Tobu World Square has been delighting families with its precise and meticulous miniature structures for over 25 years in Nikko.
During our trip to the Nikko area, we visited the Edo Wonderland and Tobu World Square theme parks and our family had a blast at both. Tobu World Square is a miniature theme park with over 100 buildings built at 1/25 scale. The preciseness of the replica buildings are delightful to look at and if you love miniatures, you’ll appreciate the details spent in creating these structures. Ready to check out the shrunken world? Let’s go!
Where is Tobu World Square
Welcome Square at Tobu World Square
When visitors first enter the park, the first area is the welcome square. This area has all the restaurants and gift shops as well as a 3D map of the park. The structures on the maps are identified by the same Nanoblock structure which was pretty cool.
At the World Square, there are also giant replica food visitors can enter and play with.
The park is divided into the following zones:
- Japan Zone (traditional and modern)
- America Zone
- Egypt Zone
- Europe Zone
- Asia Zone
The park is set up as a loop so it’s easy to see all the area without detour. The highlights for us are the Japan and Europe zones as they contain the most buildings.
Japan Modern Zone
Japan zone modern contains many of the landmarks you would see today when visiting Tokyo. Some of the structures have accompanying sound effects. For example, Tokyo Dome has baseball announcer broadcast and the crowd cheering as if a game was going on.
America Zone
The America zone includes iconic New York downtown buildings and harbor area.
There are delicate touches like people performing the musical on the streets of NY or and a wall being painted by painters.
Egypt Zone
In the Egypt zone, there are the fewest structures of any zones. It only included the replica for 3 pyramids of Giza, the Great Sphinx, and The Great Temple of Abu Simbel.
Europe Zone
Europe zone was one of our favorites as a family. It had many easily recognizable structures and also incredible details.
The Vatican model was incredible both in size and detail of the structure. You can see how large the model is below.
It wasn’t just the structures that contained all the intricate details, statues on the side or nearby the structures are also replicated.
It was interesting to see the workers repairing and maintaining the models.
Asia Zone
Asia zone had some spectacular models as well, from the ruins of Angkor Wat to the massive Forbidden Palace in Beijing.
A pleasant surprise for us is the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas from Kaohsiung in Taiwan.
Japan Traditional Zone
Japan traditional area had many cultural landmarks from throughout Japan, from Todaiji in Nara to Himeji Castle.
Heian – Nikko Yuba Restaurant at Tobu World Square
When you travel to Nikko, one of the food you’ll see featured all over the region is yuba (ゆば). What is yuba you might ask? It’s tofu skin.
We had lunch at Heian restaurant which featured yuba located inside the park. Unlike theme parks in the US, the food in the Japanese theme parks are usually quite delicious and reasonably priced.
The lunch we had was yuba soba bento. It came with tempura, yuba, soba, and a few other sides dishes.
So what does yuba taste like? The texture almost like a mix of really soft tofu and egg, with just a slight soybean taste. It is very soft and you can flavor it easily with condiments.
Thank you for reading our Tobu World Square guide. The park takes about 2-3 hours to go through and it’s great for a morning or afternoon activity in the Nikko area especially if you have children. We’ll head to Nikko’s cultural landmark Tosho-gu in our next post.
