While I don't have a picture of the entrance, I do have a picture of the entrance to the Konoha section. Which really is just as good.
J-World is fabulous! Heading straight in you come into a circular room with giant tv screens full if your favorite (and most profitable) Shonen Jump characters. In the center there is a touch screen to bring up some of the characters that float by, and they give short little speeches. A very exciting but not very photogenic place.
To the left was a statue of Kakashi that I have seen previously at other Naruto events through the years. We decided to go that way, as to the right was the goods shop and what we figured was the end of the tour.
Kakashi was standing at the entrance to a small theater where they were preforming a Naruto themed show about Kakashi in ANBU. Rhole and I arrived too late for the final show of the day--so we missed it. Alas, it was a limited time run and I did not have the time or money to return.
J-World has several big areas full of themed things to do--on top of the entrance fee (¥1300), most attractions that we looked at were ¥800! While the DragonBall attraction looked fun, we were women with a purpose. Instead, we took some awfully goofy pictures--girls in Lolita look awesome riding Goku's Nimbus and sitting in a Sayain Space Pod, don't we?
While we didn't do any attractions, there was plenty of fun stuff to interact with and take pictures with. In the DragonBall area, there was a Capsule Corps kind of theme, and the Gintama area was done up to look like a street in old not quite Edo Japan. The massive One Piece area reminded me of a fantasy ship dock, with fake shop fronts of all sorts of strange shops. You could even see the side of the ship in some sort of fake ocean, and that attraction was a ride through some sort of adventure. There was also a One Peice merry go round, which fat people were advised not to ride.
Going through to the circular entrance gate again, we found Konoha! Konoha was very exciting, to the side there was a food court with Ichiraku Ramen and other foodstuffs. The main part of Konoha was the attraction! Despite the 800¥ cost, we went in. We were provided with an English guide which was pretty difficult to use. Our headsets seemed loud enough outside the attraction, however once inside it was much too quiet. The Naruto adventure is Akatsuki attacking the Leaf, so you had to wander through a maze of little quests and challenges, the hardest of which and most fun was slapping Itachi's eyes. The room was quite dark and finding the eyes with switches was a little tricky and quite fun!
The end of the Konoha maze was a room where you had to collect Rasengan balls and then move on to throw the balls at tailed beasts and enemies. The collecting of the Rasengan balls was supposed to be timed, but we totally missed that and ended up with overflowing bags. And then, because our headsets were so quite, we had no idea when to throw them when we reached the last room. We did throw a few, which was lots of fun, but we only had about ten seconds before it was over. For all our befuddled effort and yen, we received a coin of a ninja. Mine ended up as Shikamaru.
We decided to try some food, though because we were headed out to dinner with a friend, we only got a light snack. There was areal that roughly translated at "Brother Itachi's Burnt Eggs" or something equally ridiculous. It was some brown toast with a Sharingan egg sunny side up. It was....nothing special. But fun to eat none the less. I have no picture of it, but Rhole got some tasty looking onigiri hat I did manage to snap a picture of!
Last was the gift shop. While the food was meh, the gift shop was pretty awesome. All sorts of JUMP related goods, with some awesome Naruto stuff. They had the requisit puzzles that every gift shop has, and tsgirts and manga. Some of the best stuff, however, was the Ichiraku ramen bowls and the tasty looking printed nori (seaweed) sheets. There were cookies as well, the standard omit age fare, but the nori sheets were very cool, with Sharingans and the Konoha symbol printed on. All I got was a clear file with Obito/Tobi on it. Because I have issues and love him.
And that was it, really! Shonen JUMP Land is a pretty cool place if you have the 1300¥ to get in. It is oddly English friendly, which was not something I had anticipated. I don't think the staff speaks English, but there are English guides for the attractions (a rarity!), and and English map of the place. If you like Shonen JUMP manga, I would definitely hit this place up.
I can't wait to take Zail with me. He'll probably spend the entire time ranting about things being weak....like Raditz.
