In the end, the more relaxing option we took was to spend a night in Hakone and to access Grinpa Park from Hakone via a rented car. We did not want to spend a whole day in Sylvanian Village, and there were other things to see around Mt. Fuji highlands and Hakone.
The hubby likes to visit Japan at least once a year. So for this year’s Japan holidays, I managed to slip into the itinerary a trip to the Sylvanian Village. The Sylvanian Families theme park is located within the Grinpa Amusement Park in the Shizuoka prefecture and near Mt. Fuji. I later found out that the park is really in the middle of nowhere; it's not exactly remote, but you need to travel a fair distance into the Mt. Fuji highlands. After researching that getting to Grinpa Amusement Park would involve taking one and half hour train (or bus) ride from Tokyo Station to Gotemba, and another 45 minutes of (not-so-frequent) bus from Gotemba, we decided we could not do a day trip to Sylvanian Village with a toddler in tow. On a side note, we travelled during the Obon Festival so there was only one bus from Gotemba to Grinpa Park and vice versa. Even less flexibility for us. In the end, the more relaxing option we took was to spend a night in Hakone and to access Grinpa Park from Hakone via a rented car. We did not want to spend a whole day in Sylvanian Village, and there were other things to see around Mt. Fuji highlands and Hakone. It took us about 40 minutes ride by car from Hakone to Grinpa Park. It was a cloudy day, with a chance of showers, when we arrived in Sylvanian Village. We could only see one other family in the whole of Sylvanian Village. The rides within the Sylvanian Village were catered more for younger children like my daughter’s age, which suited us just fine. I was excited to see some of the Sylvanian buildings in life-size, like the Windmill, the St. John School, Village Bakery and the Sylvanian Kitchen. Daughter had fun going inside the houses and playing with some of the Sylvanian house gadgets. There was also the Photo studio, which was unfortunately closed on the day we visited, and a Sylvanian Museum. The displays at the Sylvanian Museum were nice as I got to see all the older buildings, and I would love to have a similar display cabinet for the various families. But I had actually expected the museum to be bigger, and the displays to be more awesome rather than looking a lot like the displays at Toys’r’us. I have some of those Sylvanian Families craft books, and I probably had an expectation that the displays at the museum would be something like the pictures inside the craft books. More about what I saw in the Sylvanian Village later. Hope you had fun so far looking through the photos.
4 Comments
Rachel
25/7/2013 03:08:33 pm
I love sylvanians. I am only a little girl but I love to decorate there house.
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Claudia Fagundes
18/3/2015 03:15:38 am
Quero fazer a coleção!!! Onde encontro em Belo Horizonte a linha completa. Gostaria de representar a marca. Obrigada,
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Heather
15/5/2016 02:12:29 pm
this is so cool!! if i went there i could not leave
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19/9/2016 02:18:49 pm
Thanks for sharing. I had always wondered what Grinpa was like. Is so interesting to see. Lo
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About MeI like to experiment with photography and dabble in crafty things. I started collecting Sylvanian Families in 2009 and hope that someday my little daughter will enjoy playing and collecting Sylvanian Families as much as I do. Archives
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