Luke Bradburn, 28, from Greater Manchester discovered the forgotten tourist hotspot of Kinugawa Onsen while travelling in Japan which was a “ghost town” frozen in time
An urban explorer has uncovered an eerie, abandoned city of hotels with cars also left in the street for more than 30 years.
Luke Bradburn, 28, discovered the forgotten tourist hotspot of Kinugawa Onsen, in Japan, once a bustling resort town famed for its natural hot springs. He travelled to Japan in early 2024 to document the Fukushima exclusion zone and while scouting for other nearby locations, he stumbled upon the abandoned hotel district. Where there had been a thriving high street, it is now a ghost town with dozens of massive hotel buildings slowly decaying along a cliffside river.
Some are frozen in time, filled with arcade machines, taxidermy animals and even drinks still sitting on tables. Luke spent six hours navigating overgrown paths, broken staircases and dangerous drop-offs, exploring a handful of the roughly 20 sprawling buildings.
Luke, from Bury, Greater Manchester said: “It was like walking into a ghost town. There were abandoned cars on the streets and while you could drive through the area, every building around you was just left to rot.
“When we stepped inside, the contrast was mad. From the outside, it’s all overgrown and decaying, but inside some of the rooms were pristine – like no one had touched them in decades.”
Kinugawa Onsen began to decline during Japan’s economic downturn in the early 1990s as tourism slowed and many hotels shut down.
Due to Japan’s strict property laws, many of the buildings were never demolished and still stand today as some owners died without heirs or simply vanished, leaving the properties in legal limbo.
Luke said: “It’s very different in Japan. The crime rate is so low that abandoned buildings don’t get looted or destroyed as quickly. In some cases, they need the owner’s permission to demolish and if the owner died, they legally can’t for 30 years.”
Luke estimates there are around 20 abandoned hotels along the river in Kinugawa Onsen. He managed to explore five or six of them by passing through interconnected corridors and hallways.
Luke said: “Each one felt like stepping into a time capsule. You get a sense of what life must’ve been like here at its peak and then it just stopped. It’s eerie, sad and fascinating all at once.”
Inside the hotels, he found grand lobbies, traditional Japanese onsen baths and entire rooms frozen in time. Luke said: “One of the strangest things was walking into a lobby and seeing a massive taxidermy deer and falcon still standing there.
“It was bizarre. I’d seen pictures of it online before and then suddenly we were face to face with it.”
Some rooms were so well-preserved, it looked like guests had just left. Luke said: “We found arcade machines still filled with toys, tables set with drinks and rooms that looked like they hadn’t been touched in decades. It was surreal.”
But not all of it was pristine. Luke added: “There were floors missing, staircases hanging down, parts where you had to backtrack because everything had collapsed. It was really unsafe in some areas, you had to be so careful.”