Last weekend I had a pretty unique experience with my buddies Mike, Mike and Jason. We went on a haikyo – the Japanese term for urban exploration – a really cheesy term for a very cool activity. Haikyo is basically just going and checking out abandoned developments & buildings. For what? Well – just for fun actually. Strange as it may sound – it is really interesting.
The Russian Village is an abandoned theme park (as of about 5 years ago) in Niigata prefecture – about 4 hours by car north of Tokyo. We rented a car – and Jason kindly drove us up to the location that British Mike had targetted for our adventure.
The park was unbelievable. While some parts were a bit vandalized (graffiti, broken glass, etc.) – many parts of the park were in great shape aside from nature taking over. We took the liberty of making some non-destructive signs of our visit to the park…
The village consisted of a hotel, a Russian church and a courtyard with various shops, restaurants and attractions. The whole complex seemed really geared towards wedding parties – which obviously was a bad business decision in such a random part of Japan.
Above pics courtesy of Jason – he and Uk Mike have some great writeups of the event including videos and more pics (Mike’s, Jason’s). Canadian Mike assures us he will also post something eventually… 
Edit: Correction – he has!
Below is my contribution to the capturing of the weekend on film …
Looking forward to the next haikyo!
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Nice post Scott-tockulous, I like that photo of us standing by the chairs-didn’t realise he took that- surprised I didn’t get that shot too. I like the new look of the site too.
Nice summarized write-up Scott. My photos look good in your post! I enjoyed our time exploring the park just you and I.
Fire heading photo looks good. Just what one would expect the website of an expecting father to have.
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Good write up Scotty, short and to the point. My post is now up by the way.
So will this be the first and last haikyo you do?
Mike Uk – Thanks Mike-mockulous. Still tweaking the site a bit – will get her up to snuff before too long.
Jason – Thanks again for your pics. The fire heading photo is going soon – don’t get too attached!
Can Mike – Thanks. Hope it’s not the last haikyo for sure. I am certainly game for another provided we can do a day trip or something that doesn’t take all weekend. Have linked to your post now too BTW…
Wow, but Gaijins, what did you break?
<- “Bad” Gaijins. typo.
Okumura-san,
Haha… we didn’t break anything – honest!
We just had a look around – just for exploration. It was fun – maybe you would like it too!
@Okumura
Dude, we did not break anything. You should have seen what other Japanese haikyo people did in the hotel rooms. It was disgusting.
> Jason
I didn’t think you broke something, and I know (may be more than you) that
not all Japanese are polite
It was just a joke, and it’s not my intention to embarrass you guys. Sorry for that.
Hi Okumura- no worries- and Jason, probably it wasn’t proper haikyo people that did that, but more likely local kids. Proper haikyo people who go the efforts that we did to get to a place generally have more regard for the haikyo than that.