Japan's Abandoned Amusement Parks

Japan's Russian Village

 Io9: Japan has a wealth of bizarre abandoned amusement parks. For example, we've seen an entire Mount Rushmore left to rot and a graffitied giant model of Lemuel Gulliver.

In the town of Niigata, you can visit the remains of The Russian Village, a shuttered tourist attraction that once boasted such sights as a recreation of the Cathedral of the Nativity in Suzdal, Russia, fake cars from the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and (what appears to be) a woolly mammoth skeleton, hanging out in the middle of nowhere.

When the Niigata Russian Village opened in 1993, an entrepreneur hoped to attract tourist dollars by importing a little slice of Russia to Japan's west coast. This Russocentric Epcot Center managed to stay open for a decade before the park fell into bankruptcy. After another grand opening in 2002 — that lasted all of six months — the Village was closed permanently, leaving such weird artifacts as a fake taxidermied woolly mammoth behind.

From the looks of these photos taken by Ralph Mirebs, plenty of people still visit the Village, but nobody pays the entry fee (such as Vice Magazine, who found employees' costumes up for grabs). I don't know about you, but I find facsimile villages like this pretty fascinating. Cloning geography, for fun and proft.

Giant Model of Lemuel Gulliver