Still City Program: Tour (9 & 10 Nov.) Countryside driving trip to Izu Penninsula : the abandoned resorts and theme parks or Haikyou. by Daphne Mohajer-Va-Pesaran
A two day driving trip to Izu to spot abandoned resorts and explore the countryside.
廃墟-はいきょ- ruins; abandoned building: In recent years Haikyo hunting has become a popular pastime for foreigners and Japanese alike with numerous blogs, books and news reports. Ironically, in the case of places like Gunkanjima, it has actually served to reinvigorate the economy through tourism and souvenir sales. Not to mention rides in tiny boats to get to the once most densely populate place in the world (). We will be driving along a countryside littered with the evidence of the burst bubble. We are driving through hills covered with overgrown baths, resorts, homes, love hotels, apartments, etc.
It’s not just about defacing a space for graffitti artists, or for looting to find TVs and furniture, althought they are promptly looted and destroyed- we will be visiting the Haikyo so you can get a sense of the state in which they were left, and the sheer number of them in the countryside as well as talking a bit about the history.
These are monuments that tell stories – haunting, spooky sometimes, but always interesting and fun to explore them as relics of past ambitions.
Schedule: We will leave very very early morning on the 9th and drive to the tip of Izu to Shimoda city
We will stay the night in K’s onsen Ryokan after sneaking into a public onsen on the sea in Ito city. After spending some hours in a hot bath by the craggy beach we will go off to K’s and get some sleep in a dormitory style tatami room . It’s lovely and right by the river.
The next day we will leave around noon and take a liesurely drive back into the urban sprawl of Tokyo. We should be back around early evening and I will drop you all off in one central location.
Please get back to me ASAP if you would like to participate – I need to book cars/rooms
Looking forward to it very much!
