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This Week in Dulture…
Approx 5 minute read:
🌊 Tsunami warnings & earthquakes
🎢 Super Duper Theme Park Update
🏢 One of the coolest buildings in the world
🦌 Deer, deer, and more deer
Dulture weekly mix
This week’s mix reminds me of all the random stores we’ve walked through so far in Japan. The fun part is you never know what you’re going to see but there’s always one thing that remains consistent: the staff greeting you and standing there ready to help you the second you flinch, like only stoic Japanese retail staff can do.
Kind of like this mix - stoic and consistent.
Greetings again from yet another Shinkansen, this time the Nozomi on route to Tokyo station from Kyoto.
In planning this trip, we didn’t see all these predictions from Japanese manga artist, Ryo Tatsuki, about a major earthquake happening in July 2025. It was only until spring time that things started popping up for me on Reddit.
Apparently Tatsuki had predicted numerous major disasters in the past through her manga series, The Future I Saw. From COVID to the nuclear plant meltdown in Fukushima in 2011, to even Princess Diana’s death, people started paying a lot closer attention to Tatsuki’s work globally.
In 2021 a reprint of the series came out with a 2025 prediction of a major earthquake in July 2025.
Welp….
Given Japan sees so many earthquakes yearly, even though there’s always the chance that they are Godzilla-like destructive, the country seems to know how to remain calm, band together, and just keep sh*t moving.
We heard of the tsunami warning in Kyoto, right before getting on this train to come back to Tokyo.
When we landed at Tokyo station, it was just like any other busy day at the station. The news was splattered with tsunami this and tsunami that - rightfully so given what happened in 2011.
But the part that I wish I could bottle up and bring back home to Canada is that the Japanese know how to really come together and stick together.
There’s a lot the rest of the world can learn from this country man, besides Hello Kitty.
Another Day - Another Theme Park
One of the main reasons why I wanted to come to Japan was this place:
But it turns out Universal Studios Japan is worth visiting in general.
Getting into the park wasn’t the same ordeal as waiting to get into Disneyland in a sense that there was actually a bit of shade - still 35 degrees Celsius at 7:30 in the morning.
You get hit with a wave of Oh yeah, Universal Studios is American as you walk in - Jurassic Park, Minions, and Jaws to say the least, are all over the place.
One of the only photos I cared to take outside of Super Nintendo Land lol
When we got in, we followed the wave of people as the majority of people sped walked (absolutely no running!) to Super Nintendo Land. Because that part of the park gets so packed, you have to purchase a timed entry ticket to go in and ours was at 3PM so we figured we would try our luck at opening just to see what happens.
Turns out the timed entry tickets don’t start right away so if you get to the park at opening you can get in Super Nintendo land without one - hence the mob of people we followed.
The area itself makes any Nintendo lover want smile.
But it’s just really really well done. The details, the characters, the music, the ambience - aside from it being insanely packed and hot, it’s well worth checking out, especially if you don’t live anywhere near a Universal Studios.
This place is a dream land in real life - like it looks fake and real at the same time
We didn’t stay here long, there’s 1 ride and it was usually over 100 minutes to wait in line
Who doesn’t love Yoshi?
Oh and the food - bruh....let me just leave you with these photos.
The Umeda Sky Building
The first time I went to Japan I found myself in Osaka and admittedly knew nothing about the city other than it was a large city like Tokyo but had its different quirks.
Osaka’s take on American culture
At the time Google maps wasn’t a thing so I typically went to the highest point of each city to look out to literally see what area I should check out next. For one reason or another a lot of the major cities in Japan all have their own tower with an observation deck of some sorts that you pay to go up.
In Osaka they have the Umeda Skybuilding.
I’m not exactly a world traveller but this building(s) has got to be one of the most unique buildings in the world. Completed in 1993, there was originally supposed to be 4 towers at the site but Japan’s economy collapsed in the late 80’s.
The towers are connected by the “Sky Garden”, a 360 degree indoor and outdoor view of the Osaka skyline. To get up and down from the Sky Garden, you take separate escalators that are seemingly floating in glass tunnels between the towers around the 40th floor.
Fans of architecture will be amazed by how the Sky Garden was constructed and installed in between the two buildings - pretty crazy tbh.
The thing was built on the ground and then lifted up 173m and installed in between the towers.
They have an anime short playing on the 39th floor about the construction of the buildings that somehow turns into a love story about a boy and a girl who meet at the building as kids and eventually become married as a designer and an architect…of course.
As I said, pretty crazy tbh…also the views!
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Bambi Land (Nara)
Being Canadian, anytime I go to a park and there’s geese the only thing I think of is avoiding them in fear that one of them decides it’s having a bad day and wants to chase a human.
Now replace geese with docile, friendly deer, and that’s what you get in Nara.
About a 45 minute train ride out of Osaka, Nara is the unofficial (maybe official?) paradise for deer worldwide. Walking maybe 5 minutes up the street from the train station you start to see deer.
Then you walk another 5 minutes and the parks are littered with deer everywhere.
The deer are protected animals in Nara so they’re allowed to roam freely in the city like they were people - even if it’s wanting to go into a 7Eleven
According to Shinto belief, deer are messengers of the gods, where a deity came riding into Nara on a white deer 1200 years ago and ever since then they have been considered sacred animals in Nara.
Also they have no natural predators, other than the tourists feeding them crap from the convenience stores.
As long as you don’t feed them, they walk up to you, stare for a second waiting for food, and then they move on to the next dumb tourist (who ends up feeding them).
Go to Nara and live out your dreams of being in a live action Bambi film...
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