I am dead tired, but what a great day to visit Hirakata Park, a local theme park.. the weather was great, not too hot, not too cold, partially cloudy with parcels of sun. If we backtrack one more day, yesterday I went to an Okonomiyaki place (Japanese pizza) and I had the best I ever had! The restaurant boasts that they preserve the traditional taste of Osaka. (Osaka is known for Okonomiyaki and takoyaki - fried octopus dumplings).
But back to today, I havn't been in a theme parc for a long time, so this was very refreshing and the parc itself is very beautiful. I took many videos and some during rides, I hope I can post them soon.
This theme parc was pretty standard except for a walk-in ride that you literally walk in a giant fridge with fake-oversized food. The second weird thing was the samurai-themed haunted house that features a Kill Bill style beheading at the end! There was one special 4-D ride where you have to go in an egyptian coffin and look through a virtual-reality mask and you see images and you have to keep your hands outside the coffin. At some point you see scorpions in the screen and you feel something pointy hitting your hands! From that point I did not have the guts to leave my hands outside the coffin. You later find out that they were monitoring your heart beat ect.. and they give you the results of how brave / wimp you are when you get out!
Also Japanese "fear" of water was also apparent in this park since in every ride where you had the possibility of getting wet, they would take all the precautions to make sure you don't wet: in the amazon rapid ride, they put tall plastic sheets around the vehicle to the point that you cannot see anything outside and they even offer ponchos at the beginning of the ride. In the log ride with a big drop, they put a large plastic window at front to prevent the water from falling in the log when it does its final drop in the water.
For a nice Saturday, the parc seemed pretty empty; there was practically no waiting time, but rumors say that this park is usually closed until the beginning of May, but because of the exceptionally mild weather, they opened a little earlier, so most people might not be aware of that.
Apparently there is also a slump in domestic travel and it has lead to the closure of two theme parcs: Nara Dreamland in Nara and Festival Gate in Osaka. I might visit 4 more theme parcs in Japan: Expoland in Osaka, Parque Espana in Mie prefecture, Universal Studios in Osaka and the Disneyland resort in Tokyo.
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