Located in Nagano, the Shinshu Kanko Hotel sits on the side of a steep hill with a small village surrounding it.  It isnt easily accessible from the front (being that it's surrounded by houses with people walking around), but can be accessed if you sneak in via the grounds out back (you just have to take a long hike up a steep road and then slide back down the hill behind the main building...which is on a severe slant - so you have to stay on your arse and hold onto vines and branches as you make your way to the bottom).  

 

A Japanese mate of mine told me that this place was haunted, so I was super eager to check it out.  

 

It's a pretty big place and very little (if any) of its original fittings are still there and most of the guest rooms are empty (you might find a lamp or a mattress on the floor if you're lucky).  I guess this place is less about exploration and more about just having a good time creeping yourself out.

 

Starting from the top floors, there's a few banquet halls and some nice decayed little guest rooms which are well lit and great to photograph.  Some of the rooms on these levels are completely exposed to the outside (a lot of the walls have crumbled and fallen to the grounds below) so you need to be a little stealthy or someone from one of the facing buildings in the village might see you.

 

As you descend deeper into its bowels it gets darker and darker until you need a flashlight.  Walking these pitch black halls with only the sounds of dripping water is creepy fun, but the floors here are slimey and you have to watch your step.  The stairs joining these levels are completely unstable and extreme caution has to be taken if you choose to use them (some staircases have crumbled away, leaving little cliffs on the edges of some of the floors).  

 

It takes a while to see this entire place and what makes it more time consuming is the fact that you have to duck and crawl along the floors in a lot of the areas (to avoid being seen).

 

This place is due for demolishement and work has already started on the ground floor...but there were no workers around on the day I visited.  When I left I got busted crawling back up the hill by a young couple taking photos of the town below.   They looked kind of freaked out because I was sliding on my stomach up the hill through the dead leaves that blanketed the slope.  I smiled at them but they jumped into their car and sped off.  I guess I looked a little strange.