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 …
Ruin of a Japanese WWII Shipyard
The Kawaminami shipyard was opened in 1936 and went bankrupt in 1955. It had four huge bays and two large factory buildings. Through the war years it served as both a munitions factory, a drydock for construction of cargo ships, escort ships, and kaitens, and possibly also as a Prisoner of War (POW) slave labor camp. By some accounts up to 4000 POWs were forced to work here during wartime. The main factory hall. History on the place has been hard to come by definitively. According to official POW internment records, it never had POWs. According to other sites it …
Top 10 Haikyo 2010
Common wisdom says Japan is a tiny island nation crammed from shore to shore with people living one on top of the other. Every bit of spare space is used to build Prius factories and grow rice. In actuality, though, there are far more dark spots on the map than you’d imagine. The general view that every square inch of land is worth a bazillion dollars is just not true. There are gaps in the facade that whole towns have fallen into, along with bizarre abandoned theme parks, ruined U.S. Air Force bases, and the tawdry remnants of pay-by-the-hour love …
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 …
Top 5 Japanese Ghost Towns
Common wisdom about Japan says it’s a tiny island with a serious premium on space, leading to real estate prices in the cities higher even than the most exclusive blocks of Manhattan. The thought that there might be whole abandoned towns on this island seems a paradox- how could a country with so little space abandon anything? Well, they do. Most ghost towns in Japan are built around mines, like abandoned gold rush towns in the American West. When the mine seams gave out the jobs went away and the people left. Soon, the place was abandoned. Here are 5 …
Overgrown Toyota at Tama Lake
The last time I went to the Akasaka Love Hotel on Lake Tama was November 2008. Winter was just setting in and had not yet sloughed away the summer`s ripe vegetation, meaning that this gorgeous neglected Toyota was mostly buried in foliage. I took a few shots of it scraggled with greenery but they didn`t stand out. Now winter reveals its pale bones, most of them broken backwards and jiggling loosely on rusted hinges. A Toyota.
10 Abandoned Haikyo Vehicles
The haikyoist must be ready to use any means of conveyance at his or her disposal.
The Guardian reviews this site
About an hour ago the Guardian newspaper put a review of this site online.
Haikyo Roundup Feb 2010
A roundup of the the best recent haikyo explores from around the web.
Ruin of a Japanese ‘kaiten’ suicide-boat base
Towards the end of World War 2 the Japanese military created and employed the `kaiten`, a manned suicide torpedo designed to blow up American ships with great accuracy. At that point in the War Japan had suffered severe losses, was experiencing rapid decline in its industrial capacity compared to the US, and American troops were closing in on the home islands. Surrender was out of the question, so Kaiten (along with kamikaze planes) were brought in to help tilt the balance. Kaiten facility observation point.