The Hotel Cadillac House opened in April 1985, at the exact moment Japan was falling in love with easy money. It was a resort hotel built around a gallery of vintage Cadillacs, with a car museum and a restaurant on the ground floor, guest rooms and a pool lounge upstairs, and a club lounge in the basement. The story goes that the collection belonged to one of Japan’s most famous former baseball players. For a decade, it was a fashionable playground for young holidaymakers with bubble-era wallets.

Then the bubble burst, and the hotel closed its doors around 1996. When the property went to auction in 1999, the winning bidder turned out to be affiliated with Aum Shinrikyo, and the locals fought successfully to keep the cult out. The building has been in limbo ever since. The Cadillacs are long gone. What remains is a red-brick colonial shell with white columns, a grand staircase over rotting red carpet, and a teddy bear clutching a little red heart that visiting explorers keep posing around the ruins. I visited in December 2021.