Exploring the Real-Life Liminal Space of Tokyo’s Shiodome Station

If you’ve ever looked at an image of an abandoned or empty playground, office complex, or shopping mall — be it an actual photo or computer-generated — and felt a weird mix of nostalgia, unsettling dread, and existential horror, then you’re familiar with liminal spaces. Liminal spaces have even made their way into the zeitgeist via Apple’s Severance, which draws inspiration from the Backrooms meme.

While many liminal spaces seem distinctly unreal thanks to their apparent lack of human presence, it’s certainly possible to find them in the real world. Several years ago, while driving through the Nebraska panhandle on a family trip, we chanced upon a playground in the middle of nowhere that was disturbingly pristine given its remoteness. More recently, YouTuber Desolar posted a video tour of Tokyo’s Shiodome Station, a railway station located beneath a 47-story skyscraper that, despite being located in a city of 41 million residents, gets surprisingly empty.

Shiodome Station looks unreal, even hyper-real, like something out of a video game. As Desolar wanders about the labyrinthine complex, with its pristine hallways, elaborate floor mosaics, gardens, and empty shops, the station is both serene and slightly ominous, as if it doesn’t really belong to our world — a mood further enhanced by Kane Parsons’ ambient soundtrack. (On a related note, Parsons, who also goes by the name Kane Pixels, has directed an ongoing series of Backrooms-inspired shorts.)