Tourists go to Japan to experience Japanese life and Japanese tourists travel the world to experience life in other countries. But if you live in Japan, you can travel the world without ever leaving home! There are theme parks, which show you the highlights of different countries around the world. The reason why these little countries are so popular is that everyone welcomes strangers and everyone speaks Japanese!

Here is Tony Peterson:

“The first theme park, and the most famous is Tokyo Disneyland, which was opened in 1983. You can see an idealized America and experience the American way of life, and Western Land, and an Adventure Land, including a “Main Street USA”, which has stores and places to eat American food, just like in the other Disneylands. There is also a “World Bazaar”, where you can experience other countries’ food as well, and buy their products.

Nagasaki has an amazing theme park, called “Huis Ten Bosch”, which is a miniature of Holland – one hundred and fifty two hectors of windmills, tulips and old-looking brick houses, together with a palace, a castle, ships and museums. One of its attractions is a devastating Dutch flood, featuring thunder, lightning, and six hundred tons of very real, very wet water. It’s very popular. Really enthusiastic and rich tourists can buy the ultimate souvenir – a real Dutch-style house, built right in the theme park, where they can actually live.

Nearby, in the city of Fukuoka, you can stay at the “Sea Hock” – resort and hotel,- a huge hotel in a shape of the ocean liner, ready to set sail for the five continents of the world. The rooms are all decorated in the style of different continents, and your journey around the world starts the moment you step onboard. Different restaurants serve food from all five different continents too.

Garasunosato, near Hiroshima, is known as the “Venice of Japan”. You can go on gondola rides, and you can wonder beside the canals, and eat typical Italian food.

Niigata is the closest place to Russia on the northern coast of Honshu to north of Tokyo. It has its own Russian village, where you can see Russian houses and taste Russian food, and drink vodka. And you can actually worship in a Russian orthodox cathedral! Or, if you go to Aumory prefecture, further north-still, you can visit Jesus Christ’ s tune at Shingamora. Some Japanese believe that it was Jesus’s brother who was crucified, not Jesus himself. Jesus escaped, came to Japan, married a Japanese woman and had three daughters! So, you can go on and pilgrimage the visitors’ tune.

From Aumory, you can cross the sea to the island of Hokkaidō, where you can visit ‘German happiness” kingdom. You can see replicas, medieval buildings, and experience German food and drinks, and see people dressed in traditional costumes. Also on Hokkaidō is “Canadian World”, which offers the sense of romance, exoticism and nostalgia, implicit in 19th century Canada.

One of the most popular books in Japan is “Anne of Green Gables”. Here you can see Anne’s farm and buy “Anne of Green Cables” cakes, home-made jam and other souvenirs.

Now, a favourite destination in England for Japanese tourists is Stratford-upon-Avon, but now they can take just an eighty kilometer’ train ride to Marauma and visit the “Shakespeare Country” theme park. There they can visit Shakespeare’s village, go inside a replica of Shakespeare’s birthplace and Mary Arden’s house, as well as experiencing what life was like in Elisabethan England. But, if you really want to see in time, go to Tobo World, where you can see scale models of more than a hundred famous buildings from around the world – the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Parthenon in Athens, St.Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, the Statue of Liberty in New York, and so on.

But this kind of thing isn’t limited to Japan. If you are in Florida, you can go to Disney’s Epcot World Showcase, where you can walk from country to country or take a ferry across the lake. Each country has a “treasure” – a building, typical of the country; musical entertainments, places to eat, and shops to buy souvenirs. Some have a ride – in Norway you can experience a storm at sea; in Mexico you can sail through the River of Time and experience the history of Mexico; in Canada you can see a three hundred and sixty degrees’ circle vision movie called “O Canada”. You can even visit the United States, sponsored by American Express and Coca-Cola, where you can see an amazing, a moving summary of American struggles and triumphs, performed by animatronic figures representing famous people from American history. You can go to an English pub or have afternoon tea in the United Kingdom, drink in German beer garden, sit in a French sidewalk cafe, eat in Alfredo’s restaurant in Italy! And you can visit Japan, where apart from eating in Japanese restaurants, you can see a five-story pagoda. It’s not the whole world though, because only eleven countries are represented there.”

– Oh dear. It sounds absolutely dreadful!

– It really is.