it’s a messy business. Here are five ruined dens of sex from around Japan.
‘Love Hotels’ are a lot like roadside motels, designed with the express purpose of facilitating ‘relations’ between Japanese couples who still live at home, and have no access to a bedroom away from their parents. They are often cheap, and come in a variety of wacky ‘flavors’, decorated in garish hues, with flashing lights, hot tubs, and handy vending machines stocking contraceptives and other toys. You can take a ‘REST’ at a love hotel (one hour, cheap rate), or enjoy a full STAY (up to eight hours, more expensive).
The Akasaka Love Hotel Haikyo in Tokyo reminds us of the importance of that old adage: ‘location location location’. Situated at the far end of a strip of Love Hotels on the Lake Tama ring road, it’s clear this place suffered for lack of passing traffic. Now its forecourt and parking lot are bouldered with rotten 80’s styled furniture, burnt-out cars, and avalanches of mounded pillows. Inside, its gaudy rooms still sing of forbidden pleasures, the walls plastered with bright helios, lurking cheetahs, and naked Bathsheba7s, though I doubt any lusty couples have joined in their bawdy chorus for some time.
‘Soaplands’ are descended from Turkish water brothels, places where the hard-working Japanese salaryman can go to get himself soaped down by a young and nimble nymph. After protestations from the Russian Embassy the name was changed to Soapland. The legality of these places is much in question, with a wider range of deeds considered legal than you might expect. Due to this semi-legality, the places are often run by ‘yakuza’- Japanese gangsters, situated in red-light districts.
The Queen Chateau Soapland Haikyo in Ibaraki is at once a grand but squalid folly. A bath-based brothel rising 5 fairy-tale stories into the sky, cornered with towers and capped with bright red tile, it represents an era gone mad with indulgence, audacity, and hopefulness. Now it lies in crippled ruin, its bright colors fading, its halycon days of glamor and glitz surplanted by ghost-like hangings in its dim and dusty bars. Its grand playing-card Queen still stands aloft emblazoned across the front of the building, but her stare is now more that of the toothless Ozymandius than a haughty mademoiselle.
‘Hostess Bars’ are bars where men pay to be flirted with. Attractive women sit by them, pour them drinks, stroke their thighs, pay them compliments, and can make a fortune from big-spenders seeking to impress the girls with the most expensive champagne and caviar.
The Akeno Gekijo haikyo in Ibaraki is something of an oddity in Japan, as one of only a few actual strip clubs. Of course there are similar venues; hostess bars, soaplands, love hotels, but they each cater to a slightly different crowd and provide a slightly different flavor of tawdry service. To find a straight-up strip club complete with central podium, viewing seats, and dancing poles seems a feat beyond expectation. But there it is, on a small back-road in a quiet rural area surrounded by bamboo, half-burnt to the ground and buzzing with mosquitoes.
The Hotel Royal haikyo in Kanagawa is the grand-daddy of all love hotels, streaking 7 empty stories up into the big blue sky, a giant vermillion flag on the banks of Sagamiko Lake calling out to all and sundry in a mega-watt baritone- “Need some discreet time alone with your loved one? Come on down!”
The Pearl Love Hotel Haikyo in Tochigi is a wreck in camouflage, deeply nested underneath a blanket of scraggy brown vines. Rooms lie in embers, grown through with ferns; once-bohemian beds, chaise longues and chandeliers lie scrapped, dropped, and despoiled with the nests of birds, spiders, and the homeless. The grand two-story executive suite still maintains some of its sordid gravitas, its sultry red round-bedded apex room as faux-regal as ever, now overlooking a graveyard of spent passion inveigled by nature’s rapacious tendrils.
See more ruins explorations here-
[album id=4 template=compact]So today I had my first lesson with Alfie Goodrich, a pro photographer based in Tokyo. It was my first time to use the new SB-600 flash I bought for my camera, and first time to go off camera. It was pretty awesome, and I`m psyched about future possibilities, especially for haikyo, and shooting people in haikyo. We`ll see.
Here`s one shot we came up with. We had no model so I just shot Alfie.
Without a flash this shot is basically impossible- it`s too dark. In haikyo I`ve been using HDR so far, but am confident better results can be had using flash- certainly when it comes to shooting models.
A tasty nibble I snacked upon in Kyushu- though probably available all over Japan. Just smack your surf-board sleeping friend over the head and bake her into a biscuit.
More Japangrish and J-products than you can shake a stick at.
