Ise Sengoku Mura


On December 27th, 2001 I went to Ise Sengokue Mura. "Ise" is a town in Mie prefecture. "Sengoku" is the period of war and chaos before the 3 unifiers in Japan's history (CLICH HERE to visit my page about them). "Mura" means village. So "Ise Sengoku Mura" is an amusement park with a samurai/ninja theme which relates to the history of Japan.


The park had all sorts of interesting shows and attractions. The picture to the left shows me standing with a "samurai" outside the park's "castle". The inside of the castle has a history show (which involves video, moving statues, shaking floors, and wind machines) about the life and battles of Oda Nobunaga (the first of Japan's 3 unifiers). Each floor contains a show about one of his most famous battles and was and interesting way to present history in general.


Of course the theme park wasn't all educational. It was also filled with attractions with little to no historical value. One of those was the "haunted house" (only one of 3 at the park) pictured on the left. The enterance here shows the ghost of Oda Nobunaga who's been decapitated and riddled with arrows. The mouth of this head moves and he warns passersby not to enter.

Also fitting into the uneducational category was a kid targeted movie where a group of samurai animals (a dog, monkey, and panda lead by the parks mascot a cat) battle evil ninjas. I also saw pictures of other days when those characters roam the park much like Mickey & Friends at Disney Land. However, I wasn't quite that fortunate on the day I visited.


And finally (in addition to the food, shops, and artists) there was a ninja fun house where you could ran around trying to find secret passages and revolving walls and also some shooting games. There was a wooden bullet gun range as well as a bow and arrow range (shown on the left). And all of that equaled fun, fun, fun.


It's true that everything at this park was in Japanese and that half the time I was completely clueless as to what people were saying. However, there was no time during my visit to Ise Sengoku Mura when I questioned whether or not I was having fun. It was certaintly a lot of that, no matter what language you speak.




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