I live in Tokyo. Nothing super creepy, but I can share a few experiences…

Japan is a goldmine for abandonments. Much of it is well-documented and I rarely break new ground, but I go to some neat, creepy locations. Places tend to be more intact — less stuff stolen, so you have things to look at and rifle through -- than abandonments I have visited in Canada, the US and Europe.

One of my favourites is an eight-story hotel on the coast outside of the city that is full of old jukeboxes, karaoke machines, musical instruments, old coin-op black and white TVs, etc. Saw some big nasty-ass mukade (centipedes) in there last time…

Down the road from that is an old Jurassic Park-style biomdome greenhouse thing on this remote cape overlooking the ocean. It had a jungle theme with monkey cages and shit… found dead fishing soaking in jars of formaldehyde there last time I visited. Not far from there is a mining site I sometimes visit, as well as an underground bank vault. Which is also near Mt Fuji and the suicide forest, where we found a corpse two summers ago. We called the prefectural police and the body was recovered. It had been there for a while — pretty much skeleton. Even the noose had rotted away.

I’ve done a few explores in the communities that have been abandoned around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant due to radiation. You can clearly see tsunami damage in some of these towns near the coast, and quake damage further inland. Wild boar and deer in the deserted streets. Lots of stuff to see, but it’s sad. Lives have been ruined. People left everything, including photo albums, toys, etc. Bowls and chopsticks lay on kitchen tables. And so on. Been with a Geiger counter and without.

Went to a very cool abandoned amusement park in the mountains of Kyushu last year. Tons of old coin-op arcade games from the early 90s…

But one of the creepiest and saddest abandonments was one I saw while on a work trip down south in Kagoshima prefecture (on Kyushu). I was traveling with a photographer I’d hired out of Fukuoka and we had a day off after visiting an industrial project for a client. We had already driven down the entire east coast of the island after our initial appointment, and explored a few abandoned pachinko parlours and restaurants on the road south. The east coast of Kyushu also has some pretty beaches and is popular with surfers.

We got to Sakurajima, an active volcano that almost forms an island, sitting on the edge of a big bay. The entire base of the volcano, which was smoking and audibly rumbling the day we were there, is inhabited. Schools, gas stations, homes ring the base of the volcano/almost-island. I spotted one place as I drove down a deserted stretch away from the main villages that was almost complete obscured by overgrowth. I pulled over; my photographer declined and went for a stroll down the road to stretch his legs.

It was a tiny home that looked like it had been empty for years. And it was definitely not the kind that was on the local or gaijin urbex checklist -- a rare gem. I got to the main door and it slid open easily.

Everything had been left exactly as someone had been there the day before. There was food in the cupboards, the bed was made, books and other personal items lying about. It looked lived in. But it obviously hadn’t been disturbed for a while — I don’t think anybody had been there in YEARS. Couldn’t speculate how many.

But the creepiest thing — there was a butsudan (a small Buddhist shrine sometimes seen in homes) with the photo of a man. The distinct impression I got was an old widow with no family had died countless years before and that was it. No claim on the property because it was in the middle of nowhere and that was that. I guess.

It was just kinda sad and felt wrong and invasive, so I left.