Latest news with #urbanexploration
Fox News
3 days ago
- Fox News
Man discovers 'ghost town' full of empty, eerie hotels: 'Like a time capsule'
An urban explorer has uncovered a hauntingly preserved resort town in Japan, where towering hotels sit crumbling along a riverside cliff. It's been untouched for over three decades, according to reports. Luke Bradburn, 28, stumbled upon the forgotten tourist destination of Kinugawa Onsen during a trip to Japan in early 2024. While his original goal was to document the Fukushima exclusion zone, Bradburn ventured beyond the area and found a "ghost town." "I was scouting other nearby locations when I came across this entire district of abandoned hotels," Bradburn told news agency SWNS. "It was like walking into a ghost town." Kinugawa Onsen was once a bustling resort town renowned for its natural hot springs. It began to decline in the early 1990s during Japan's economic downturn. As tourism dried up, many hotels shuttered. But due to the country's strict property laws, the buildings were never demolished. Many remain in legal limbo after owners either died without heirs or disappeared altogether, according to SWNS. "It was like walking into a ghost town." "It's very different in Japan," Bradburn said. "The crime rate is so low that abandoned buildings don't get looted or destroyed as quickly." He added, "In some cases, they need the owner's permission to demolish, and if the owner died, they legally can't for 30 years." What remains today appears to be an eerie scene, with an entire street of massive, multi-story hotels slowly rotting away. Bradburn, who is from Greater Manchester and is now a full-time explorer, spent six hours navigating overgrown paths, broken staircases and precarious drop-offs around five or six of the roughly 20 structures, said SWNS. He would often move between buildings through interconnecting corridors. "From the outside, it's all overgrown and decaying," he said. "But inside, some of the rooms were pristine - like no one had touched them in decades." "Some of the rooms were pristine." Bradburn found himself in hotel lobbies filled with forgotten remnants of the past - traditional Japanese onsen baths, untouched rooms, even drinks still sitting on tables, the same source reported. "One of the strangest things was walking into a lobby and seeing a massive taxidermy deer and falcon still standing there," he recalled. "It was bizarre. I'd seen pictures of it online before, and then suddenly we were face to face with it." Some spaces felt like time capsules, he 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," Bradburn said. "It was surreal." He said much of the area was extremely dangerous to navigate. "There were floors missing, staircases hanging down, parts where you had to backtrack because everything had collapsed," he said. "It was really unsafe in some areas. You had to be so careful." Bradburn said the entire experience, overall, was emotional and disorienting. "Each [building] 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," he said. "It's eerie, sad and fascinating all at once." Kinugawa Onsen still draws some curious visitors, said SWNS, but the ghost town of abandoned hotels stands as a quiet and mysterious relic of Japan's tourism boom and bust. Much of it remains hidden in plain sight, as Bradburn's experience indicated - still waiting to be further discovered.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Tragic reason why £3m overgrown mansion was left abandoned with TWO sports cars and rooms full of luxury belongings still inside
An abandoned mansion which went viral after YouTubers broke in is owned by a grieving and reclusive multi-millionaire, MailOnline can reveal. Dozens of urban explorers and ghost hunters posted videos inside the £3.3 million property after word spread the house and all its contents had been 'frozen in time' for a decade. After influencers peddled unverified theories about the owner, it can be revealed the once-jet set executive, who we are not naming, lives a solitary existence in a multi-million pound mansion in London as he struggles to come to terms with a family death. A neighbour told MailOnline: 'He had a partner, she passed away. There was a child, but she is now gone. He doesn't want anyone to understand what has happened to him. 'He is a rich person, he never gets visitors. He is very intelligent and well educated but he sleeps until three in the afternoon, the blinds spend most of their time closed. 'His house here is full of papers, letters, we believe he is in a deep depression, great sadness. In almost three years he has not had any person visit, we have barely seen him. If you don't know him, he won't open the door. He doesn't care.' When we visited the abandoned mansion an hour's drive outside London, the driveway was totally overgrown and a vintage BMW 3 series was covered in vegetation. The grand entrance at the top of the driveway is sealed with a chain lock and high brick walls make it impenetrable. Neighbours claim YouTubers broke down a fence on a nearby footpath and trespassed across private land in order to access the mansion. They alleged the content creators prized open a downstairs window to enter the home. One group allegedly 'had their van towed', a neighbour said. Videos of the property have been made by influencers including 'The Bearded Explorer', who, with 231,000 subscribers, boasts of exploring 'anything abandoned & derelict across the world'. Once inside, the home has a frozen-in-time feel to it with its contents such as furniture, TVs, clothes and bed linen still in situ. There is food and wine still in the working fridge and YouTubers note how it is as if the owner 'left in a rush'. Some rooms such as the lounge, kitchen and dining room appear to be in surprisingly good and dust-free condition, albeit with the odd bit of ivy pushing through cracks in the windows, yet an upstairs bedroom has a caved-in ceiling and mould throughout. The property's interior is of late 2000s or early 2010s style and is packed with trinkets like oil samples and a BP-branded coat which evidence a successful career in deep sea oil prospecting. There is also an impressive film poster collection including James Bond's From Russia with Love starring Sean Connery and James Dean's The Great Escape. Some items offer a glimpse into the owner's interests, including several 2007/08 Chelsea season tickets for the Harris Suite hospitality section when the club was managed by José Mourinho and later, Avram Grant. There are also vintage Chelsea kits alongside Boston Red Sox baseball replica shirts in an upstairs bedroom. The owner also owns an impressive war time memorabilia collection including a poem written by a WW2 RAF pilot while a didgeridoo is propped up against the fireplace. Standouts in the home include a dust covered Jaguar XJ sports car in a garage. Strangely, its tires have not deflated. A door into the garage has had a hole cut out of it. But shameless urban explorers, who partake in 'Urbex', have gone a step further by brazenly filming deeply personal items like compensation documents which reveal the owner's name. They even gawk at old family holiday snaps, school photos of young children and even a framed handwritten note from a child clearly learning to write. With power still feeding the home, trespassers are able to turn on lights and even a kitchen radio which ghost hunters have used in lowlife videos to pretend the home is haunted. One neighbour of the mansion, who said the home has been ransacked by burglars thanks to videos posted online, said they believe the home was abandoned in around 2013 but a calendar which features in one video dates to around 2015. The neighbour said they do not know why the home was abandoned and noted how the alarm never goes off, but revealed: 'He continues to pay his subs for the road, we have tried to contact him but he doesn't reply. 'Several people have tried to buy it from him and he's just not been interested or responded in any way. 'It's not a cheap property, it will be worth something to him to sell it. 'It's huge, it goes from here all the way down to the main road. His is a nice house, he paid £2million for it in around 2011. 'His email he doesn't respond to, I've sent him registered post with a forward and it's never come back. He just doesn't seem to want to do anything about it. 'When we moved in he had this other half with a daughter and then she left.' Neighbours paint a picture of a successful and wealthy man who used to jet around the world to New York, Australia and the Far East on work. Hotel cards from across the world found in the abandoned property corroborate this. The executive has held senior roles in London and Boston, USA, according to his LinkedIn, and neighbours say he 'always travelling' up until 2021 when his partner became ill with a terminal condition. They say he plunged into a deep depression after her death in 2023, which he notes on his LinkedIn profile. He is said to now rarely leave his house and has few visitors. Those that do knock on his property, his neighbours say, are not answered to. His garden is overgrown and the home, is a mess, with letters in the hallway piled high. Locals believe the owner will not have a clue what has happened to his property. Another said: 'Shame on those who have exploited him. This will come back to bite them, I can assure you, he is not someone to mess with.'
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Who needs a car? Los Angeles by foot
Los Angeles is a constantly shifting, fragmented city with a landscape that is both navigated and determined by the car. Yet for her series North North South, Iranian American artist Ayda Gragossian wandered through different areas of the city on foot. North North South by Ayda Gragossian is published by GOST. All photographs: Ayda Gragossian Gragossian documented the spaces, objects and textures that are often overlooked when life is in constant motion Over a period of four years, Gragossian amassed a collection of images of store windows, parking lots and suburban houses that function as motifs Gragossian: 'In a place teeming with dreams and expectations, a single sign or building can disrupt the pattern of conformity, reminding us that the true essence of any city is best appreciated when we slow down and truly observe our surroundings' North North South takes its title from a photograph of a broken freeway sign that features in the book The title collates the main ideas behind the series, such as the quintessential American condition of traversing freeways that perpetuate inequality and the power of photography to transform the banality of everyday life into the poetic Speaking of LA, Gragossian says: 'Contradictions collide, and beauty and neglect, nostalgia and impermanence, intimacy and distance, exist side by side' 'In Los Angeles, what do you see when you are not moving at 60mph?' Gragossian's black and white photographs are devoid of people, an aesthetic choice that emphasises the city's contradictory characteristics The visual narrative in North North South departs from that of the glamorous LA popularised by the entertainment industry Instead, Gragossian's photographs capture a deeply personal view of a working-class city where different realities coexist in close proximity Gragossian: 'This book began as a personal journey. After living for a couple of years in England (where I completed my MFA at the University of Oxford), I returned to Los Angeles, wanting to reacquaint myself with the city I had called home for the past decade' 'I started walking … and seeking out spaces and objects that spoke to a different urban imagery, one that felt truer to the way I experienced it' North North South is not a conventional portrait of LA. It is a sequence of photographs that moves through the city the way life does –without a fixed route, weaving in and out of places, refusing a singular narrative In a city obsessed with productivity and spectacle, this work invites the viewer to slow down, to pay attention and to recognise the poetry in the overlooked
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Current condition of closed Oasis pool revealed as TikTokers 'explore'
Video footage from inside the dilapidated Oasis Leisure Centre has revealed how the swimming pool looks now, amid new hope for the site's revival. The Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon has been closed since November 2020, after Better shut the site during the Covid-19 pandemic and then later handed the keys back to leaseholder Seven Capital, claiming it was impossible to make enough profit. On Saturday, July 19, a group of urban explorers entered the empty leisure centre and began live streaming to hundreds on TikTok from the account which boasts 13,000 followers. Now a new video, shared by on TikTok, has given an inside tour of how the Oasis currently looks. It comes just days after Swindon Borough Council approved plans to rebuild the Oasis without a sports hall. TikTok footage shows inside the Oasis (Image: (Image: The decision now gives the faintest of hopes that the centre might be open at some point in 2026, 50 years since it was opened. However, the council's planning committee then went on to refuse permission for 700 flats on the site, which could be crucial to the funding of the leisure centre refurbishment. Urban explorer footage of the site shows a drained pool with some dirt and debris scattered across the ground. When asked how they entered the site, a spokesperson for the TikTok account said: "It took hours and was very sketchy." Recommended reading: Urban explorers live stream from inside Oasis pool as 'police descend' Council leader labels misconduct allegations against him as 'nonsense' Potential reopening of beloved Oasis Leisure Centre plunged into doubt Old water slides 'Storm', 'Great white' and 'Sidewinder' have faded in colour and graffiti is visible on the walls, suggesting these urban explorers aren't the first to have entered the site since it closed. Urban explorers have confirmed entry to the site was 'sketchy' (Image: Nostalgic comments left under the video state: "This was my childhood" and "I can hear the sounds and everything." Another added: "My childhood and my children's is there. Shame it's closed." For those who have spent years campaigning for the reopening of the leisure centre, the 'behind-the-scenes tour' was not welcomed. Taking to X, a spokesperson for the Save Oasis Swindon campaign group said: "Someone's live inside the Oasis. Presumably Seven Capital aren't bothering with security at the moment?" Urban exploring, which is defined as the exploration of manmade structures that are typically abandoned or inaccessible to the public, is not in itself a crime. It only becomes a criminal offence if damage is caused to property or items are taken. A Wiltshire Police spokesperson, previously commenting on urban exploring, said: "Our advice to these people would be to stay out of these structures because if they injure themselves, it could be hours or even days before help arrives. "If something does happen, it also puts the lives of those people in the emergency services at risk when they have to rescue these people as well."
Japan Times
15-07-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Tokyobike founder believes in taking in sights of dynamic cities slowly
Ichiro Kanai knows that if you have a thrilling city to explore like Tokyo — the eclectic architecture, far-flung galleries and picturesque backstreets — it's best done riding a bicycle. Tokyobike sells a range of light pedal-powered bikes designed for urban exploration. With their earthy colors, it's a functional accompaniment to a lifestyle that prizes minimalist design and products with simple aesthetics — Apple's iPhones being the tech equivalent. 'It's most fun to ride through unfamiliar places. When I ride my bike, I feel really nostalgic. In the evening, I hear voices from inside the houses and smell the food. It suddenly brings back memories. That's something you can only experience on a bike,' said Kanai, founder and president of Tokyobike. In Japan, cyclists are typically divided into two categories — the practical mamachari (literally, mom's bike) users which are dominating the market, and endurance cyclists who criss-cross the country, clad in high-tech gear. The bikes certainly sold, despite their relatively high prices between ¥59,400 ($404) and ¥95,000. | courtesy of Daisuke Hashihara The image of lycra-clad riders dominates in some Western countries. But in Japan, and especially in Tokyo, cycling is primarily a form of transport. 'It's basically like putting on your shoes for Japanese people,' said Chad Feyen, of the Cycling Embassy of Japan, which promotes cycling in the capital, noting that even commuting office workers typically ride to and from train stations to condense their travel times. Kanai is developing a niche customer base of those who want to cycle as part of a lifestyle, drawing eclectic influences from Apple, radio broadcaster J-Wave and the operator of the Muji brand — companies that create their own worlds. 'At first, it was still so much more expensive than mamachari bikes, so I was worried about whether it would sell,' he said of the early days of Tokyobike. Tokyobike's outlet in Kichijoji, western Tokyo. The company sells a range of light pedal-powered bikes designed for urban exploration. | courtesy of Daisuke Hashihara The bikes certainly sold, despite their relatively high prices between ¥59,400 ($404) and ¥95,000. The company's annual revenue remains modest at around ¥700 million. The 62-year-old affable entrepreneur, known affectionately as Kin-chan to his colleagues and neighbors, first discovered the joy of two wheels when he was a student — although his first taste was motor driven. 'As soon as I got on a motorcycle, I could go to all kinds of places. I loved that freedom,' Kanai said. After an early career working for a motorcycle manufacturer, Kanai hatched a plan to start his own bicycle business. Initially, the plan was to sell specific bicycle parts online, targeting enthusiasts, but when the name for his online shop came to mind, the vision grew from there. The image of lycra-clad riders dominates in Western countries. But in Japan, and in Tokyo, cycling is primarily a form of transport, says Chad Feyen, of the Cycling Embassy of Japan, which promotes cycling in the capital. | Elizabeth Beattie 'I thought it would be nice if there was a bicycle called 'Tokyobike.' It wasn't that I had always wanted to make bicycles, but I came up with that name ... so I made it into a reality,' he said. The original Tokyobike was produced in Taiwan, based on Kanai's design, which drew on his childhood recollection of bikes fashioned from frames made of chromoly steel, a type of low-alloy steel that is strong and durable. 'It's pretty faithful to the traditional shape of bicycles,' he said. Founded in 2002, the company today has six retail stores in Japan, with two partner-operated stores in Tokyo and Fukuoka. The bikes are also available at some 200 dealer stores across the country. The flagship store is located in Koto Ward — an industrial, creative suburb of eastern Tokyo. Despite the brand being named for the Japanese capital, it also has retail spaces in Los Angeles, Milan, London, Berlin, Taiwan and Bangkok, with plans to expand deeper into Europe. The flagship store is located in Koto Ward — an industrial, creative suburb of eastern Tokyo. | courtesy of Daisuke Hashihara 'Right now, bicycles are a difficult industry to grow in,' Kanai said, noting that one recent challenge for the company is the sweltering Tokyo summers. June was the country's hottest since record-keeping began in 1898, according to the Meteorological Agency, with temperatures 2 degrees Celsius higher than average, the agency reported. 'The effect of global warming. I think we're starting to feel it to some extent,' he said. This leaves fewer cyclists in the mood to rent bikes and enjoy the city slowly — although cyclists still remain prolific on streets and roads in Japan year-round. While bikes are an important part of transportation, 'freedom' is a word Kanai often comes back to when speaking about the allure of exploring the city on two wheels. The power of spontaneous exploration in a nation that is famed for rigidity is something Kanai feels acutely. He started his own business and has blazed his own trail, fueled by a curious spirit and love of adventure — the feeling of the breeze and no set pathway being a recurring verbal touchstone for him. Kanai's feeling for bicycles — the freedom, autonomy and being in control of your own path — is a message he has not just for his customers, but also for people in general. 'There are a lot of people in Japan who don't feel free,' Kanai said 'You can go wherever you want (when you're bike riding), you can change it up depending on how you feel at the time. You can make the decision on your own.'
