Reid Main

Today may have been my favourite day of the trip but paradoxically it is probably not something I would recommend to most people. When we were planning this vacation one of our must-see spots was Nijigen no Mori, which is basically a theme park for video game, anime, and manga nerds. The primary attraction we wanted to go there for was Dragon Quest Island, a real-life scavenger hunt where you play the role of a Hero from the Dragon Quest games. But before I go any further I really want to emphasize that if you do not have some sort of emotional connection to any of the franchises in the park, you are probably not going to have a good time. This is not a highly polished, billion dollar theme park. It is designed to tug on your nostalgia and I took the bait, hook, line, and sinker. I am not going to fault anyone who found themselves bored because it would be no different than if someone took me to a Taylor Swift or Bluey themed amusement park.

Getting to Nijigen no Mori is a quest all on its own so thankfully we finally managed to sleep through the night and wake up at 8pm. We grabbed some coffee at Tully's and some food at FamilyMart before catching the train to Ōsaka Station and then boarded the JR Kōbe Line headed for Maiko Station. The reason why getting to Nijigen no Mori is no picnic is because it actually resides on Awaji Island and there are no trains that go there. You need to get off at Maiko Station, climb several flights of stairs to get up to the highway, and board a bus that takes you across the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge directly to the entrance of the park. I am making this sound much worse than it actually was because Google Maps turned out to be absolutely spot on with directions. But this is the first and only bus we actually took during our entire time in Japan so I'm simply calling it out because it could be jarring for some. One good thing to note is that the buses still accept contactless IC cards (such as Suica) so paying was completely seamless from start to finish.

We arrived at the park shortly before 10:30am and did a little bit of exploring before making our way to Dragon Quest Island for our 11am timed entry. It took us about 95 minutes to complete every quest and we enjoyed absolutely every second of it. The way it works is you're given a tag that interacts wirelessly with various parts of the park. Sometimes you're just picking up items, other times you're initiating conversations with NPCs for quests, or even starting battles with various monsters. There is an element of randomness to how you complete the main story which ensures that not everyone in the park is trying to do the same things in the same order. As you complete quests, buy better equipment, and defeat more monsters, you eventually gather everything that is required to fight the final boss in his menacing castle.

After the battle you're required exit Dragon Quest Island and pass through Luida's Bar, a Dragon Quest themed cafe. Since it was approaching 1pm we stopped for a quick bite. One thing that will never cease to amaze me about Japan is how these themed restaurants always make such good food. In the West you'd expect them to half-ass it and produce something at the level of McDonald's if you're lucky. But the meals we had at this random cafe on an island designed for weebs was stellar. Elsie loved her lunch box, comprised of an omelette, onion rings, fried chicken, and blue rice in the shape a healslime named Healdrick, the mascot of Dragon Quest Island. My metal slime curry was also delicious even though it looked like I was eating molten lead. And for desert we got a tasty light pancake and fruit assortment. Let's not kid ourselves, we definitely paid a premium just to get things in the shape of Dragon Quest slimes but it was still a fantastic experience that I'd gladly do again.

As you're walking through the park one of the attractions that cannot help but catch your eye is a full-scale version of the head of Godzilla from the Shin Godzilla film. The next thing that probably catches you're eye is people zip-lining hundreds of feet before passing through the mouth of Godzilla. At this point I did not care what the reason was for this insanity but both Elsie and I wanted to try and it turned out to be a lot more exhilarating than we were expecting. There is no ability to break so whatever speed gravity decides to pull you at you're just along for the ride before slamming to a stop at the end. As part of the ticket price you also gain admission to a Godzilla museum that had all sorts of large miniatures and models from all of the Godzilla films.

We grabbed some Godzilla themed snacks (a chocolate cream puff with strawberries as teeth was my favourite) and checked out a couple more of the merch shops before deciding it was time to leave. By now it was 3:30pm and we figured that we would just return to where we had been dropped of and catch a bus back. Unfortunately this was where our relaxed attitude on checking the schedule for public transit in Japan finally bit us in the ass. While trains may come every few minutes, buses don't and the next one was over an hour away. We noticed a taxi just sitting in the parking lot and figured it would be able to take the same route as the bus. Oh how wrong we were. It turns out there are some sort of special rules for buses on the highway that cross the bridge and our taxi driver had to take the long way around to get to Maiko Station. In the end it took over twice the time to get back via taxi than it had taken to get to the island via the bus. So to anyone reading this planning a trip to Nijigen no Mori, definitely look at the return bus schedule and plan your day accordingly.

By the time we got back to our hotel it was after 5pm and we decided to pull footage off our cameras until 7pm. We then popped out to a yakiniku place for an hour before returning for some much needed sleep.