Is it better to have been loved and lost, than never to have been loved at all? These sites, galleries of photographs of an abandoned Japanese amusement resort (click on the pictures for more) raise some intriguing questions about the nature of beauty and loss.
If we’re being honest it seems pretty clear that, had we seen this place when it was going strong, we would probably (as the jaded grownups we have become) consider this to be a pretty tacky amusement park, which is a bit like calling something a pretty water-resistant duck. Amusement parks are amusing, but they are rarely sophisticated or ironic. And they are rarely beautiful.
But now look.
del.icio.us: all this useless beauty
blinklist: all this useless beauty
furl: all this useless beauty
Digg it: all this useless beauty
ma.gnolia: all this useless beauty
Stumble it: all this useless beauty
simpy: all this useless beauty
newsvine: all this useless beauty
reddit: all this useless beauty
fark: all this useless beauty
Technorati me!
raincoaster 
I so so so want to go there…. bags that pony on the right…. the one with the evil black mane…
I am not even sure if they’re all the same park, since I don’t read Japanese. But I want this one.
Hi rain, your player doesn’t work, it gives me error. Something wrong with the file extension, you think?
Yes, thanks for the head’s up. Odeo is demented. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m leaving it up for awhile so that the techies can look at it and give me their opinion (“Odeo stinks.” Yeah, thanks guys). If I can figure out some storage online I will change the link.
You can get the file directly here:
http://odeo.com/show/6654543/1186580/download/AllThisUselessBeauty.mp3Nope, you can’t. Did I mention Odeo is demented? Try this?[audio src="http://media.odeo.com/7/4/2/09_All_this_useless_beauty.mp3" /]
How many URLs can there be for one simple MP3?
Ironically, the player
seems to be working perfectly nowworks perfectly as long as you’re signed in to Odeo.Well this is certainly useless, although it is in no way beautiful. I’m just going to take the damn thing down for now.
All right, fine. Be that way. It seems to work, so I’m putting it back up. No idea why it sometimes fails, but it’s not because I did anything wrong. Is there beauty in dysfunctionality as there can be in decay? When it makes the YouTube dancers skitter around like bad animation, yes; in this case, no.
If you like this sort of thing, there’s (amongst others) http://www.28dayslater.co.uk which has awesome reports and images mainly from the UK but Europe too. :)
Ah, looks really interesting. I do like this kind of thing, thanks. If you do too, check out Walking Turcot Yards, over in the blogroll. It’s a photoblog of the largest abandoned urban space, Turcot Yards in Montreal. You wouldn’t think there’d be that much material with a flat, paved area only three miles long, but there is.
awesome pics and post. they immediately convert me to raincoasterism or raincoasteropia, or whatever it is …I’m on board. I didn’t see the same romantic elements in Turcot Yards.
Reminds me when we had our own spot of New Jersey in Norfolk, Va in the 1970’s – Ocean View Amusement Park along the Chesapeake Bay. In the winter, you’d half expect Bruce Springsteen to be wandering along the midway. Eventually, its claim to fame was that it was a location for the disaster movie “Rollercoaster.” Despite its association with the movie, the park’s coaster resisted several attempts at destruction by sawing when the park finally closed. They had to bring in explosives.
Having ridden it a few times, I don’t see why the sawing didn’t work.
Thanks for the plug! Turcot Yards is a whole other type of issue even if it is in the same general abandoned category. But if you think this is something (and I certainly think it is!) then you have to check out this “Gulliver’s Travels” abandoned theme park also in Japan.
Neath
TAN, welcome. raincoasterism accepts all converts happily, but be warned that there is a lot of calamari involved. I am happy that reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated…but I hope you got to collect the insurance even so. I like Turcot Yards for the same ability to find beauty in decay, in things considered to be by definition ugly; it’s a much more monumental sort of thing, more socialist and less romantic, but I like it anyway. I’m ALWAYS taking pictures of whimsical graffitti.
Old wooden roller coasters are another love of mine, FFE. But it would have been cooler to have burned it down!!!
Neath; thanks for that. How weird. Is Japan full of abandoned amusement parks? I may have to scoot over.
I think Japan is littered with abandoned parks. It was mentioned in the beginning of Spirited Away…the father says “This is a theme park. In the 90’s there were lots of plans for them, but many didn’t succeed. This is probably one of them.” (thanks to the transcript prowess of this site.) To warrant casual mention in a movie, it must be notable.
Thanks for that. I shall get a piggy bank in the shape of a Hello Kitty immediately!
Which will presumably go with that other HK item you own.
Ah, I know it’ll come as a surprise to you, but I don’t actually have sex with machines. I’m terribly old-fashioned and of delicate sensibilities, ya kno.
Sorry? Huh? That was the Hello Kitty Massager. Whatinhell perverse gland of yours made you see anything else in it?
I had all my glands removed at puberty. They got in the way of archery practice.
Those roller coasters look like Pig Snouts. Gives me a bad flashback to Hannibal.
Thankfully, I’ve never seen that.