Pingback: TF Top 20……Tokyo Fox Hits Of 2020 | Tokyo Fox (東京狐) Pingback: TF Top 20……Photos For 2020 (End Of Year Filler Post!) | Tokyo Fox (東京狐) Pingback: Tokyo Daytripper: The Town With Multiple Quirky & Mysterious Sights Just A Couple Of Hours North Of Tokyo | Tokyo Fox (東京狐) Pingback: Tokyo Daytripper: The “Theme Park” In Gunma With A Sloping House, A Mysterious Cave & Not Much More! | Tokyo Fox (東京狐) Pingback: Tokyo Daytripper: Japan Snake Center – A Place To Avoid But Not For The Reason You May Think! | Tokyo Fox (東京狐) Still, it’s good fun to explore and look at the walls which are full of cut marks made by the small axes used by the hundreds of labourers who once worked here during it’s glory days.Ĭlick here to read ‘Tokyo Daytripper: A Shrine Dedicated To Feet & The Last Remnant Of A Former Haunted House In Gunma’Ĭlick here to read ‘Tokyo Daytripper: The Creepiest Buddha Statue In Japan!’Ĭlick here to read ‘Dining Out: Jihanki Shokudo (Vending Machine Restaurant)’Ĭlick here to read ‘One Of The Most Dense Temples In Japan!’ġ3 Responses to Tokyo Daytripper: The Lost World Ruins Of A Stone Quarry In Gunma There are some steps around the place but they don’t really seem to go anywhere. Yabuzuka Ishikiriba (stone-cutting place) is a great place to wander through the dark chambers which are accessible if you can scramble up the modest mud banks. I’ve not seen it but I believe this place was used as a location for ‘ The Hidden Fortress: The Last Princess‘ (2008) a re-make of the classic Kurosawa movie which was something of an inspiration for George Lucas when it came to writing the original ‘ Star Wars‘ (1977) film. Some of it is closed off due to collapse but without anyone around that’s probably not going to put off most people! Production continued until after WWII and when it did cease it was just left abandoned for decades until the Ota City Tourism Association website posted about it as part of a hiking course. The steep rock walls rising up around you have a height of about 20 metres and it has the eerie feeling of being like one of those places in Cambodia which featured in ‘ Lara Croft: Tomb Raider‘ (2001) as it’s like another world.įrom early on in the 20th century this quarry produced the porous Yabuzuka stone which was known as being easy to cut and was used as a cheap foundation stone in buildings. Of course it wasn’t on a par with Petra but there was still a special feeling of having discovered something, and for a while I had the place all to myself as I wandered and explored this abandoned natural landscape which has been slightly lost amidst the trees and overgrown vegetation. The gateway to the ruins involved passing through a fairly narrow corridor surrounded by towering high walls cut smoothly from solid rock, and in some ways it did remind me of the first time I visited the ancient ruins of Petra in Jordan and saw The Treasury. The remains of Ota Yabuzuka stone quarry came to my attention thanks to Tsubakuro’s Blog. After a few minutes walk the forest makes way for a huge stone space originally created in the Meiji era when stones were cut here until the middle of the Showa Period. This place really has just been left alone and I have to admit that I did feel a bit like Indiana Jones discovering some long lost ancient hidden temple or something. In fact there pretty much is no actual physical sign at all, and there’s no car park, ticket office or information centre. Within that forest lies the sight that I’d came to see and it’s all rather mystical as there really is no sign of what’s about to come. A 20 minute walk north-east of there took me through the peaceful countryside to a decaying forest. There were a couple more changes at Tatebayashi and Ota before finally arriving in Yabuzuka Station just before 10am. With my mask fixed by a couple of staples, I changed to the Tobu Isesaki Line and continued up into Gunma Prefecture. Subsequently, I had to ask to borrow a stapler at the ticket office at Kuki Station which slightly bamboozled the woman working there who was surprised by my strange request. I didn’t have any spare ones either and there wasn’t time to turn back due to the need to make one particular train further north. Wearing masks is something that has just been an everyday thing for a while now in Japan but typically the elastic on mine snapped not so long after I had left the Tokyo Fox Global Operations Centre just before 7am on the day of this trip. There’s something special and mystical about walking through a wood or forest and discovering a lost world of sorts but that is exactly what happened at this place just a couple of hours north of Tokyo.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |