Kappa Hotel: Up Above and Down Below

As the night stretched on, so too did we speed up our exploration. We were no longer stopping in every individual hotel room. It was time to head straight to the important points - and with the map in hand, finding each of the interesting locations was a breeze. We hit our destinations with good speed as made our way through dining halls, lounge rooms, a billiard room and a table-tennis room.

Anything here?

 Though elevators were once a valid way of getting around, with the power grid being off, it was the stairs all the way for us. It was no sweat finding an emergency staircase to lead us all the way to the roof. By this point, we had already found out that, inside the hotel, every door would open to us. It was just a matter of picking which doors to open. When we came out into a dark, quiet night, nothing but the sound of the river raging below broke the silence of the sleeping town.

Discarded analog televisions and karaoke units lined the way to the rooftop, further cementing into our minds how much time had stopped since this place was left unattended.
 Unlike some hotels in the very same region that had baths installed at the highest place possible, Kappa Hotel had nothing much going for it on the roof - but for the view upon the rest of Kinugawa.

What was I expecting to see?

Having scouted the way up, we now knew that the next destination was down. But we knew we hadn't seen the last of this roof.
And so we backtracked and took the staircases lower than where we had even started. One item on the map in particular had me curious, reading "Kappa Country."
 It was with great surprise that we found it to be an arcade, and a sizable one at that. Nostalgia took us. Would that we could've shipped a whole console home.
 We paused here only briefly though, before the rest of our descent.
 Along the walls, guide arrows lead us to our next destination: the baths.

Being that the Kappa Hotel was situated in an onsen town, and given the sheer size of the place, it almost seemed only natural that it would have six bathing halls. The state they were in when we found them, though, was less than pitiful. Ornaments had been smashed by previous explorers, and we even found a dead rat in one of the baths.
 By far the biggest bath was the Kappa Bath, remarkable also with its small Kappa ornaments staring back at us as we explored the room.


Legend had it that these amphibious monsters were notorious for stealing children away, drowning people and their animals, and even rape. They were regarded as a form of imp or demon, but they're much more iconic nowadays. Even still, it's no wonder this place is so popular with the urban exploration community in Japan. The room would've been a little creepy had I been alone.

Most of the other buildings are also hotels.

It was growing late. We took a break at this point, and even a short nap, before heading to the very top of the building once again. All went according to plan.
As the clock struck 5', we stood atop the abandoned hotel and caught sight of the town in its waking hours during the sunrise. The exploration had left us tired, and we watched as people came out on the roofs of other hotels to take baths. The clean mountain air mingled with the smell of rust from the roof's railings.

We were just about ready to leave the hotel to its loneliness when we decided to have one last peak at the Kappa Bath again, wondering what it would look line now in the light of day.

The beautiful thing about Haikyo is not having to share.

With such a nice view on the woods, the cliffs, and even the river, if one got close enough to the window, it's a bit of a shame that the Kappa Hotel was one amongst the handful of hotels to close down in Kinugawa. Had it still been running, the Kappa Bath by itself would've been enough to make the place the talk of the town, it seemed to me. But one only understands so much by visiting it after its fall.

See you next time, Kinugawa.

We were exhausted and our clothes were filthy by the time we left. Bumbling out of the hotel, we tried to find our way into a hard-earned bath, with no success whatsoever. The hotels still running wouldn't let us use theirs (some do, though apparently not in this town) and other places wouldn't open in three hours still - which wouldn't give Millo enough time to get home for work.
Damn! What a bummer.
We stumbled onto the train and slept the way home. One more Haikyo off my checklist.