A small room with dated decor and furniture bolted to the walls: you sit in the middle, the room begins to spin. Bakkuri Houses (Surprise Houses) used to stand in almost every Japanese amusement park, but now only a few still run. Hanayashiki’s (Tokyo) is the oldest still turning. Dazaifu’s pastel park keeps a kidcore one beside a children’s train. Higashiyama and Enakyo Wonderland still have them. And in Hokkaido, Noboribetsu’s Poltergeist House is a unique horror themed spin (pun intended), on the same machine.
The claustrophobic closed room with no windows, eerie silence, furniture on the ceiling, and kitschy childlike exterior, all feel like a real life backrooms render, or spinning portal into some liminal hell. One would be forgiven for thinking an entity is about to appear at any moment.
Key features include:
- Silent, rotating interior
- Classic kidcore paint and Shōwa dolls on many surviving examples
- Hanayashiki is Japan’s oldest operating house (1949)
- Poltergeist House at Noboribetsu, is the only known one of it’s kind
- Nostalgic, kidcore feeling
Photo credits: Pinterest – OP unknown , https://enakyo-wonderland.jp/pages/66/detail=1/b_id=350/r_id=80/
