Japan's abandoned city spaces

Urban explorer Florian Seidel has visited Nara Dreamland more than half a dozen times for his blog Abandoned Kansai. The park, built in 1961, shut its doors in 2006. It's become one of the most popular destinations for Japan-based urban explorers.

Given the potential dangers of climbing around abandoned amusement park structures, such as this roller coaster, security guards are now stationed at Nara Dreamland. Seidel says the park, an obvious ripoff of Disneyland, couldn't compete with the arrival of Universal Studios Japan in 2001, which is why it closed five years later.

At a total height of 100 meters, the World Peace Giant Kannon, or Awaji Kannon, is one of the tallest statues in the world. Located on Awaji Island, in Japan's Hyogo Prefecture, it closed in 2006 following the death of its owner. Though put to auction several times since, Seidel says there were no takers.

The Hokkaido House of Hidden Treasures was a sex museum in a small town near Sapporo.

The abandoned Maya Tourist Hotel was built in 1929. In a blog post dedicated to his find, Seidel says the deteriorating venue, located halfway up Mt. Maya in Kobe, has been battling the forces of nature since being left to the elements some two decades ago.

The Shimizu Onsen Center was a public bath in the mountains of Japan's Shikoku island. In Japanese culture, frogs symbolize good fortune.

Macabre as they are, decaying animals are part of the urban exploration experience and often covered in blog posts by global followers of the trend. This unfortunate creature was snapped at the abandoned Shimizu Onsen Center.

A volcanic eruption in 1977 bent, twisted and partially collapsed the Sankei Hospital in Hokkaido, says Seidel, who visited the abandoned facility in 2013.

On October 10, 2011, Kyoto police arrested 16 people at the abandoned Kasagi Hotel -- and left notes as a warning to anyone who might be tempted to do some exploring of their own. Though much of urban exploration is considered trespassing -- and sometimes dangerous -- devotees stress they "take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints."

The Furuichi Love Hotel in Hyogo Prefecture was once an hourly refuge for Japanese couples from all walks of life. Seidel has visited several abandoned Japanese love hotels, which are featured on his site.

Seidel photographed this welder's mask at an abandoned mine somewhere in the mountains of Japan. As with most urbexers, Seidel doesn't give away exact locations of his finds, largely because he doesn't want to see them overrun.

• Around the world, urban explorers hunt down and often photograph society's crumbling edifices


• In Japan, urban exploration is referred to as "haikyo," the Japanese word for "ruins"


• Japan-based Florian Seidel documents his derelict findings on his blog, Abandonedkansai.com

(CNN) -- Urban exploration is an edgy pastime.

But give it a Japanese name and this underground community, known for seeking out derelict and often inaccessible environments, sounds even more hardcore.

Haikyo is the Japanese word for ruins and is the term used to describe urban exploration ("urbex"), a growing trend for people to track down and often photograph society's crumbling edifices.

Urbex in Japan plays out in much the same way it does in the rest of the world -- explorers are recreational trespassers who seek out abandoned, man-made structures, where they have a good poke around as they soak up the atmosphere.

There are few hard and fast rules aside from the oft-quoted mantra -- "Take nothing but photographs, leave only footprints" -- but there are a few aspects that are unique to urban exploration in Japan.

Among these, abandoned amusement parks and sex museums.

German Florian Seidel, a translator, has lived in Japan more than seven years and been a dedicated urbexer for almost five.

He says he's seen the hobby take off in Japan since he started.

Although there are no official numbers -- urbexers tend to be a low key, scattered community not least of all because of the potentially illegal aspects of the business, such as trespassing -- he says the number of urbex blogs has exploded from a dozen when he started to about 100 today, most of which are in Japanese.

"There are tons of abandoned places in Japan, the problem is you have to find them," says Seidel.

That's the part he most enjoys.

He's proud of the fact that more than 90% of the places on his site, Abandonedkansai.com, he has researched and found himself.

As with most urbexers, he doesn't give away exact locations, largely because he doesn't want to see them overrun.

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A volcanic eruption bent, twisted and partly collapsed the Sankei Hospital in Hokkaido.

'Very, very weird'

The detective work doesn't end when he's found and explored a site.

Seidel likes to find out about the history of place.

Take those abandoned sex museums -- there are two in Japan, both of which have been deserted for more than 10 years.

"In the 1960s, Europe had the sexual revolution, but that didn't happen in Japan -- they had sex museums, especially in onsen [hot spring] towns," says Seidel.

"There were 20 to 30 sex museums all over Japan, pretty much one in every prefecture. Most of them closed from the beginning of the 1990s -- I guess the Internet killed them."

Seidel has visited two abandoned Japanese sex museums and although both have clearly been picked over and pilfered from, enough remains to make it clear what they were all about.

The one in Hokkaido he remembers best for the bizarre shooting games and taxidermy animals in sexual positions -- horses and monkeys.

"You could say it was partly educational and very, very weird," says Seidel.

The other museum, in southern Japan, is filled with crumbling erotic statues and sculptures and an eerie naked mannequin in a white casket, her mutated nipples pointing in all directions.

He found old advertising pamphlets that boasted of wax dolls of Marilyn Monroe and a 1970s erotic star, but these were long gone when he visited.

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Urban exploration can be risky. There's no way to tell if abandoned structures, like this coaster at Nara Dreamland, are architecturally sound.

Other amusements

The current hot haikyo site is an abandoned amusement park, Nara Dreamland, says Seidel.

It's so popular that a security guard has been posted at the gate to try and keep out the curious.

"Technically, if there's a security guard there it's not abandoned, but it makes it onto all the lists and blogs," says Seidel.

Nara Dreamland, built in 1961 and closed in 2006, does make for dramatic images -- the abandoned, rusting rollercoaster set amid the desolate ruins of the theme park.

If you're after atmosphere, it's got plenty.

But what about the danger factor?

"I'm a conservative explorer, I've never been injured, but it's definitely dangerous," says Seidel.

"There are all sorts of rusty things where you could get tetanus, there's barbed wire and some military areas could still have ammunition -- a mine could go off."

For a sample of Seidel's haikyo images, you can check out the above gallery or visit his site, Abandonedkansai.com.

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