Katsuyama Dino Park

Katsuyama Dino Park is an open-air park in Katsuyama, inside the grounds of Katsuyama Dinosaur Forest and three minutes on foot from the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. Life-sized dinosaurs stand among the trees, and the visitor walks past them. There are three parts to it: the walk through the wood, a tram ride among giant insects, and a play area.

The wood

More than sixty dinosaurs are set along a course of nine zones, which takes about twenty minutes to walk round. The zones are arranged by subject. There is a valley of plant-eaters, with a group of ornithomimus running and a stegosaurus and its young; a hunt, where utahraptors come at an iguanodon out of the bushes; a pteranodon gliding low through the trees on wings eight metres across; a spinosaurus, which lived on fish; velociraptors; a gathering of horned dinosaurs around triceratops; mamenchisaurus, the largest of the long-necked dinosaurs of Asia; and a company of tyrannosaurus. The ninth zone is a maze of mirrors.

The insect tram

A separate ride, about fifteen minutes long, goes through a wood of insects on an electric tram with a recorded commentary. The insects are built at forty to eighty times their real size. The mantis is about six metres long, the stag beetle and the rhinoceros beetle about four metres each, the beetles set fighting.

Gaogao Hiroba

Gaogao Hiroba is a play area, with each thing in it paid for singly rather than covered by the ticket. There is a train on rails, dinosaurs that walk or that carry a child on their back, rowing boats on a pool, a putting course of nine holes, and running water in which sand is washed through a box to find small stones, which are kept.