A while back Sweden’s premier urban explorer Jan Jornmark got in contact with me about doing some haikyo together in Japan. He was on tour for his third book (on the heels of two bestsellers of mostly Swedish ruin- you won’t find them on Amazon unless you search in Swedish), coming hot from Detroit and looking for some cool stuff in Japan. Jan’s a fascinating guy- a professor in globalization, expert on bubbles and economic collapse- whom companies that own old buildings in Sweden PAY to go into their buildings prior to refurbishment and shoot the ruins, then prep a …
Volcano Museum 5. Documentary
Well over a year ago now a Belgian film-maker called Jeroen Van der Stock got in touch with me about making a haikyo / ruins documentary in Japan. He had the concept but seemingly no solid structure at that time, so we met up for coffee to discuss ideas. I went along because it seemed a kick- I’ve had other meetings about haikyo books and TV shows that fell through quickly- so I didn’t have high expectations. A year and a half later, Jeroen has pulled the first stage of his haikyo documentary vision together. He got funding from a …
Dreamland in Outdoor Japan
The Nov/Dec edition of Outdoor Japan features an article with photos by me about Nara Dreamland. I wrote about it on my site here, but the version I wrote for OJ was quite different, emphasizing the adventure, tension, and exhaustion much more. It’s always great to see your work in print, especially with photos. They did a beautiful job with the layout- using the silhouette parts of the Corkscrew ride for text. I’m really pleased. This page on the OJ site tells you where you can pick up your copy of the magazine.
Weekender Interview and Cover
A few months back Elisabeth Lambert of the Tokyo Weekender (one of several free English magazines available in Tokyo) got in touch with me about haikyo. She was doing research for an article, and we went back and forth with a few sets of interview questions. It’s always interesting for me to talk about haikyo, especially if the person ‘gets it’- compared to people who (and I understand this view too) think ‘why would you want to go to dirty old buildings full of trash’? The magazine came out this week, and it turns out the haikyo piece is the …
Outdoor Japan Haikyo – Sports World
The March-April edition of Outdoor Japan was my second time to present a feature article on haikyo, including photographs. This time I focused on Sports World, my all-time favorite haikyo. They did a wonderful layout in spooky black with the photos given ample space to shine. In addition I had the chance to go through the copy of the whole magazine with Gardener the editor and help out with proofing in general, which was great fun. You can buy back-issues of OJ and of course Subscribe to future issues here.
Kindred Spirit Interview- The Spirituality of Ruins
I’ve mentioned my sister Alice on this site before– when she got her book ‘The High-Heeled Guide to Enlightenment‘ published. She spent a year of her life experimenting with various forms of spirituality- going to shamans, doing sweat lodges, having reiki crystal therapy, being regressed through past lives, etc… It’s a fascinating read I’d recommend to anyone interested in that sort of thing. Typically I’m not, but I’ll admit some of it got me thinking. Anyway- since that book came out she’s been hard at work promoting the book and writing pieces for magazines based around the topics of the …
Diggnation!
The guys on diggnation from Revision 3 covered my asylum top 10 ghost town article on their most recent show. This is awesome. I don`t customarily watch the show- I`ve got Scott to thank for the notification- but am well aware of digg, and of the comings and goings of co-host Kevin Rose thanks to his appearances on This Week in Tech. It`s fantastic to have him reading and liking my article and photos- even if he does garble one sentence from the text. Thanks to the guys on diggnation for choosing this article to cover, and thanks to everyone …
Asylum Haikyo Article
The US men`s magazine Asylum is currently running an article introducing haikyo to their readers, written by me. It’s a top 10 of all the best `ghost towns` in Japan, and is the first of what could be several articles on Japan`s ruins on that site. Asylum is a popular online magazine catering to culture-savvy young men. They generally run articles about weird stuff and hot laydeez. Apparently they surpass Playboy.com, Maxim.com and many others, with 31 million page-views by around 2 million readers per month. Wow. This article has been in the pipeline for about 4 months, waiting for …
The Guardian reviews this site
About an hour ago the Guardian newspaper put a review of this site online.
Outdoor Japan Haikyo Article – Forgotten Places
The magazine Outdoor Japan is currently running an article introducing haikyo to their readers, written by me. It’s titled ‘Forgotten Places’, and is the first of what should be a series of articles covering various ruins around Japan, focusing on the adventurous side of exploring them.
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