Suzuka, Mie

We booked a night at the Suzuka Circuit Hotel, in Suzuka, Mie. The hotel resides inside a small amusement park connected to the legendary race track that is used in F1 and Moto races. I will date myself, but this is what I fondly remember playing Pole Position 2 as a kid. I’m sure race and video game fans know the race track by heart.

Hinotori Express Train (Kintetsu Line)

To get to Suzuka, we bought tickets for an express train on our usual Kintetsu line, which is also the line we ride to go to my wife’s parents house. Suzuka happens to be pretty close to where they live, but we were coming from Osaka and happened to get a lift on the relatively new Hinotori Express. Hinotori means literally fire-bird (phoenix), so it has a neat logo on the train.

The train made fewer stops and felt really fast on our way to Suzuka. In fact it didn’t make any stops once we left Osaka until Tsu, which was where we were transferring to a more local train. The seats and interior were new, and reclined quite a bit. There was a nice snack and coffee vending machine area too.

Suzuka Circuit Hotel

Suzuka itself didn’t seem like a very big town. We had to hop off the train and then take a bus to get to the hotel. The bus ride took about 20-30 minutes through local roads, and we heard the traffic backs up for hours during race weekends, so luckily no races during our stay. When the bus arrived, they dropped us off at the Suzuka Amusement Park entrance, and then the park staff escorted us to the hotel. The hotel had rooms geared for children, so we had to try one. The colorful room had theming with the Suzuka Circuit mascot, baby stuff and a toilet seat for toddlers!

We immediately headed to the water park area of the amusement park to cool off, M really liked it. She likes lazy rivers, luckily those are super common in Japan.

Initially, we were thinking of getting some dinner outside of the hotel, since we had a “viking” the night before. It turns out that leaving the hotel/park would require at least a 15min walk in the heat, so we ended up at the only choice at the hotel, another “viking!” To our surprise, it was a higher quality buffet and we stuffed ourselves silly again. Imagine the chaos of dozens of small children, while eating some fancy steaks and sushi. After dinner, back in our themed room, and we had to have a race awards ceremony!

Suzuka Circuit Amusement Park

Luckily the park wasn’t too crowded, mostly just hotel guests on such a hot day. We went on most of the rides without any lines and M liked driving the mini go-cart for the first time by herself. She barely made the height cut off!

The adults got to enjoy the motorcycle roller coaster, which was quite fast! It also took you right next to the actual race track, and was the highlight ride of the park.

We took a quick peak into the race track, and noticed there was a line of real go-carts that I believe you can rent and ride around the track. Maybe when M is a bit bigger, we can give that a go, maybe even catch a F1 race too!

Summary

Around lunch time, we were done with all the rides and took the bus/train back to the wife’s parents place. The park had a lot of driving themed attractions, and we were kind of glad that it was not crowded or very big. Since the park/hotel is in Mie, we got the prefecture sponsored discount, so saved ourselves nearly a couple hundred bucks! The hotel was nice, food was great and with the discount it was well worth the stay. Thanks again to the tax payers in Mie, we are happy to do our part for the local economy:P Without the discount, we might have opted for a day trip because the hotel stay with dinner/breakfast was 60000 yen (~$450 USD) plus park passes. Considering the hotel was pretty full, I think a lot of families were taking advantage!

We were also happy to take a break from our travels and eat a home cooked meal. Thanks to the parents for yummy food from the garden:)