The park itself is still standing and largely untouched, so there are lots of unofficial visitors exploring and photographing the park. Nara Dreamland closed down shortly thereafter in 2006. The killing blow came when Universal Studios opened up its own park in nearby Osaka in 2001. After Disney had an official presence in Japan, Nara Dreamland began its long and slow decline. In 1983, Tokyo Disneyland finally opened. If you compare maps of the two, they're pretty much identical. Nara Dreamland, which was built in 1961, was in a lot of ways a straight-up copy of the original Disneyland, complete with jungle cruise, monorail, and main street. Some people visited Disneyland to try to capture all the magic. There weren't really many other amusement parks that were as big or that paid such attention to detail. It's hard to imagine now, but when Disneyland first opened up back in 1955 it was a pretty big deal.

While some might attribute this to the local climate or the time of year these pictures were taken, I'd like to say that there's so much fog because this place is creepy as hell. Still, that hasn't stopped intrepid explorers from climbing all over these rabies hazards.Īnd for some reason, nearly every picture I've found of Takakanonuma Greenland has been in a dense fog. Since its final closure, the park and its huge roller coasters have become overgrown by local plants and nearly completely rusted over. In 1986, the park tried to open back up again after being closed down for about 10 years, but quickly failed again. Takakanonuma Greenland was an amusement park that opened up in the mid-70s and quickly closed down. Let's take a look at some of the creepiest abandoned amusement parks in Japan. Lots of people have taken it upon themselves to explore these abandoned parks and provide us all with nightmare fuel. Lots of these failed amusement parks have been either abandoned or torn down completely. Countries like China and South Korea are experiencing a kind of amusement park boom, while Japan's amusement parks have kind of peaked.

Other Asian Parks: Lots of new amusement parks are opening up all across Asia too, which has brought attention and attendance away from Japanese amusement parks.

With those banks gone, the amusement parks couldn't afford to stay open.

Failing Banks: Lots of smaller parks were financed by banks that gave bad loans, or failed for other reasons.

Why would you go to some no-name amusement park when you can go see freakin' Mickey Mouse?!

Bigger Parks: Places like Universal Studios and Disneyland have put a lot of smaller parks out of business.

There are a bunch of different reasons why amusement parks go out of business: Why do so many amusement parks fail? It seems kind of strange that so many amusement parks would simply just close shop. And while not all of Japan's abandoned parks are as creepy as rusty ol' clown car above, some of them come pretty damn close. Places where poeople used to gather to have fun or go on vacation now sit vacant to rust and become overrun by nature. Some of the creepiest of all haikyo in Japan are amusement parks. The Japanese call these places haikyo ( haikyo 廃墟（はいきょ）). Not only are there still tons of rural places in Japan, but there are even abandoned places, places that were simply left behind to rot.

A common misconception about Japan is that it's so densely populated that every single town is just like Tokyo urban, people all crammed together, few empty spaces.

Abandoned amusement parks