I went to a theme park called "Warp Station Edo" in Tsukuba Mirai City. It is one of the places where movies and commercials that have old Japanese settings are shot, and the reason why it is named "Warp" is because you would feel like being in the 17th century of Japan. Let me show you some of the pics I took.
The entrance of this park. An adult has to pay about 4.3 us dollars to enter. I thanked for this good weather that allowed me to take good pics.
This is a doll that dances on a rope and it should be manipulated by several people to move around. The dance is called "Obari Matsushita Ryuu Tsunabi" Obari is an area in this city. And "Tsunabi" would be "Fire Rope Dancing" in English. Some fireworks are involved in this dancing.
This video is an example of Tsunabi.
The white paper on your right says "metalware". These are called "Yajiri" and they were used in the battlefields from B.C. 10 to A.D. 3 in Japan. A Yajiri is often made of steel.
This is one of the movies that were shot here. This one is called "Sakuran" and the women is a renowned model called "Anna Tsuchiya", who is also a mother. She plays roles as a model, actress, and singer. I saw her being interviewed on CNN as a successful celebrity from Japan.
This is a drama called "Koumyou ga Tsuji" that was broadcast on NHK in 2006. It features now 30 year old Yukie Nakama as the heroine. It is based on a novel by Ryoutaro Shiba that has the same title as this drama.
This is another movie that was shot here. This movie has two guys as the heroes and one of them is a good-looking tall idol Tomoya Nagase from a group called Tokio. He is really popular among girls in Japan. This movie is called "Mayonaka no Yaji-san Kita-san". "Mayonaka" means "midnight".
This building was modeled after "Shibai goya" , which existed in the Edo Period(1603-1868). Shibai means "play" and goya is "hut". Do you know a kind of play called "Kabuki" that was in fashion in the Edo period? Take a look at this Kabuki video.
This must be a picture called "Ukiyoe". It depicted the secular aspect of the Edo period and was considered a very modern artifact back then.
A street in the 17 century in Japan would have been like this.
A boat like this can be still seen in today's rivers. One has to have a long stick to hit the ground to move it to the other side of the channel.
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This is an old-styled well. Does this look very different in your eyes from the old one in a western country?
I'm not good at explaining something very old that existed in the Edo period. But I chose the Japanese history as one of the subjects in high school, and that helped me a bit to explain. Since I'm a Japanese, I don't know how these kinds of thing would look from the perspective of foreign people, but I enjoyed this surreal setting. =)
