As I did when my cousin was here, I am going to take my sister's account of her trip, and use it as the start of my blog entries. My words will be in black, and hers will be in blue.
We went to Edo Wonderland, the Edo themed park. It was very cool & realistic - a reproduction of an Edo-era city. No rides, just the buildings and exhibits and some activities. There was a cool parade of elaborately costumed people. All the restaurants and kitschy souvenir shops were sort of disguised behind screens & doors of the buildings, so the street scene looked quite realistic. They even had live chickens in a basket cage along the street, and wide, deep street gutters with koi. There was a cool thing where two "Edo police" chased a ninja up the streets and to a bridge right where we were standing, and the ninja threw these guys off the bridge (actually they ran up to the rail and flipped over it) down into the small river several feet below, that was cool.
Many tour books only mention Edo Mura in passing, or even dismiss it as being a tourist trap, but I thought it was a very cool experience. In fact, I would definitely go back! There were some diorama scenes with wax models that were a bit gruesome, but when I showed pictures of them to the locals here, many people recognized the scenes as being important parts of Japanese history. Jane decided to join one of the scenes, but was later arrested by Edo policemen! After that, Jane and I fought off a fierce ninja attack-I have pictures to prove it! Look! All silliness aside, it was a very beautiful place, and much more culturally informative than I expected.
