Still in Fukuoka, virtually at least, as the blog lags real-time: We haven’t go to grips with Fukuoka the city as a whole but there are some excellent day trips accessible by train, which is cool given we have rail passes. “Today’s” event is a visit to Huis Ten Bosch, an entire Dutch town amusement park complete with legit and spendy residential area, created from the ground up, about 1.5 hours by train from Fukuoka. If I can make sweeping generalizations, the Japanese really nerd out on some specific things e.g. capybaras, crust-less white bread sandwiches filled only with sweet cream, gachapon, floppy bucket hats etc but let me add Dutch culture to that list. For whatever reason, it is Holland that they view as the paradigm, or preferred model, of Western European culture: Sorry, Denmark, Iceland, Germany and Ireland.
I think they like the tulips and canals, of course, but also the civility and general order. People from the Netherlands may beg to differ but, actually, there are a ton of reviews of HTB where the Dutch fawn about how accurate the place is. Yes, it is amazing, but I’d say “accurate” only if you’d taken a heroic dose of magic mushrooms before hitting town. Japanese theme parks tend to take the kitchen sink approach to content, rather than a narrow, targeted concept. All bases will be covered with activities for everyone from the hellion 2 year olds, through teens, young adults and families to seniors. By the way, be very careful relying totally on Google Maps, or for that matter, local apps like Japan travel or Japan transit, to plan your trips here. We ended up taking a, thankfully, pleasant and short diversion to the seaside town of Sasebo on the way to HTB after trusting in bots. In the case of HTB, reading the directions on the resort website and looking at the rail network for the area would have avoided the unplanned side-trip.
Back to the craziness – A theme park has to have mascots and HTB has three, the top dog being a disturbingly anthropomorphic tulip girl called, wait for it, Tuuly” and two random bears Leuk and Luna. Their main role is to provide top dollar shopping opportunities in the myriad of souvenir stores. Bargain tip: Hello Kitty, Anpan Man and any other non-HTB characters are cheap as chips at HTB, but the parents are trapped as the HTB-specific gear is only available here. Ka-Ching. It’s a beautiful Spring day, its full-on tulip season and HTB spares no Yen in providing the ultimate tulip experience alongside actual, full-size windmills and canals. It’s bananas. You can understand that these things are essential for a Dutch experience, but what blew my mind are the endless regular buildings all over the huge site. These are not cardboard cutouts, sometimes three stories high – What is going on upstairs? Do the employees live there? Where did the money come from for all this? We paid about $45 each for day passes and there are no extra charges for the top attractions, though you’ll be in line for the kid-centric ones. It’s not very busy today either, its hard to imagine the business model. Maybe the Japanese have still not moved past the Covid times and re-embraced the day out at a theme park with thousands of other pathogen sources?
Whatever’s going on, we’re fine with it, as it makes for a relaxing day out. It’s hard to describe some of the seasonal decorations but, given the Spring and Easter season, the place is a riot of flowers, eggs, rabbits and other things that I couldn’t identify at all. There are hotels on site and, after dusk, it all lights up in a truly psychedelic display, but we’ll have to get a later train back, so we’ll only get a taste of that. We do “Horizon Adventure”, “800 tons of water begins to rampage in front of you”, a cheesy but charming theater event and several immersive experiences in the new “Fantasia” section. These are digitally enhanced art exhibits similar to some of the stuff we saw in the Tokyo Teamlabs installation. The two based on flowers and underwater life are, actually, quite well done, the “Galaxyquest”attempt sadly not so much.
Back in “Amsterdam Central Square”things are getting lively with a series of pseudo-live performances. We catch a couple of sets by a J-Pop wannabe doing a solo act complete with dodgy guitar playing. He can sing for sure, and he’s got the look, but it’s Milli Vanilli-esque. In between songs there are extended high speed storytelling episodes, which the older audience eat up. Of course, we’re oblivious except to note that this storytelling trope is very Japanese and pops up frequently during our trip. Now, any Easter festival is incomplete without a pagan ring around the maypole and what do you know? Here come a bevy of fine looking young Japanese men and women in vaguely Oktoberfest getups along with, yes, Tuuly, Leuk and Luna.
It’s the classic British Maypole dance with intertwining ribbons, very “Wicker Man”: We wish we could understand the words, it all comes across as very pre-Christian or, more precisely, a timeline when Christianity never occurred. We stand well back to avoid being dragged into the proceedings.
If we’d had more time, and been braver or willing to stand in line, there were also zip lines, a Jurassic Island, canal cruises and several VR experiences. There’s even a wine bar with tastings to finish off the day, and we hang out there too long, not realizing how long its going to take to walk to the railway station for the last train out. It’s a full-on sprint to get there in time, Abby is not amused, but we make it with seconds to spare.
We recommend HTB and, probably, most of the other Japanese theme parks, and there are some strange ones out there. They’re usually very well done, crazier than a dog in a hubcap factory, and great places to see how Japanese people enjoy themselves. It was long but fun day, even though we’re physically still not at the top of our game. Time to move onto the hot springs resort of Beppu leaving the enigmatic metropolis of Fukuoka behind.
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