For a city whose fame is derived from such an innocent, beloved national treasure as the Meoto Iwa, or Wedded Rocks, Futaminoura’s real claim to fame should be its alarmingly desolate night-life. Witness at dusk the closing of shop shutters and ryokan doors to be greeted by one of the most ominous towns in Kansai. Take a nighttime stroll past the town’s only convenience store to find a trailer home, complete with blacked out windows, Christmas reindeer still stuck to the roof, and countless tourists’ bodies likely buried only inches underfoot! Here one can easily imagine a Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Wickerman-style (i.e. the-town-is-in-on-it) horror story in which one arrives for pleasure and stays to be served up deep fried and on a stick at the macabre town fair.
In honor of the chills crawling up our spines, we bring you Uncomplimentary Postcards: Variations on Futaminoura by Sarah Rogers-Tanner.
Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.
Have you experienced the nighttime horrors of Futaminoura? Ever visited/lived in a less than picturesque locale? Send us your uncomplimentary postcards!
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As an eyewitness of this eerie town, I can say with confidence that I’ve never before feared for my life like I did in 二見浦. When we were looking for our hotel we tried stopping in an open ryokan to ask directions, but there was no one to be seen and no one came when we called. I truly believe that my travel buddy and I could have pelted through the town with an ax murderer on our heels, screaming for help at the top of our lungs, and all the doors would have stayed shut.
The rocks at sunrise were totally worth it, though.
I’m really kicking myself for not taking any pictures that night… or during the day when you could really see the blacked out windows on the trailer… Oh man, and we didn’t even mention the bathrooms with ashtrays in the stalls… we should have done a whole article on this place.
Oh my god. I felt the SAME WAY when we were there at night… creepy didn’t even begin to cover it. We arrived past 8 and it was pouring down rain… no one could give us directions to our ryokan and when we finally made it, I felt like I was in a horror film… just a little. It was a great trip ovreall, beautiful during the day, but very very deserted and unsettling at night.