Tokyo German Village

Despite its name, Tokyo German Village is in Chiba: a large countryside park in Sodegaura, on the Boso Peninsula. Flower fields, small rides, animals and pick-your-own crops are spread over a hillside, and about 3,000 parking spaces ring the park so that visitors can drive from one area to the next.

The Four Areas

Lake Area lies just inside the entrance, past a European-style garden planted with seasonal flowers. A circular rose garden holds about 250 varieties and 3,000 plants, which flower in early summer and autumn. There is a boating pond with swan boats, a sports ground for football, basketball and unicycling, and three small houses where visitors can touch insects and reptiles, furry animals and fish.

Country Area is lawn and slope, with a nine-hole putting golf course, a playground and a Ferris wheel 40 metres high that looks out over the surrounding country.

Market Area holds the restaurants, the shops and the dinosaurs, with a ride that runs among them, along with craft workshops and the Five Senses Garden. It is the centre of things in summer, when a stream fed by cold groundwater runs through it for small children to play in, and in winter, when the illumination goes up.

Park Area is aimed at children: a woodland adventure course, a children's zoo, and a cluster of rides including a kids' coaster, a grass sledging slope, a mini train, trampolines, teacups, a swinging pirate ship and archery.

Flowers Through the Year

Something is in flower in most months. Rape blossom comes out in winter and early spring, then tulips in April, snapdragons and petunias from May, lilies at the turn of summer, sunflowers in August, and cosmos and marigolds through October into November. Moss phlox spreads around the boating pond in spring.

Picking and Making

Harvest activities rotate with the season: shiitake, wood ear mushrooms, peanuts, sweet potatoes, potatoes, mandarins, strawberries and peaches. Most run only in their season, and some only at weekends and on holidays.

The craft workshops cover leather, candles, resin, chalk art, aromatics and glass. Leather craft runs every day; most of the others are held at weekends and on holidays.