From the outside does not look wildly different from Tropical Island in Germany.

Ps: do not go there, very rude staff.

This project is a poster child for the Japanese "bubble economy" of the 1980s, the economical and even cultural impact of which cannot be overstated.

In William Gibson's Neuromancer, Japan is the Land of the Future, where all the exciting technological development happens. That was a direct result of the bubble, which enabled extreme and often irrational investment in R&D as well as ambitious real estate projects like this, which must have been started at the height of the bubble - but opened a year after it burst in 1992.

It had seemed at the time like Japan was set to take over the world. And then reality hit: many of the investments never stood a chance of turning a profit. Like a gigantic indoor resort, absurdly expensive to build and run, but "saddled in one of Japan's poorest prefectures", which at its best got one fifth of the visitors it would have needed to be profitable.

After 1992, Japanese property prices fell for 18 years straigh, and the Nikkei didn't get back to its 1990 high until 2023!