Drink Machine

The drink machine sits in a corridor of the former Family School Fureai in Yubari, Hokkaido. Its paint is peeling. Its display panel is dark. Nothing about it 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. The building stood empty for roughly a decade. In October 1994, Yubari Kanko Kaihatsu Co., Ltd. was established as a third-sector tourism entity, part city, part private, to reinvent Yubari as a destination after the last coal mine closed in 1990. Family School Fureai was its first facility, opening 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 operator filed for bankruptcy on 2 April 2007, with total debt of ¥5.46 billion. The facility was not among the assets transferred to the successor operator. It was left without a custodian. When this photograph was made in 2016, the corridor was quiet. The drink machine had not been removed. Its display panel had been dark for years by then, and there was no particular reason to expect that would change.