Ashiomachi: The Copper Mine

Top of the morning to you. You may be wondering why I'm standing outside of a forsaken piece of tube on the side of a mountain.
 Yeah, that's tarp on the other end, and some water, food, and sleeping bags inside.
 Let me tell you about my trip to a decaying town five hours out of Tokyo, then.

Four hours out of Tokyo is a town called Ashiomachi. It's not a well-known town. It's a forgotten pit stop between Tokyo and the touristic town of Nikko, very sparsely populated and with few things going for it. The train there goes through mountain and valley and is one wagon long. It's a rinky-dink little thing. From what I gather, Ashiomachi wasn't always so dead. It was once the center of a rather important copper mining operation. But the copper mine, Ashiodozan, closed down over seventy years ago, and the town fell into economical decay. Our destination is that abandoned mining facility.

 Although mining operations have long ceased, the place lives on as somewhat of a museum, but with large sections sealed off the public. We, however, want the whole deal with no restrictions. Under the cover of night, Ken, Aala and I went in through the back, weaving through an underbrush and down the side of a mountain. Arriving there, we set up camp well out of sight - that tube!
 Our morning begins at 5 AM, once security has long gone and hasn't yet come back -- and now the place is all ours.

Decayed industrial buildings, broken shacks. This place has been battered and beaten by the elements. Ashiodozan actually closed down because of environmental hazard. On top of the toxic air within the mines themselves, Winter in this mountainous area is supposedly frigid hell.
 The vegetation, however, is doing its best to take over, and in some parts of the facility, is succeeding. Foxes are heard. We did see some deer around the premises, and animal droppings are found all over the place.

Slipping out of Ashiodozan is remarkably easy in the wee hours of the morning. Right out the front gate we go. But our Ghost Town experience doesn't end here - our next destination is set to the recently abandoned elementary school lying in wait nearby.