After a few unorganized days of planning and confusion in terms of transportation, some friends  and I all managed to get ourselves to Nagashima Spaland, which is about 40 minutes away from Nagoya by bus and right by the ocean.

Being as it was a Tuesday, there were hardly any people and the longest we had to wait in line was about 5 minutes. Nagashima is also host to a water park, but that was closed, as well as a large spa/onsen area, but we came for the amusement park.

The park itself was very small. Just a few roller coasters (including one that was a direct imitation of Steel Force, called Steel Dragon 2000 instead), a children’s area that took up quite a bit of the park, a large ferris wheel, and some other attractions. It was actually quite fantastic. The weather was nice and it was a good day to spend the afternoon. The park was notably old, lacking any of the newer, more impressive rides, but it was all quite clean and functional. Also with a strange theme of Peter Rabbit, even though none of the rides were Peter Rabbit-based.

We also briefly wandered into a haunted house, which ended up being not quite as terrifying as one would think with strange animatronic headless robots and such, but still, quite an experience.

Nagashima also has a large outdoor mall of sorts, where we explored for a bit. I’d like to come back, though for $20 a bus ride, I doubt I will. Still, we found a rather expansive collection of stores there, including the Body Shop, Bandai, and Lego store.

The tough part of that day was coming home early and going straight to dance practice that went for about 4 hours. Still, all’s well that ends well!

Location: nagashima spaland, nagoya, japan