Hello. I'm a vivid Testuo The Iron Man & Japanese architecture appreciator currently staying in Kyoto for a bit, and am on the lookout for interesting looking tunnels and industrials areas (publicly accessible). Here's a great example of one I came across the other night walking home. I'm already aware of the Kiyotaki tunnel from searching the sub, and plan on visiting it at some point.
My main interests are for visual & audio research, so bonus points if there's an interesting audio quality to the spot. (Tunnels tend to lend themselves well to that, I find)
by SkullThug
4 comments
One time a friend and I went up to Kurama late at night and we had to walk back down to Iwakura cause the trains were done for the evening. We walked through 二ノ瀬 tunnel cause it looked like it would save us time cutting through instead of going around the long way through the town.
It was a trippy experience. Because it was so late at night there were almost no cars. But when one came you could hear it way before you could even see the headlights and it made a monstrous deafening roar because of all the soundwaves accumulating and passing through the tunnel. Felt like a giant sea monster was slithering through to tunnel coming towards us and then plop, a little kei truck appeared just puttering along.
I’m not quite sure if I could recommend it though. It’s a long ass tunnel to do on foot. It felt like we were in there for at least 30 minutes, maybe more. And the inside of the tunnel is quite boring and featureless, like just a giant concrete tube. It was only fun cause in between cars we were talking and drinking as we slowly made our way home.
The really awesome thing is that we went to Kurama to try and see some shooting stars cause there was a meteor shower. But we couldn’t find a spot on the mountain that wasn’t completely obscured by tree cover, and it was cloudy anyway. After we emerged from the tunnel it opened up to a big open sky and the clouds were gone! We wearily climbed up to the top of the opening of the tunnel which was just dirt and rocks and shrubs and sat down looking up. We saw tons and tons of shooting stars which made the trip completely worth it.
But yeah for general industrial looking areas, south of Kyoto station is more like that.
It’s very funny to me that you’d decide to go to kiyotaki in the middle of the night (referring to the story you linked to) to see the tunnel, and not during the day to see the absolutely beautiful river. To each their own I guess…
There’s bound to be something of interest for you along the lake Biwa canal/aqueduct. There are a few industrial remains around Nanzen-ji, then the canal is walkable going eastward from say Keage station. It has a very interesting history, there’s a NHK documentary about it.
The pedestrian tunnel beside Gojō over to Yamashina freaks me out. Hope this helps. Any of these “なんちゃら口” entrances to Kyoto have an execution site associated with them, which helps.