Amusement parks in Japan

[Bernard]

Hi Everyone,

I have an idea for a diorama and I wanted to know if anyone has any photos of Amusement parks or public swimming pools in Japan? I was seaching through some old kits that my father and I had and I forgot about a lot of animated ridess. If it fits in with the Japanese theme I might do something along these lines I just need to know if these type of parks exists in Japan.

Thanks

[CaptOblivious]

Yes I do! I'll post them right after the baby photos. We stayed just outside of a well-known amusement park in Asakusa (a neighborhood in north-central Tokyo), and had a great view of it. In fact, I've got a panoramic of the whole thing....It looks like any sort of western amusement park, nothing particularly special except the pagoda (same one Alpine posted photos of earlier) in the background.

[CaptOblivious]

Check the gallery, under prototypes...http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/action,gallery/sa,view/id,59.html

 

It's called Asakua Hanayashiki Amusement Park. There is an English website here:

English: http://www.hanayashiki.net/e/index.html'>http://www.hanayashiki.net/e/index.html

Japanese: http://www.hanayashiki.net/

 

and a useful map (which will help you make sense of the photo) here:

http://www.hanayashiki.net/e/map.pdf

[Martijn Meerts]

You can also build a Dutch town and have a prototypical Japanese amusement park ;)

 

http://english.huistenbosch.co.jp/

[alpineaustralia]

In terms of aswimming pools - you could try to build this one:

 

http://www.kirainet.com/english/the-biggest-indoor-swimming-pool-in-the-worl/

[Martijn Meerts]

Excellent location to build an in-door beach.... At an actual beach ;)

[marknewton]

Bernard, if you build an amusement park or swimming complex, you could consider having an older loco, MU car or tram on display, this seems to be a fairly common thing.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Bernard]

Thanks everybody - these are some really helpful ideas. I can't believe the swimming pool! I know the Japanese made a manmade indoor skiing mountain but the beach is mind boogling! I grew up near the Atlantic Ocean but a beach in the middle of garden/forest land? Yeah, I think we can have people living on the moon someday after seeing those photos!

[Darren Jeffries]

Unfortunately that pool closed in 2007. We have a man made beach hear in the Cotswolds. It is 100miles from the nearest natural beach. It is not undercover like that though.

 

Veering off topic there. An amusement park would be great. There are lots of fairground ride kits available for the european market which could work.

[Martijn Meerts]

It's sort of depressing to see how few N-scale rides there are compared to H0 scale rides. Especially Faller has some amazing stuff in H0, very nice large ferris wheel, fully functional roller coaster and water log rides and such. With current day techniques, it should be easy for the to convert some of those H0 scale ones to N-scale, but it seems they're not all that interested.

[marknewton]

Bernard,

 

Here's a timely blog entry showing the two Hanshin cars preserved at Hanshin Park, near Koshien station in Kobe.

 

http://rail.hobidas.com/blog/natori/archives/2008/07/post_821.html

 

That's the other thing I meant to mention in case you didn't know, many of the Japanese private lines own amusement parks and sporting facilities.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Bernard]

Martijn - you are right the Faller HO kits are great and now that I'm looking at the ones my father had that exactly what they are a Faller animated swimming pool. I also forgot my father modeled S & HO scale so the kits are all HO and not N so I might not do this for the Party in Sept (wrong scale)

 

Why did the beach/pool close? There was so much work that went into it.

[Martijn Meerts]

I'm still hoping they make their newest H0 scale ferris wheel into N-scale. That one shouldn't be hard to do at all, and it looks amazing. I've seen the H0 scale version with all the lighting kits installed in action, well worth the cost.

 

[SubwayHypes]

 

my favorite amusement park in japan is KORAKUEN.  its right in the city of TOKYO.  its extremely cool because it has a tall DROP ZONE that gives you spectacular views of tokyo city, you can see trains and everything.

 

another cool thing is that the tokyo metro subway line, MARANAOUCHI LINE (sp?)  runs right by it, and the subway pops out of the underground and rides outside right  by the amusement park.  Until about 4 years ago, there was a small roller coaster that ran parallel to the train tracks at the edge of the park.  If your ride was timed correctly, you could be taking on a roller coaster ride directly parellel to running trains, less than 20 feet away and elevated too.  REALLY COOL.  too bad they tore down that section of the park to make the place more modern and hipster.