At 8:15 on August 6 1945 the first nuclear bomb in the history of warfare detonated over Hiroshima, obliterating the city within a 1.5 mile radius and killing outright some 80,000 people, with around another 70,000 dying of radiation and burns by the end of the year. Japanese pilots flying on reconnaissance missions to the city after all radio transmissions went dead said that `practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death`. The A-bomb dome (genbaku dome, originally Hiroshima Trade Promotion Hall) was only 150 meters away from the blast hypocenter. It survived because of its …
Mt. Fuji’s mysterious underground vault
The underground vault haikyo in the shadow of Mt. Fuji is one of the strangest abandoned structures I’ve yet explored. A double-doored double-walled walk-in safe with triple combination locks buried in a man-made mound in an unpopulated and obscure part of the Japanese countryside. Now its thick and weighty doors hang open and loose, and there’s nothing in the vault but for 5 odd logo/symbols on the wall, and no other clue as to its purpose but for the dedication in kanji on top of the dome- ‘in memory of our ancestors’. Imposing entry hall to the vault. I stumbled …
The apocalypse seed vault on Svalbard island
The Global Seed Vault on Svalbard archipelago way up near the North Pole is not in Japan, nor have I ever been there. It is however a very cool post-apocalypse place, an insurance policy for the Earth and human-kind in the event of rampant global disease or massive nuclear fallout, and as such belongs on a site mostly about ruins as much as anything. The entrance.
Kaze no To and Umi Hotaru, Tokyo Bay
From the 25th floor lobby of the Dentsu HQ in Shiodome there’s an awesome view across Tokyo Bay, taking in Hamarikyu gardens, Odaiba, the Rainbow Bridge, and in the distance, fogged by pollution and heat distortion- a weird-looking dome-shaped structure out in the middle of nowhere. Weird dome, at 200mm zoom from the edge of Odaiba.