Fake History At Its Best: Toei Movie Land

Shortly before departing on our (g)weeklong adventure, I found myself discussing our travel plans with Tachibana-San while en route to one of my schools. He had actually made a trip out to Kyoto fairly recently and had a few recommendations for me. He took it as a given that I would be visiting the Golden Pavilion-everyone does-but recommended two slightly less popular attractions that I might otherwise skip; the Kyomizu-Dera and Kyoto Uzumasa Eigamura, known in English as “Toei Movie Land”. While we regrettably never made it out to the Kyomizu-Dera, we did spend most of our last day in Kyoto at Toei Movie Land.

Toei Movie Land is a theme park run by the Toei Company, one of Japan’s largest movie studios and owners of Toei Animation. Knowing very little about the park, we assumed that it would simply be a collection of old movie back lots that we would be allowed to walk through. As it turns out, Toei Movie Land is really a bona fide theme park of sorts, albeit without the rides. There are a number of performances scattered throughout the park in addition to the requisite movie sets and guys in samurai costumes. It was a strange and interesting place to wander around and was seemingly designed to provide an almost infinite number of hilarious photo ops. Luckily for Team Gweek, hilarious photos are our specialty.

According to the pamphlet, this robotic ninja constituted some sort of “show”. It took me a few minutes to figure out that it was, in fact, a robot and not an actor. I don’t know why I am so stupid.

Horse: The Ride!™

It has become increasingly clear to me, over the past few months, that Matt is much more skilled at looking threatening than I am. I really don’t know why I even try.

Here’s a theater that hosts an awesome samurai show, full of acrobatics, swordplay and evil monologues. The building itself is built to resemble a now defunct Edo period theater that once existed in what is now Tokyo. The entire park is actually built to resemble that city during the Edo period and it’s quite fun to simply walk around and admire the fake sights.

Here’s a replica of the famed Edo pleasure district, Yoshiwara, lined with okiya (traditional geisha houses). It's funny to think that what was once Tokyo's booming pleasure quarters is now the mostly quiet Asakusa.

Memoirs of a Geisha meets Mannequin?

Greg is really strong.

Rickshaws are fun for everyone! Well, everyone except for the poor soul that has to do the pulling.

This show was pretty interesting; the idea was to demonstrate how a samurai movie is made in about 20 minutes. The actors and director stood behind glass and acted out various scenes while cameras inside fed the “movie” to monitors mounted outside. Ever wondered how a little slight of hand and a quick panning camera can be used to create the illusion of a successful hit with a throwing star? Or how movie thunderstorms are made? Well, this would be the show for you. Just about the best thing about this show (and all of Movie Land’s shows, for that matter) was the comic relief-which was actually really funny.
Here we see one of the park's two “SFX” areas. As you can see, they were pretty convincing, as far as special effects go.
We were just about ready to leave when we discovered a whole area of the park that we had yet to explore: Super Hero Land. Packed to the gills with Power Rangers, Masked Riders and various other nondescript robots and men in tights.

[Insert Power Rangers theme song here]

OH MY GOD, SOMEBODY SAVE THAT SMALL CHILD!

If you really think about it, Team Gweek is a lot like Voltron: a powerful being fused together from disparate elements to defend the universe…or something.
Greg and Megan doing their bacon routine, as they are wont to do.

Well, that’s Toei Movie Land, providing a stark counterpoint to Kyoto’s places of historical relevance. The next morning we boarded a bus bound for the bright lights of Tokyo, our final Gweek destination. Stay tuned for the chilling conclusion!