Drink Machine

Gutted and propped open, a white vending machine dominates the left side of a debris-filled room at the former Family School Fureai in Yubari, Hokkaido, its coin-slot diagram still legible on the door panel. Sodden sofas and an overturned chair frame occupy the floor beside scattered cardboard and paper. A section of ceiling at the upper right has given way, exposing timber framing and insulation above. Nothing about the machine suggests it will be moved. The building was constructed in 1975 as Yubari Municipal Asahi Elementary School, a new reinforced-concrete three-storey structure built on the cleared site of Yubari Daini (Second) Elementary School. It opened on 1 April 1975, consolidating three predecessor schools, Yubari Daini, Teibi, and Fukuzumi, into a single campus with 13 classes and 351 students. The gymnasium, retained from the Daini school, already predated the building it stood beside. Asahi Elementary operated for eight years. By 1983, population decline had made even the consolidated school unviable, and it merged into a new Yubari Elementary School. In 1983 Family School Fureai opened in the former school building with classrooms converted to tatami-floored guest rooms, communal bathing facilities, a dining hall, and training rooms. The base rate was ¥5,600 per night. The tourism strategy did not hold. By June 2006, Yubari City declared its intention to seek fiscal rehabilitation, having accumulated deficits of approximately ¥35.3 billion. Family School Fureai ceased accepting guests that same year. The facility was not among the assets transferred to a successor operator. It was left without a custodian. When this photograph was made in 2016, the room was quiet, a window at the far end framing a bare grey sky. The machine had not been removed, and there was no particular reason to expect that would change.