About 2 years ago a friend put me in touch with a publishing company called Things Asian Press who were looking for contributors for a new guide book to Japan. I went ahead and contacted them, offering some of my haikyo adventures from my website.
7 Massive Holes in the Earth
The Earth’s face is a pock-marked, scarified thing, riddled with enormous holes dug by human hands or caused by the caprices of nature. Deep ‘blue hole’ lagoons accrete within coral reefs, volcanoes tear the earth apart leaving enormous smoking craters…
Jason Collins’ haikyo show
Back in December of 2007 I rented a car with 2 friends and we set off into the mountains of Gunma on our first haikyo trip. It kicked off a boom in interest in haikyo that has led to articles decrying us, book chapters written by us, articles showcasing our photos, and now a gallery exhibition by one of the core 3 that set out together in 2007.
Remnants of Kamaishi Iron Mine
Kamaishi Mine is ranked as the second best haikyo (ruin) in all of east Japan, according to one of the haikyo books I follow. Iron has been mined there since 1727, and Japan’s first blast furnace was built there in 1857.
Nuclear Craters on the Marshall Islands
The impact was immediate and massive. In a second the fireball of flame, earth and smoke spread almost four and half miles wide, engulfing everything within its path, visible over 250 miles away. After one minute the atomic mushroom cloud reached 47,000 feet high and 7 miles wide.? 5 ships were destroyed, numerous islanders were poisoned by the nuclear fallout, and a whole island was gouged out of existence as a crater 2km wide and 250 feet deep was burned into the earth. It was the 15 megaton 1952 ‘Castle Bravo’ atomic bomb test on Bikini atoll in the Marshall …
Exploring an Abandoned Japanese Castle-Shrine
Japan is riddled with shrines, both in cities and out in the countryside, huddled in the basin of wintry valleys or perched precariously on top of mountains- often at points of raw natural beauty and power. From time to time though these wooden complexes go bankrupt. The monks pack up and move out like franchisees out of rent money. They didn’t sell enough blessings from the shrine blessings shop, didn’t garner enough inheritance tithes, didn’t bury enough people in the graveyard plots they rent out. They move out and the wooden structure is left to fend for itself against the …
Airplane boneyard in the Mojave desert
This is where planes go when they die. Vast hulks of metal that cost millions to build, now grounded in obsolescence, taken out to the boneyard to be shot in the head like Old Yeller. Their long neat lines look a lot like the white tombs of fallen soldiers at Arlington cemetery, seemingly endless in number, waiting for the day they will be hacked open like sheet-metal pinatas to get at the valuable guts within. Fallen soldiers at a final roll call in the boneyard. The boneyard is just one part of the Mojave Air and Space Port, the same …
Seoul’s ruined Jumbo Jet, the Juan T. Trippe
The Juan T. Trippe Jumbo Jet was once the crown jewel of the Pan Am fleet, built in 1970 as the world’s first commercial jumbo jet. Now it’s the shabby ruin of a high-concept restaurant in Seoul, South Korea. I visited in the summer of 2009, with SY. This is the story of our explore, and the story of how such a historic plane ended up in such bizarre circumstances. Nose cone of the Juan T. Trippe I was in Korea to visit SY’s family and get to know something about her country. On our trip we visited all the …
Awesome abandoned theaters in the USA
Cinema is the American cultural export, a clearinghouse genre jam-packed with iconic images, historical rewrites, and the changing face of the Western hero.
Ruins of the Queen Chateau Soapland, HDR
It was my second time to visit the ruins of the Queen Chateau. It’s a bizarre abandonment, a giant soapland in the midst of a cluster of still-functioning soaplands presiding over them like the towering castle in the suburbs in Edward Scissorhands. Within its walls sex was transacted for money on a grand scale, on 6 floors of executive suites, four per floor, each kitted out with a large bath, private bar and a bed. 3 Venuses in the lobby, behind the fountain It’s a little odd to talk about going to a soapland, even one in ruins. Perhaps it’s …