It's a Small World After All!

Just north of Nikko are several theme parks -Tobu World Square, Edo Wonderland, and Western World. We started at Tobu World Square which has many monuments and famous buildings around the world, all at 1/25 the actual size. Somehow we imagined this much bigger than it actually was, and we thought it might take the whole day... We were initially disappointed with this theme park, but then got into the "small world" spirit (and kitschy-ness) and spent the morning posing with all the famous buildings we had been to! Here are just a few photos. (My remedy for getting excited about this place was to take photos of EVERY building.) They had the Twin Towers, which was weird, but also the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, and many many sites within Japan.

What was especially cool was the little people, often dressed in kimonos or school uniforms, or in the case of this NYC scene, window washing uniforms.

After we finished our around the world sightseeing trip, we headed back in time to the Edo period here in Japan at Edo Wonderland. It met up to World Square in terms of kitschy-ness factor, but by then we were prepared for and expecting it. It was rather like the Renaissance Festival, with lots of people in costume and lots of random shows. We saw a show of a famous geisha at the time entering town,

a ninja show, a water magic show (this was an all new low in entertainment value as we could actually see the tubing at her wrists!),

and a couple of short plays.