Years ago I read this book, The Devil of Nanking
As the years have wore on, and I got to know the city, I’ve ended up stumbling across abandoned buildings, boarded up, often for years. These blocked off concrete blocks sit empty while nature slowly reclaims them. Sometimes they are in quite luxurious neighborhoods where it doesn’t make sense to have this property just sitting and not making money. Yet this is Japan where things can get forgotten, even things that have the potential to bring in Yen hand over fist.
The Kichijoji Castle
The Kichijoji Castle is a house that is right next to one of the best parks in Tokyo, Inokashira Park. It has been boarded up for at least 10 years and even though it sits on some of the choice real estate in Tokyo no one has touched it … except for some kids who probably explore its, and each others, depths in the darkest of nights.
Daikanyama Dilapidation
Daikanyama is one of the trendiest areas of Tokyo. This is where the rich and hip Japanese go to buy $300 jeans and sip $14 fruito soy milk lattes. Yet among all the glitz and glamour sits this apartment block. Resting right next to the beautiful cherry blossom lined Meguro river it has about twenty bachelor pad units that could easily rent for $1000 a month. Yet it sits empty, left to the elements while its owners piss away tens of thousands of dollars a month in rental income. Google Maps seem to show people living in it when they drove the map car through in 2009 but its been empty for at least a couple of years.
![IMG_0073[1]](https://gaijinass.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/img_00731.jpg?w=616&h=461)
Forgotten Factory
This warehouse / factory looks like its been sitting there for decades. Out front among the ivy is some machinery that looks like it was last used during the start of the industrial revolution. Yet this building is right next to Temple University’s Japan Campus in the heart of Azabu-Jūban a residential neighborhood where foreigners constantly out bid each other to live in some tiny bachelor pad.
If you like this try these:
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| Japanese Donut Heads | Cute vs Sexy | The best Star Wars behind the scenes yet | Making Friends in Japan | The architectural greatness of Watanabe-San |
Gaijinass 
I love movies. Especially Japanese movies. This has a point.
Most people wouldn’t sit through many of the extras on their DVDs. Other than deleted scenes, the average citizen considers extra DVD content a waste. They pay the extra for the Special Edition Extended 2-Disc Director’s cut and watch the long version once, all the delted scenes once, and then its just the regular theatrical length they watch plus their one or perhaps two favorite deleted scenes.
I lived for the outdoors and didn’t need any other people in my life. Then God laughed and decided to grind me under his heel. Enter an allergy to grass (the other allergies over the years just didn’t have the stopping power of this twelve gauge monster) and a discovery of movies. {this is some sort of over played re cap of my life story}
Being trapped indoors leads to an extreme amount of movie watching. After you’ve gone through everything in your collection enough times that simply picking the DVD case up runs it through your mind in fast forward, you tend to surf the extras and second discs. It is this that leads to the relavancy of my reply.
Somewhere in that mess of extras on my DVDs I came across a bit about abandonned buildings in Tokyo and on its outskirts. In particular abandonned hospitals. They are like premade horror flik sets that can be rented for next to nothing. Whichever movie I had watched (probably about some horror story in a hospital) bragged about using one of these abandonned hospitals. These buildings make great sets, locals, and helpers in the war between producer and director.
Off of the movie subject. A city in the Northeast corner of Iowa by the name of Clinton has converted many abondonned buildings into low rent housing. They made a big deal in their local newspaper about two Japanese architects visiting to get ideas for similar such projects back in Japan. This was a few years ago. My mind is a mess so no telling how long ago.
Maybe someday I can hide out in one of these forgotten places and manage to stay off the radar enough to build a life in Japan. For now its me, a cot, and good times in a flooded basement that reeks of various pesticides that the flood washed loose and into the air again. My throat is all broken out and scratchy. My eyes burn. My head hurts. Please, whatever Gods/Angels/Demons watch over my fate, either take me peacefully in my sleep tonight, or put a letter from that wonderful pen pal of mine in the mailbox for me tomorow.
Enjoyed the article Yos. The pics helped (wow that makes me sound simple minded). … Off topic, and way out of left field, I have been on a weird kick of watching movies that are set in mental wards. I ran out of Japanese movies to watch on the family netflix and suddenly realized that there is an obscene amount of movies set in mental wards.
Huh…..
The gist of it:
1.) Old abandonned hospitals in Tokyo/Edo sometimes get used as movie sets.
2.) Some Japanese architects have been looking into the idea of possibly using old buildings, that have fallen into disuse, as housing for people with low incomes.
I lived near Tabata and my neighbourhood was full of abandoned buildings. Sure it’s not the most fashionable part of town but it’s on the Yamanote line. We had a tatami mat factory, huge building, next door. The owners (sisters) were friends of my housemate’s parents and she said they’d been fighting for nearly 20 years. I was like – why don’t they turn it into a gaijin house. You could fit a fuckload of gaijin in there! I have no idea why homeless people hadn’t moved in, guess that’s a Japanese thing.
I’m not sure if some of the abandoned buildings are death duty issues or something like that – a Japanese friend tried to explain death duties to me once but…zzzz….
After the quake, it got pulled down as did quite a few other places. I think the potential structural damage was used as an excuse to pull down abandoned buildings, and to get elderly relatives into homes so their houses could be pulled down.
Thanks for the insight! I’d love to know the back stories behind these too. I imagine it’s like you said some sort of family feud. Although the property taxes on these must be huge … unless they can write off the losses or something. But yeah if I had a big building I’d be cramming gaijin in on bunk beds.