Urban explorers have found an eerie and haunting resort town in Japan, with hotels left untouched for decades, and drinks set on tables as though guests may return at any moment
Along a cliffside river, a haunting abandoned resort town has been discovered by urban explorers in Japan, and it’s seriously creepy.
The city was once a major tourist attraction, and the explorers found around 20 hotels that have been left frozen in time, with drinks eerily left on tables, as though the guests were due to walk back in at any moment and claim them.
It’s been over three decades since the entire area was abandoned, with the discovery shedding light on what life was one like in the bustling resort, and it comes after news that an abandoned UK Butlin’s site is now seaside town’s ‘hell hole’ hotel .
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Urban explorer Luke Bradburn, 28, hails from Bury, Greater Manchester, but his adventures have taken him all the way to the other side of the world. He originally visited Japan to take a look around the Fukushima exclusion zone in 2024.
However, he stumbled across the abandoned city of Kinugawa Onsen whilst looking at other places nearby, and found a chaotic and “eerie” place. Half of the city is “pristine”, as though people only just walked out, and other parts of it are dangerously disintegrated into disrepair.
“It was like walking into a ghost town,” Luke explained. “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.”
Once a bustling high street and tourist hotspot, it was in the early 1990s that Kinugawa Onsen faced a rapid decline when the Japanese economy hit the rocks. Quickly, one after the other, hotels began to shut their doors, with tourism screeching to a grinding halt.
However, the buildings have been left as they were because Japan has some strict laws that make demolishing things difficult, so the past is frozen in place.
“It’s very different in Japan,” Luke explained, “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.”
Of the roughly 20 hotels that have been abandoned in the area, Luke managed to make his way through about five, using corridors that connected them.
“Each one felt like stepping into a time capsule,” he said. “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.”
From rooms left exactly as they were when in use, to grand hotel lobbies and traditional onsen baths – Luke was able to get a real glimpse at what it would have been like in its heyday.
“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.”
He added: “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.”
However, exploring the hotels isn’t for the faint-hearted, because many parts of them are collapsing or have disintegrated altogether, making it “really unsafe”.
“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,” he explained.