Our trip to the graying town of Ashiomachi doesn't end at the copper mine. We stumble out with a second destination in mind: the recently abandoned local elementary school. Understandably, the town has had a decline in terms of the number of young students in the area, and therefore this elementary had to close in 2007.
Once upon a time, it must've been bustling with kids playing around and the like. The building itself is sizable, so one would assume it had the attendance to match.
As we arrive at the site, all doors are locked and chained. Understandably, they didn't want us in here. There's a sign on the window that says that the place is being watched by camera, but we quickly call that bluff - there is no power being fed into the building. That just leaves the matter of the chains.
We aren't caught off guard, though. I make quick work of climbing to the second floor, finding an unlocked balcony door, slipping in and opening the way for my companions. The one obstacle being out of the way, we now have freedom to explore the building as we like.
Although the chairs and desks were taken away almost entirely from the classrooms, the number of things that weren't was quite amazing. Though dusty, some of the other rooms such as the teacher's lounge room and the audio-visual storage rooms were fully supplied with furniture and appliances that were more than likely still functional if not for the lack of power in the building. A number of a calendars indicated that the last month the school was in service was July 2007, merely five years ago.
Despite only recently being abandoned, though, the building did show several signs of age dating far prior to said decision. Most of the facilities were long outdated, examples being an abundance of VHS tapes and tape players, diskettes and the like. It's easy to imagine the place didn't get much funding in recent years, but we did also find at least two dozen unicycles in the sports storage room, a number of complete xylophones, and even a tuba. If anything, maybe the program at this school was a little dubious also. We did rejoice, however, in finding packaged clothing that fit us!
Of course, we also went through all the elementary school fantasies we had (or didn't): burning things with magnifying lenses, role-playing teacher and students, kicking doors in and moving stuff around, yelling through megaphones and pushing each other with equipment-moving carts through the halls. Every new piece of junk we found was like dungeon treasure. Such was probably the delight pillagers used to take in the olden days. The only thing we kept though, were the clothes.
Before leaving, there was one thing I had left to do.
You see, I had spotted these golf clubs and a bag full of golf balls in there, too. Unfortunately, the clubs were left handed, but I did get a chance to practice my driving arm.
Aala bet me 10 bucks I couldn't break a window. I came very close and hit a nearby wall, but I didn't get to see any of that money. Maybe I'd have had more luck hitting with my right arm.
Oh, fancy that shirt I'm wearing? That's my sweet dungeon loot. I'm keeping that.
In the western world, sushi has only recently boomed in terms of popularity. We're looking at a less than 10 year timeline here, from which it went to almost unheard of to a common get-together meal. I recall hearing that in the recent years "Sushi" has even become a trend in the naming of pets. How's that for popular.
I don't come to Shin-Okubo often. The last time I was in the area was for the Yamanote Line walk. At that time, Aala showed Ken and Sofie and I a peculiar Chinese restaurant. "I have to come here and write an article about this place," he said. "But I can't eat here, because it isn't Halal." I offered to help. He'd pay my meal!
