Harvest Hill (Sakai)

Harvest Hill (Sakai) is in a suburb south of Osaka, which has a number of theme park type rides and activities, some farm animals in a petting zoo and a Sylvanian Families Village. The trip was maybe 30 minutes on the train, and another 20 minutes by bus to the park.

The park is geared towards small children under 12, and consists of some theme park rides, a petting/feeding zoo and obstacle course. The entry fee was about 1000 yen for adults ($7 USD) but then you were charged more fees per activity. We skipped most of the rides and kids go cart stuff, they weren’t all that appealing compared to a bigger amusement park and headed straight for the main attraction.

Sylvanian Families Village

The collectible toys known as Calico Critters in the USA has a different name in Japan Sylvanian Families. M is a big fan of these toys and has a number of the dolls and toys at home. She was pretty excited to check out the life size village, with a number of homes that you could enter and explore. The buildings were well done, and looked a lot like the toys.

Sprinkled throughout were life size dolls too, which made for lots of photo ops. We spent most of our time here, and there was a fake fishing pond with plastic fish and magnetic fishing poles, that was a nice addition and interactive.

We caught a brief song and dance show with some of the characters, and in the end we even received some free figurines so the additional entrance fee (600 yen or $4) was worth it.

Harvest Hill (The rest)

The rest of the park is rather big, we did a tram ride, walked across a suspension bridge for walking and fed some barn animals. The weather has been cooler the last couple weeks, there weren’t any lines and so we had a pleasant day at the park.

We noticed a pattern that these parks always have feeding as a big part of the animal interactions. This means the animals are quite friendly and aren’t afraid of people. I assume the parks rotate the animals so they all get fed an appropriate amount.

Lunch was the usual affair, they did highlight sausage on their menus. There is a mini sausage factory on site, so we got a sausage plate with fries. Might have been even better if we had some beer.