Nagoro Scarcrow Villiage

After a somewhat scary drive we made it to Nagoro "Scarecrow Village."

This small town in Japan is inhabited by hundreds of dolls or scarecrows.  It has been featured in the news as "One of the most terrifying places on earth," and "Straight out of a horror film."  It is essentially a ghost town with less than two dozen living residents, all of who are over the age 55.  This place had such an eerie vibe.

Everywhere we looked we saw them.  Just doing a quick glance around it looked like there were people out and about, but when you stop and look closer you see none of them are alive.  It was so creepy.

We were snooping way to close to a residents home, thinking it was abandoned, when I saw a shadow move inside.  It scared me, because we were already on edge.  Then I noticed smoke coming form the chimney.  After a few minutes she came out to talk to us.  

Well, she actually invited us in.  Her name is Ayano Tsukimi, and she is the one making all the dolls.

Her house seemed like a typical old Japanese house except it was full of dolls.

She only spoke Japanese, but she was able to show us that she makes the dolls.  She even had a little pamphlet with Japanese and English explaining.  It says that this is the town she grew up in, but she lived away in Osaka for a while.  When she moved back most people in the town had died or moved away.  Her dad passed away.  She was lonely so she made a scarecrow of her dad who often worked in the garden.  Other town people seemed to enjoy seeing him there, so she made more to represent other people, and it grew from there.

This next one is representing a wedding.

We found this room in the community center.

The school was the craziest part.  Literally hundreds all lined up.  We didn't see any other tourists there, but we know they sometimes come because people signed the chalk board.

The next on is Tucker and Leon pretending.

Ayano Tsukimi hopes that more people will move to Nagoro and bring life to the town again.  I honestly do not think it will work.  It was really hard to get to.  Our GPS told us we thought we had an hour and a half drive from the airbnb so we left at 6am.  We didn't find the town until about 3:30.  It was a horrible drive.  Think very small one lane roads going up a windy mountain.  Our first way we ended up turning back because of ice.  We didn't know it was on a mountain, so we were not prepared with chains.  The second way we tried we almost made it but we got completely stuck on the ice.  It took us a couple hours to get off.  I had to go walk to an abandoned nearby ski resort and steal a shovel (I was originally going to bring it back, but wasn't able to get back up to where I took it).  Then we had to dig at the ice and try over and over again to get off the ice while Bob and Tucker pushed on the back of the car.  It was scary and cold.  After we got unstuck we found a new route that was three hours to the village.  It was a stressful drive to say the least.  I do think the towns location has everything to do with it being abandoned.  There is nothing really there.  No stores, restaurants, even vending machines.  I would have like to stay the night, but there was no where to stay.

It was definitely an adventure.  I'm glad we got to see this town that is so unique and a little bit scary.