The Asylum

The team minus Agha.

"I draw the line between hospitals and asylums," Erika said to me as I went through my list of Adventure Friends, inviting them to hop on board my latest venture. Her curiosity eventually got the better of her. But this was one adventure I knew not everyone would be willing to join me in. Even Millo had to think twice, and he had been on this journey before. But he, Agha, and Christina answered the call along with Erika, and soon we were five, making the trip down to deep Saitama on board local trains, chasing fear like a junkie chases a high.

Not all of my companions wanted to be here by the time we took this pic.

The building we stood before was once known as the Asakura Hospital. Today, it's a place known only to self-reputed ghost hunters. For 14 years has it stood in silence, disturbed only by those who dared breach its walls to uncover its secrets. In its heydays, the Asakura was a mental clinic, you see, and when it shut down, rumors of the reason for its abandonment spread throughout the urban explorers, and soon attracted the ghost hunters. Some sources say the place shut down because an unreasonable amount of deaths made authorities suspicious of medical malpractice occurring within its walls. The last time Millo visited, said he, the sounds of doors opening and closing echoed throughout the building, despite its seeming stillness.

 The way was basically paved for us already by other explorers. Through breeches in fences, we managed to enter the facility, and found it to be in in complete disarray. The first floor was a mess full of broken glass and torn up pages, with messages lining the walls. If there's one thing urban explorers like to do is play tricks on the next batch of explorers following them. It was all we could do to ignore the messages written in red along the walls, saying things in the vein of "there is nothing to do here but die." But I could feel the discomfort rising in some of my companions already.

 A branch in our path soon offered itself to us - downwards to the basement, or up to the upper floors and roof? We decided to plunge into the belly of the beast, and so down it was.
 The basement looked like a dungeon.

Not really sure what it's an x-ray of, though.

 Consisting of nothing but a hallway lined with prison-like cells, the basement was spooky in its eerie silence. Wheelchairs were scattered throughout the floor, inside and out of cells alike, though I suspect this is also the doing of past explorers. We made our descent in relative silence, passing row upon row of rusting bars. Would this be where they kept the unstable patients? Upon a table in one of the rooms at the end of the hall were scattered record books full of black sheets that were immediately familiar to me from my previous experiences with Haikyo. I lifted one to my light and confirmed that they were x-rays.

 On the higher floors, we found the patients' rooms and beds. Unlike other ruins I had been to in the past, most furnishings in the building had been removed, save only the hospital beds, which stood where they were, gathering dust. Several rooms full of them were all that was left of the upper levels, and silently, so as not to wake the neighborhood we could see through the windows, we made our way to the roof.
 The town was asleep. We decided to rest here and started joking amongst each other, and I found myself enjoying the cool breeze under the night sky. And that was when some of us heard it - the sound of footsteps coming up the very same steps. Panic took our group, but we responded fast - Agha was fast out of sight, and Millo took care of hiding himself and making sure Christina did the same. Erika and I opted to hide behind the stairwell, and I positioned myself so that I could see who the incoming party was before they could see me.

 But rather than the authorities, the group turned out to be a smaller posse of ghost hunters. I took care not to scare the shit out of them as I popped out of the shadows and introduced myself, but ended up doing so anyway. My companions soon came out of their respective hiding spots too, and we soon began conversing. "You know this place is famous for ghosts?" the guide in their group asked me. "Have you seen the blood covered bed?" No, in fact, we hadn't.
 They brought us down a floor and showed us the one bed covered in deep brown stains. It was soon after that that the other groups left in silence, without so much as a goodbye. I'm a skeptic by nature, I guess, but it was around this time that some of my companions decided they weren't keen on staying around too much longer. Come to think of it, the group didn't really talk about that bed much after that.

Western Village - The Theme Park That Was

When it comes to Haikyo, I usually opt for the overnight option. I'm comfortable going at it in the dark, away from the eyes of those who would think me suspicious. But I admit there are sometimes when the place in question is too interesting, or unique not to see in the light of day. Let me take you through my first time exploring an abandoned theme park. This is Western Village.

Millo, myself, Nana, Basil.

 Coming along with me for the trip this time around are a few familiar faces. There's Basil, my guest here in Tokyo (who, by the time this has been posted has returned to Canada), but also Millo and Nana, who have each been to one of my previous raids (Kappa Hotel and Nichitsu Ghost Town respectively.) It's a fun team and one I'm glad was willing to trail along on this crazy adventure.
 Going in, I knew close to nothing about the Western Village theme park - but I did know where to find it. Geographically speaking, it's only one train station away from Kinugawa, where the Kappa Hotel was located, in the mountainous Tochigi prefecture. I had a picture of Google Maps to guide me.
 Getting into Western Village was not an issue. All it took was a little climbing and we were already in - and in a place so deep in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, there was no risk of any one seeing us. And once we were in, the fun was set to begin.

That's the old Georgia state flag! No racism intended!

They're kinda dorky looking.

 Western Village was a theme park that delivered on exactly what its name implied. Just as the nearby Edomura theme park (which is still running) is based on the Japan of the olden days, Western Village mirrored it in being based on America's Wild West.
 In its heyday, cowboys strolled around, interacting with the park's visitors. Animatronic puppets, powered by pistons and other sorts of clockwork, could be spotted inside practically every one of the park's numerous buildings. And they still can, though they haven't moved since 2007.

 The beautiful thing about Western Village in its state of abandonment is that everything that could've been taken away has been kept exactly where it was by the park's staff. Of course, this is nothing unusual when it comes to Haikyo, but this is a theme park. It was nothing short of amazing to open a door and find what could have easily been 30 to 40 different costumes strewn about the room, dusty, but otherwise completely undamaged by the elements or moth or rat. It was time to dress up.

Everything we needed to take these pictures were found on spot.

 A light reflecting screen here, a fire extinguisher there, and as many props as we wanted to use.
There were so many combinations possible and I felt like I could have spent hours dressing up with the team and taking zany pictures. The park was ours - where else would we have ever been able to shoot off fire extinguishers just for the sake of creating the haze we needed for a nice shot? Haikyo is a thing of beauty. Hell, I even dressed up as one of the park's mascots. That costume was intact too.
We found the largest building in Western Village to be a large hall full of two meter tall teddy bears, standing around and wearing all sorts of patriotic clothing. Stars and stripes in abundance, really. The second floor was filled with what was once fare games, and the third was somewhat of an Indian (as in, Native American) museum. But upon exiting the building through the other side, we came upon Western Village's defining feature: an enormous replica of Mount Rushmore. The entire thing was hollow rather than made of stone, and it's only truly dawning upon me as a write how much effort must have gone into the opening and maintenance of this park that would eventually just be abandoned and left to sit in silence.
 I resolved to do yet another thing that couldn't be done if the park were still running today, and stood upon the head of George Washington victoriously.

God I feel like I've lived.

 Western Village may not be as immense as Disney Land or FujiQ Highland, but it's no tiny little fairground either. Arcades, gigantic dining halls, a haunted house, watchtowers, a ranch, a kids' train line, and a mini-golf course are all included in the package, and that's really just the half of it. It's no wonder our day went by so fast.
 In the end, though, it doesn't take a genius to guess what did the park in - location, location, location. Take into consideration that the two aforementioned theme parks are both much closer to Tokyo than Western Village was. With such powerful competitors, how could this theme park ever hope to stay in business while operating from a tiny town in Tochigi prefecture? Kids will choose Disney over cowboys any day of the week, and this park used to count only on its theme to tide visitors over. Notice that there are no roller coasters or thrill rides in Western Village. The place probably ran into debt and stumbled into bankruptcy shortly after.
 Looking only at the facts, it may not be long until the neighboring Edomura park finds the same problems. And I may chance to climb upon its remains after the fall. 

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.

Kappa Hotel: The Middle Floors

The supper before the deed.

 The plan was simple - to take a train to Kinugawa Onsen town, arrive in the dead of night, grab a quick bite, stock up on food and provisions, spend the rest of the night in the haikyo, and find access to the rooftop by the break of dawn, and watch as the sun rose upon the town. And maybe explore a little more afterwards. Of course, we'd top it all with a soak in the hot bathes of Kinugawa.
I geared up - flashlight, camera, first aid kit, and warm clothes, and met Millo in Ueno station, and we headed for the mountainous Tochigi prefecture.


 The ride there was somewhat of a confusing mess, but when we did emerge in Kinugawa Onsen station, even later than we thought we would, light snow was falling. We stocked up on easy-to-eat food in a convenience store, and followed the river up to our destination: Kappa Hotel.
The place was a gigantic megaplex of a hotel built on the side of a cliff - two wings connected by a central building, each wing eight floors high, and most of all, in a visible state of decay. Once upon a time, it must've been a really majestic building, but it was abandoned in 1999 due to a decrease in tourism, and left to fall apart where it stood. Finding our way in and through wasn't an issue at all. We were more concerned about whether we would be able to go through the whole thing in the time we had.

It won't be long before this one's overgrown too.

 We entered through the ground-level floor, easily finding a sliding window that would let us in within the first five minutes of arriving on site.
 I say ground-level floor, but truly, this was the fourth. The floors below descended into the cliff, deep in the shadow of the valley.
 As one would suspect, after 15 years of decay, the ground level floor was blasted to hell by the elements, and this would be the one floor in the deepest stage of being taken over by nature again, with weeds growing out of the very cracks in the floor, and the boards of the floor itself completely rotten. We fell through several times, hitting the foundation of the building itself and thankfully never getting injured in the process.
But we knew this floor was only a tough passage into the more interesting floors above - and eventually, below.
The west wing staircase was not as hard to find as it was to walk to, with the floor giving way beneath us, but we managed.

One of what could've been 50-70 similar rooms.

Making our way up, we arrived upon troves of interesting rooms, giving us a peek at what the place must have been like in the past. We darted in and out of the traditional tatami rooms of the hotel, still fully furnished with chairs, bedding, tables, framed paintings, fridges, each of which even was filled with old alcohol. Hallways too cluttered with debris made us go through balconies to clear rooms. But in walking through the rooms as so, we found some inside which practical guides to the hotel still remained. And inside such a guide, one inevitably finds a floor map. I held onto that.

The invaluable map. I was thankful I could read enough to understand all this.

Once a clubroom.

Using the map, we easily found the rooms we were hoping to stumble upon that might have taken us quite a bit of exploration otherwise. The banquet hall, with its cafe and bar clubroom formed the bulk of the central and west wings of the fifth floor, and truly, these rooms must've once been grandiose. Pictures of the very banquet room we stood in lay inside an album on the bar counter, showing us scenes from the past where the hotel was bustling with visitors. But now, there was so much clutter and overturned tables and chairs that it was hard to make our way through at times - a fact made worst by the darkness.

 When exploring haikyo, vandalism is the only certainty, so it was par for course that tables would be overturned. Messages written on the walls, such as "this is a place to die" or simply, "die, die, die" were something we had expected. Other messages were just interesting or even entertaining: "this room is sweet!" it said on a door, and at one point "this is the Master Key" a message said, with an arrow pointing at a dangling key.
 Of course, names of people and dates were written all over by groups that had cleared the haikyo before us.

But what truly was disturbing was that which was just plain unusual: in one of the bathrooms, hair was scattered across the floor - intentionally cut, by the looks of it. Whether it was a person's or a doll's couldn't be told from a mere look.
 And then, it was on the sixth floor that our flashlights caught sight of antlers. Surely the layout of the place was tampered with - there was no other explanation as to why there would be two petrified stags in the middle of a hallway.

There are two in this picture.

For fear I'm dragging on too long for a single article (at least where this blog is concerned) I'll stop here, but all this is only half of what we've seen in Kappa Hotel. The very top and the very bottom floors still beckoned to us, and I'll go on about that soon enough.

The Hotel

Sometimes you don't have to go too far to find exactly what you're looking for. It was a while ago that Ken and I walked by a closed-down capsule hotel on the way to my place, wondering if there was a way in. We tried at it briefly, but to no avail. It was only recently that I decided to try at it again, and had a little more luck.
 Dead of night on a Sunday, I headed there determined to find the one way to lead me in. I headed up the exterior staircase, and from there, climbed onto the roof. Another set of stairs connected to the actual topmost floor, and from there, shimmying through narrow spaces, I managed to find the emergency ladders. Down one floor, and I was looking at another door, with a vent over it.

 I called Lo over, and with a little work, we were in the abandoned capsule hotel. Dario joined us too, and it was time for a little bit of exploration.
And frankly, we found everything in such good condition it was a little scary. Mattresses were laid out in every capsule, in good condition. Televisions were strewn about, a vacuum cleaner and air conditioning unit were still in the building, and the hair styling products sat neatly were they were left. It was as if the place was still in use, if not for the thin layer of dust and the sheer emptiness and silence of the space around us.
I had never even been to a normal, running capsule hotel, so I had myself a bit of a field day with the five floors laid out before me. Exploration time was imminent, and we swept from area to area, looking through every very nook in the place.
 And yet, the building had no interior stairs! How was one to get around?
 But with an elevator of course!

And yes, it turned out the elevator was still running. We were surprised to see it answer to our call as we pressed the button from the fourth floor, doors opening with lights and everything, spilling its glow into the otherwise dark building. Every floor was open to us, and we roamed for the better part of an hour flowing from the capsule floors, into the reception hall, through to the dining area, the office, the employees' lounge area and even the breaker rooms, but the best was yet to come, and we saved that for the very last.

As it turned out, the hotel also had a bath area on the topmost floor, complete with its very own sauna room. It was a bit of an eerie feeling, walking into a place usually so well lit and finding it disused and dry, sitting in the dark. I wondered out loud why there was only one bath area as opposed to two catering to each gender, but capsule hotels are very much facilities used only by men on domestic business trips, and so you'd be hard pressed to find anything servicing women. Come to think of it, there was even only one bathroom per floor.

All in all, the hotel was a good discovery! As it turns out, Tokyo has more abandoned facilities than meets the eye. One has only to look, though.

Ninjamura

The approach, through the thick woods.

Until 8 or some years ago, Ninjamura was a small local attraction situated atop a forested hill in Fukuoka. As children, some of Ken's friends used to visit the place, and recall a time when they went to the "Ninja House" for a thrill and got spooked by men dressed as ninjas, popping out of walls and trap doors. However, as the years passed, Ninjamura saw a decrease in profits, presumably, and shut its doors to the public. The site of the ninja-themed haunted house was never re-bought, and no one bothered to demolish it. Tonight, Ken and I and some local friends Tatsumi and Kento, have stepped through the gates to Ninjamura once more, for the sake of adventure and nostalgia both.

Notice the pile behind me.

Walking through the forest to reach the first abandoned house, I quickly realize how fast nature had retaken Ninjamura. The wooden bridges crossing through the crevasses and pits in the forested floor have long begun to rot, providing poor footing as we struggle to walk while holding onto our cheap LED flashlights.

 But as we are brought deeper into the forest, we begin to notice the ill-hidden mannequins littering the place. It isn't long before we start finding discarded limbs left and right. Some even hang above our head, pinned to trees for reasons we don't know. Soon, we even came upon a pile of the mannequins, many of them appearing to have blood painted on to them. Not too far up ahead, is our first actual stop - the abandoned haunted house itself. Does that make it twice haunted?

The maze beneath the house.

Of course, the place being long deserted, we found the elements that figure in every Haikyo, (abandoned places, as they call them in Japan,) these being graffiti, litter, and wreckage scattered around the ground.

 But soon, too, did we quickly discover (or in the case of my companions, rediscover) the intricacies of the place, once suited for scaring the shit out of children. Rooms that appear to be small, empty closets reveal themselves to be equipped with hidden doors - those famous, stereotypical reversing walls that flip around to reveal a way into a different room. My companions knew of several of these already, but each discovery brought to me a gleeful satisfaction as I kicked at walls that turned out to be doors.

 These aside, we also found a ladder with access to the attic, as well as an intentionally labyrinthine passageway beneath the house itself, forcing us to hunch over to find a way leading to the next room. We stuck around long enough to get a good look at all of the rooms, many as they were, before we headed back out and towards the next curiosity.

It was only on our way out of Ninjamura that we stumbled upon what once was an illusion-themed house with an inclined floor. The considerable angle of the ground, near 30 or so degrees, gave the impression that someone standing straight was slanted at a seemingly gravity-defying angle. Of course, this place being similarly abandoned, we allowed ourselves to experiment hanging from beams and jumping around as well.

And thus ended our brief visit of Ninjamura! Man, I've been doing quite a bit of Haikyo lately, huh.

Nichitsu by Day

We didn't get a good idea of the scope of the Ghost Town of Nichitsu until day broke, so deep was the darkness permeating the area. It was when the sun rose that we could see all the houses on the cliffs above and down the streets below, and so we wasted no time in delving deeper, exploring the town high and low. What we found didn't disappoint.

  Before going ghost, Nichitsu was fully operational as an independent town: it even had its own grocery store. Early that morning, we hit several points of interest. Nichitsu town was built up-cliff, with public buildings being located at the lower points, and residential ones located higher up. We didn't truly know about the lower point of the city until it was quite literally lit up to us, and the first construction we entered was the hospital.

  The hospital bore all the remnants of a full modern medical facility, including hardware and shelves full of medicine. Each room seemed to have served its own purpose: a first one was littered with nondescript black vinyl sheets, which, upon lifting for examination, we discovered to be x-rays. I beamed in delight as I realized I stood in a pile of such sheets big enough to be that of every bone ever broken in the town.
Other rooms included a sick persons' rest room, stained bed and all, a surgery room, complete with tools such as scalpels and an operating table, a chemists lab, with compounds such as hydrochloric acid still sitting on the shelves, and a dentists' room, with its floor completely smashed in. We delighted as every room brought us something completely new and seldom expected. One room even included organ tissue encapsulated in jars, but we could scarcely recognize the contents of the vials we lifted to the sun, but many of them were not human: several contained insects and other unrecognizable myriapods.
As we stumbled back out into the sunlight, we had little doubt that the next discovery could not be as interesting as the last. And we were wrong.

Surprisingly enough, the small town even had its own theater. Decades of wear weighed down upon the ceiling, planks of it littering the floor already. The place had a VIP room with windows looking straight at the stage, interior balconies, and a backstage room, the latter which decayed worst than any of the other parts of the building. It was easy to imagine the townsfolk gathering here every now and then for a show or a play.

Only after we were sure we had visited every single building there was to visit did we leave Nichitsu. We were satisfied. Our curiosity about the skeleton of the town, so desolate and remote, had finally met its answer, and after spending a massive twelve hours session of exploring, it was fatigue that finally claimed us, rather than any spirit or ghost.

I think I will, one day, return to Nichitsu, but for now, I leave the place to its eternal resting state for the next set of adventurers brave enough to climb up the mountain and face the village in its cold, deathlike trance.

PS: All photos on this post were taken courtesy of Lo. My camera died out the previous night.

Nichitsu by Night

I'm still tittering with excitement at what I had a chance to see and do in the last 24 hours. Just like Ashiomachi, the planning for Nichitsu has been a long time coming. Over the last month and a half, it's been a rush to gather an able crew, triangulate the location and arrange for the rental of a car to take us to one of the most desolate places in this part of Japan, and in some way I have this bizarre sense of pride in having accomplished it. Today, I've returned from a place long abandoned, that the country seems to want to have forgotten completely. I've lots to say about Nichitsu, so brace yourself for somewhat of a good read (at least comparatively to my regular posts.)

The Nichitsu Team

 There are some unfamiliar faces here I'd love to introduce before going into the whole adventure itself. The way the whole adventure played out, though, each member brought a little something to the table, so every one played an amazing role in our adventure.

Neal Pak and Nana Takeuchi.

 By the time the planning was starting to come together, Nana Takeuchi was the first person I had invited to the Ghost Town.
 At the time, she was my boss at My Gym. 
 Nana brought into the equation lock-picking, allowing our vehicle easy access through gates so that we could park the car within Nichitsu itself, away from the eyes of any potential security passing by.

Our driver, Lo.

Neal Pak is a Korean guy from Indianapolis, America, who I had met only a week before leaving. His taste for adventure instantly made me want to bring the guy along, and Neal turned out to be the best equipped one of any of us, owning all matters of rope, equipment and foodstuffs that he didn't hesitate to share during the journey.

Of course, we wouldn't have made it far without Jean-Paul Lo, who I have introduced a little while ago. Lo owns an international driving license, making it possible for him to bring us to our destination, which was otherwise unreachable. That aside, Lo stands quite tall and weighs a respectable 190lbs, which came quite handy in him kicking down doors.

Of course, the role I played was that of making sure we met our destination. Nichitsu does not show up on any GPS, nor does it have an address. Therefore I had to intersect different maps and bicycle paths existing on the internet and find an aerial photo of the place via satellite. Once I found Nichitsu, we manually input the coordinates into the GPS and the trick was done.

This town's as good as ours.

Unlike Ashiomachi, Nichitsu had no surveillance. Our adventure was a blur of jumping through windows, kicking down obstructing doors, and scaling walls. Don't be fooled by the flash-illuminated pictures: this place was pitch dark. Actual chances of getting lost were slim, since we could just as well yell to one another from either end of town, but there was always the risk of wild animals. On top of being dark, Nichitsu was also very cold, being located on a mountain. This also meant there was no cellphone signal. The four of us stuck together as a unit.

Armed with no light other than that of the stars above us and our own lamps, we took to the village with an efficient pace, and found it remarkably nonempty. The village was sizable, and, on that first night, we had managed to navigate through several apartment buildings and what seemed to be a town hall.
 A plethora of objects littered the floors, ranging from books to cutlery to game pieces and dolls, and the sheer number of things left behind was remarkable. Televisions were still connected to powerless walls.

Sweeping through the buildings.

What we knew of Nichitsu was the following: like Ashiomachi, its economy ran on mining. Predictably, the hollowing of the mines meant the collapse of the economy for the small town, forcing shops to close and people to evacuate.  Disturbingly enough, however, and this time unlike Ashiomachi, we did not find a consistent date for the collapse of Nichitsu as a town. Calendars on walls contradicted one another - some showing years as early as 1976. Others showed us 1984. Once calendar, found on the floor, showed us 1997, even. But it wasn't until we went into the last apartment building that we found any cause to feel disturbed by this.

The first thing to throw us off was the presence of recently discarded, new-looking shoes at the entrance. Soon, this was followed by the appearance of discarded calendars with dates going all the way through the first decade of the 2000's. Perplexed at the thought that some one might be using Nichitsu as a base, we pressed onwards, finding more and more signs of recent occupation in the crumbling rooms.
 The final room of the building took us by shock.
 New drapery adorned the beds, and fresh looking clothes hung by hooks. The room had clearly been arranged in a neat fashion, and by then we knew for sure: someone had been living in Nichitsu. However, unbeknownst to us whether it was the same resident who was responsible, clear knife marks adorned the walls, and words had been written into the same walls in red. Pornographic cut outs also hung from string contraptions reaching from one side of the room to the other.
 Who, in your opinion, would willingly choose to live secluded from society in such a place?
 We didn't linger too long.

Just outside, we found the perfect place to set up a campfire to drive away the cold. With a little tinkering, we managed to get quite a good one going, and, much to the amusement of the rest of us, Lo was quite efficient at breaking apart whole trees in order to feed the fire.
 Marshmallows were also brought out, courtesy of Nana, and we spent a few hours in the warmth of the flame, sharing a few jokes and stories. When morning came, we caught a little bit of sleep inside the car, before heading back out and exploring the second half of Nichitsu.

And trust me, we didn't even get to the good stuff quite yet!