In November 2013 an old friend of mine kindly sent me a link to an interesting blog called Spike Japan. Amongst other things, it told of a moribund love hotel district in Kinugawa Onsen, near Nikko. At the time of writing there were four abandoned hotels in the area, the Century, the Don Quixote, the Crown, and the Dreamy. A fifth hotel, the Asaka, was still in business. They were all within a kilometre of each other as the crow flies.

Although the author of Spike Japan wrote that he visits these places so that his readers don't have to, when I read about the abandoned love hotels I naturally wanted to see them for myself. The next morning I loaded up my equipment and set a course for the Hotel Asaka, which was registered in my (borrowed) car's GPS navigator. I was delayed by traffic jams, but when I finally got to my destination the abandoned hotels weren't hard to find. I spent two nights in the area, and photographed the ruins to the best of my ability, along with a few other local sights.

I wasn't satisfied with my coverage of the Don Quixote, so I returned in April 2014, equipped with some powerful LED light panels to illuminate the rooms which were too dark to shoot by ambient light. I revisited Kinugawa Onsen once more in January 2016, and took some more photographs of the Century, the Don Quixote, and the Crown.

It appears that the Hotel Asaka has finally met the same fate as its neighbouring hotels. When I visited in 2013 it was closed, despite it being a long weekend when every hotel in the area was filled to capacity. I walked into the courtyard and had a quick look around; it looked run down and probably disused. I didn't want to risk an encounter with an angry caretaker however, so I didn't attempt to take any photographs. The place was still closed when I returned in 2014 and 2016, so at this stage I think it will probably never reopen.