“It’s eerie, sad and fascinating all at once”
Luke Bradburn discovered the forgotten tourist hotspot of Kinugawa Onsen in Japan(Image: Luke Bradburn/SWNS)
An urban explorer from Bury stumbled upon an abandoned ‘city of hotels’ which had been left frozen in time for decades.
Luke Bradburn had travelled to Japan to document the Fukushima exclusion zone, but went on to find the forgotten tourist hotspot of Kinugawa Onsen.
The town was once a bustling resort with natural hot springs, but it has since been left untouched for more than 30 years.
Luke saw a ghost town with dozens of massive, decaying former hotel buildings along a cliffside river – with some filled with arcade machines, taxidermy animals and even drinks still sitting on tables.
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The 28-year-old spent six hours navigating overgrown paths, broken staircases and dangerous drop-offs, as he explored a handful of around 20 sprawling buildings.
“It was like walking into a ghost town,” said Luke. “There were abandoned cars on the streets and while you could drive through the area, every building around you was just left to rot.
The forgotten tourist hotspot of Kinugawa Onsen in Japan(Image: Luke Bradburn/SWNS)
“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.
Inside one of the old hotels(Image: Luke Bradburn/SWNS)
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.
Even drinks were left in some rooms(Image: Luke Bradburn/SWNS)
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.
One room that Luke discovered(Image: Luke Bradburn/SWNS)
“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.”
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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.”
AloJapan.com