Michael from Gakuranman.com is an adventurer. He’s currently living in Japan, and one of his favorite things to do is to explore and discover haikyo (abandoned sites / ruins) in Japan. For Tofugu’s current series of “scary” Japanese things, Michael has kindly offered to share with us the things that scare him most about his adventures into the crumbling, decaying, unknown. Let’s let him get started, shall we?

“Haikyo”

You’ve seen creepy Japanese ghost girls. You’ve read about doom-bringing Japanese Giant Asian hornets. You’ve heard tales from the master of Japanese horror. But what if you could experience all of that for real? Would you take up the challenge?

Littered throughout the country are ruins known in Japanese as ‘haikyo’. They come in all shapes and sizes; from a tiny wooden medical shack to the charred remains of a love hotel, from a long-abandoned tomb to a sprawling, concrete ghost island that once had the world’s highest population density. Some haikyo have fascinating histories attached, while others, gruesome stories of murder and deceit. Certainly not places you’d like to be on your own…

But as an urban explorer, these places grab me and don’t let go. Though often thoroughly bone-chilling, they offer a sense of excitement quite unlike that found anywhere else. So grab your flashlight and come with me as we explore the abandoned buildings of Japan. I’ve selected some of the creepiest and most powerful images gathered on my explorations to date. These are the things that make haikyo exploration both exciting and scary.

Tombs

Crypts are always creepy places, but this one was especially scary. Hidden deep with a cliff face in a secret cave was a small shrine with various pots and vases and a couple of marble busts. Behind that was a tiny hole leading to a further chamber. Crawling through on my hands and knees, I discovered what looked to be a storage area for special vessels and other tools used in ceremonies. I’m not sure anyone was buried there, but it looked at though it was used as a place for remembering the dead.

Skeletons

I found this rotten pig skeleton at an abandoned hotel near a river. It appeared to have gotten stuck on a second floor balcony and I can only assume died of starvation. It’s often easy to find small bird skeletons, or even a cat from time to time, but an animal as large as a pig was quite a shocking sight to behold.

Decay

Some areas found when doing urbex are just scary in and of themselves. This hallway in the Maya Hotel had an almost ghostly presence about it, with the rotting wallpaper and light pouring in from an open door. Simultaneously beautiful and creepy. I kept expecting somebody – or something – to walk out in front of me…

Decay can also present other problems as well. It’s never good to breathe mold, not to mention the asbestos that can come from decaying walls and ceilings.

Heights

This one might not be scary at all for some of you, but for others, it can be a nightmare. Heights are a very real threat when exploring haikyo, and especially in ones with crumbling, degraded concrete like Block 65 on Gunkanjima. I was consumed with awe of the place when there that I didn’t quite realize the risk. I don’t think I’ll be sitting here again in a hurry.

Fire

A huge fire has scorched the first floor of this love hotel haikyo in Kyushu, and one particular room on the second floor. It’s a curious sight – while most of the rooms remain in fairly good condition, the fire only seems to have raged in the one room upstairs, leaving a horrible dark mess. Rumour has it that the room was a murder site. Something oddly heavy in the air held me back from entering the blackened bathroom…

Spiders

Eugh. I hate spiders, and I hate spider webs even more. The number of times I’ve run into the things when wandering around old buildings… This particular one was quite interesting in the way the sticky white strands reached outwards. At the centre is only what I can assume is an egg sack. I wonder where the hatchlings are now…

Children’s Toys

Hidden inside one of the rooms of Block 65 on Hashima island is an old chldren’s toy named Poron-chan. You know the kind that rights itself when pushed over? It has an eerie bell inside that gives a rusty tinkling sounds when pushed. Once a cute, colourful plaything, now the face is warped and decaying. It gives me the shivers.

Creatures in Jars

Down in the dark basement of one abandoned museum in central Japan lurks all manner of ghoulish creatures, preserved perfectly in jars of strange liquids. In the photo above, you can see one of Japan’s squid, the hotaru-ika (firefly squid), staring long into the darkness. It gave me quite a fright when I caught its gleaming white eye staring back at me!

Murder

These hand prints have been in this old Chiba love hotel for years, even before the incident. A tacky attempt at scaring those brave enough to enter inside. It’s a spot plagued with tales of suicide and death, and well known amongst local people as a ‘ghost-spot’. But one incident in particular is confirmed as true. A young teenage girl was kidnapped by a group of youths, strangled, and her body left on the premises of this haikyo late 2004. If there’s anything more shocking than the creeping around a hotel littered with blood-red handprints, it’s knowing that a real murder case took place there. Truly chilling, and indeed extremely saddening.

Dolls

I don’t know about you, but dolls are one of the creepiest things on my list. This particular specimen I found inside the Doctor’s Shack – an old medical clinic out in the Japanese countryside. The doll’s head was decapitated, but I reunited it with the body for a few photographs, and paid a blood sacrifice. Mosquitoes swarmed around me as if moved by some angry spirit…

Koichi

A little omake from way back when Koichi visited Japan. We teamed up to explore the Maya Hotel, one of the holy grails of the haikyo world. And at night, no less! Here’s yours truly with the cool frood himself, enjoying a spooky candlelit dinner while overlooking the city of Kobe. Think yourself lucky I didn’t publish Koichi’s ‘scary face’…

So there we have it. 10 Haikyo Horrors to curdle your dreams. What freaks you out the most?

P.S. Wanna be creeped out even more? Check out Gakuranman’s haikyo explorations.
P.P.S If you love Halloween, follow Gakuranman on Google + and Twitter.
P.P.P.S If you are inspired to visit an abandoned site, be sure to know the risks before you go. In many cases it may be illegal, and you must be able to take responsibility for your own safety: Haikyo & Urbex Safety.

Greetings fellow fugu-ers! Gakuranman here. (That’s right, ‘schoolboy coat man’.) You may remember me from such indie B-posts as ‘Katakana Words Ate My Soul‘ and Invasion of the Kanji.

But not to fear! I’ve returned today to shower you with gifts. Gifts of knowledge and prosperity. Your Japanese skills will soar and…ahh, what the heck. Let’s just get on with it. Here’s some words related to the Japanese summer with a few colourful anecdotes. Because, you know, language and culture are inseparable. Kinda like this twisted daikon above. Also a mini giveaway for you hungry learners at the end of this post!

夏バテ (natsubate) – Summer Lethargy

Here in Japan, summer comes in a self-contained bubble of humidity. For about 3-5 months of the year, temperatures soar and people drop like flies having had all the life force sucked out of them. You might imagine that everyone slips into a zombified state doing nothing but waving 扇子 (sensu – folding fans) or うちわ (uchiwa – paper fans) and you wouldn’t be far off. So yes, right now yours truly is attempting to fight off zombifiction from the suffering summer heat. That’s natsubate for you!

セミ (semi) – cicada (noisy insect!)

Ahh, the sound of summer. Do you have these little critters where you live? For me in the U.K, we always had a resident wood pigeon who would coo sweet pigeon melodies down our chimney pipe. Now when I leave the house it sounds like a battleground, littered with the corpses of these short-lived insects. Personally, my ears have always interpreted the noise as the sound of Spaniards. (No offence to our Spanish friends our there, or the Inquisition!) Si si si si si si si si si. Sisisisisisisisisssss…..

かき氷 (kakigoori) – Shaved Ice.

Or so the dictionary tells us. I prefer to think of them as mounds of delicious cool. Covered with your favourite flavoured syrup (awesome, two British spellings in a row, right there!), these heavenly creations can be the only thing keeping you alive through many hot days. Other summer necessities include ちゅうちゅう (chuu-chuu) – flavoured ice lollies – or ガリガリ君 (garigari-kun) – a particular brand of ice pole sporting a kid with big teeth!

線香花火 (senkou-hanabi) – Sparkler

A kind of Japanese sparkler. You get all the fizz and crackle of normal sparklers, but with a curious little ball of hot goo forming at the tip. The ball grows bigger and bigger as the firework continues, before dropping to the floor and dying. People compete to see whose ball will hang on the longest. Very poetic and a great metaphor for many things Japanese, I reckon – the fleeting beauty found in transient objects and all that. I’m curious though, do they have these fireworks in other countries? I’ve only seen them in Japan myself.

There you have it then. A few summery Japanese words. Little and often eh? That’s the best way to keep up your Japanese studies, young grasshoppers (or should I say cicadas? har har har).

Well, I know you guys can’t get enough of giveaways around here, so as I promised here’s another great chance to win cool stuff from Japan. I have not less than *12* sets of prizes to ship out, including:

Stuff for learning Japanese while lounging in the loo.

And items for poking people with.

How about a pointy Japanese phrasebook to help your language studies?

Or, since we all worship the Tofu-gu around here, some authentic tofu-flavoured paper! In actual tofu packaging!

Oh yes. These and a Schoolboy-coat-man signed postcard from Japan could be yours. All you have to do is tell me what your best advice is for learning a foreign language.

Check out the full post for detailed information (and an embarrassing video!) I’m also giving a little time extension because you all rock. You have until Wednesday 25th August 2010! Not long then! Go for it!

P.S. If you think summer is too warm, you should follow Gakuranman on Twitter.

P.P.S. If you thought that tofu flavored paper was a good idea, you should try to win something from his contest.

Why, it was just yesterday that I teamed up with Koichi to kick some Katakana butt on edufire. A rather special class, it was – none of your usual vocabulary fluff. We’re talking real, useful katakana and it’s guaranteed to knock the Christmas socks off any native Japanese speaker when they hear you, or Tofugu isn’t a wonky bean-curd fishman! So, let’s get stuck right in to this 2-part blog post – Gakuranman x Tofugu – Fluency through Katakana Special!

I went for a vintage look with the slides – what do you reckon? Is the ‘Fugu a classic fish yet or still wet around the gills?

So, there are four Japanese alphabets, but you already knew that, right? For those of you just starting out, let me explain:

Romaji – Simply Japanese written with the English alphabet. Steer well clear of this lest you want to end just floundering around in Japan. You’ll need to be able to read the signs, so at a bear minimum you should learn the hiragana and katakana alphabets.

Hiragana – The Sexy Alphabet. For Sexy People. Why? Because it’s curvaceous, dynamic and feminine. Well, not really feminine, but I like to think of it as so ;). So soft and curly.

Katakana – Hard, angular and rough. The natural masculine alphabet, right? You’ll notice that the strokes are generally straighter and the letters more rigid.

Kanji – And kanji, everyone’s favourite, originating from China. Be thankful that it’s Japanese you’re studying – the Chinese need to learn about 10,000 kanji in contrast to Japan’s 3000 basic kanji!

And here is above, just for your reference. The amazing katakana alphabet!

Now we’re getting to the meat of it! There are so many uses for katakana, you can’t even count them on one hand! You probably know that it’s generally used for writing foreign words, but what else? Perhaps you know it’s for emphasising words too? Good! But there are more uses, oh yes! It’s used to write onomatopoeia, those lovely buzz-words that sound just like they’re written, as well as scientific and medical terms that have kanji that are simply to difficult to waste time remembering. You’ll also find that katakana is used to write people’s names, joins two words together and generally compresses everything down into one tiny little word. The most popular type are the 4-syllable words!

The examples on the intro slide are nice and basic:

ズボン – Trousers (or for you Americans who can seem to distinguish between underwear and trousers, I guess you’d call them pants).
ピンポン – Ping-Pong! The sound of a doorbell.
チョウ – Very/Super/Extra – an emphatic word.
ホモ・サピエンス – Homo Sapiens. Us, basically.
ワンピース – A one-piece dress. Two words combined.
パソコン – A PC (personal computer). Two words combined and shortened into a classic 4-syllable marvel.

So what’s first? Foreign Barbarians of course! All of the following words come from various countries. Bonus points and Tofugu-shaped cookies to those readers who can identify which word comes form which country in the comment below!

ピエロ – Clown. Like em or loath em?
アルバイト – Part time work. This word is used a lot in Japan.
クレーム – A claim or complaint about something.
サイン – A sign. No, no. Not that kind of sign… The signature, autograph kind!
ジョッキ – A beer-mug. Perplexing.
チャック – A zip. Ever forget to do yours up?
スナック – A…snack?? Nope, this is a Snack Bar in Japan. Usually a place where men go to drink and chat to the owners and often women who work there.
キャスター – A newscaster. Need good vocals for this job.
コンセント – You’ll never get my consent to marry my daughter! Not quite…this consent is a mains plug that you stick in the wall.
シール – Stickers! I must get some Gakuranman ones made…
ウイルス – A virus. Used a lot in the media recently with all the chatter of flu.
ドライバー – A screwdriver! Who would have thought…

Here’s some more. Just so many to choose from!

トランプ – Cards (Trump cards). Anyone ever played trumps?
バイキング – Oh-ho. Those dastardly Vikings. But no, this means an ‘all-you-can-eat’ restaurant.
マント – A cloak or a cape. Interesting, I could have sworn it was Tofugu’s arch nemesis, Manta-ray!
マンション – An upper-market apartment. Not a mansion.
アンケート – A questionnaire!
ホッチキス – A…hot kiss? Hah, you wouldn’t want to kiss this. It means a stapler.
ノルマ – A quota (business term, I think).
パンク – Not a punk rocker unfortunately, but a puncture.
フロント – The front of a hotel. A.k.a reception desk.
メイク – Koichi’s personal favourite. Makeup.
レンジ – A range of..? Nope, microwave I’m afraid.
レントゲン – An x-ray. Woo.

Okay, so let’s check out some hot little onomatopoeia. Ka-ching!

ペチャクチャ – A rabble of chattering grannies.
ピカピカ – Shiny and sparkly. Most likely where the yellow poke-rat got his name.
パンパン – A bloated full stomach. Go figure.
コグコグ – To drink in gulps and gulps.
ニコニコ – *Grin*
ペラペラ – (Italian Voice) I’m-a so pera-pera. Means fluent!
フワフワ – Floaty-light or airy. Also used to describe sickness when you feel faint or drunk.
プンプン – Ever seen those cute Japanese girls that fail trying to look angry by puffing their cheeks out? Yup, that’s pun-pun. Anger.
ブツブツ – Mumble-mumble-mumble. Sources say Koichi does this a lot.
ドンドン – Rapidly. We’ve gotta get going! Up the pace!
ゲロゲロ – Ribbit-ribbit. I love frogs. Anyone know if there are any frogs that are bioluminescent?
パクパク – Chomp-chomp. Munch-much.

Well, how are you doing back there? There are some pretty tricky words here, but don’t let them faze you if you are having trouble keeping up! When you’re ready for more, head on over to Gakuranman.com for the continuation and find out splendid words like ‘a flash of pants’, ‘handsome middle-aged man’, ‘close physical contact’ and the euphemism for being fired!

But that’s not all! The second part to this Katakana Special can be found here on Gakuranman.com: Unusual Katakana Words

Michael is the author of a fantastic blog called Gakuranman (schoolboy coat man), who writes about Japan, bioluminescence, and how to learn Japanese. Of course, when he isn’t looking at colorful sea creatures, you can even find him on hanging out with neon birds on Twitter. If you missed our fantastic live class, be sure to catch us next time by signing up at eduFire!