Local Tourism

The Gifu Prefectural government will open a new theme park in Minokamo City, called Nihon Showa Mura. It has a period theme and features an old theater, 50's style houses decorated with seasonal flowers, and entertainment from the 50's and 60's. Gifu has been building the park since 1990 and will leave management to a management company called Farm Group.
During the bubble years, the penchant of Japanese local governments to open up huge theme parks became a real problem, and resulted in the disposal of such sites as Sea Gaeia in Miyazaki, at fire sale prices. So it's rather amazing that somewhere like Gifu is still trying to do this.
Still, given the current problems in the world and the reluctance of Japanese recently to travel overseas, maybe the "Build it and they will come" mentality is about to make a comeback. SARS has all but killed off the overseas travel industry for this Golden Week, so there is likely to be a lot of people stuck at home this year who will want to take their families somewhere -- maybe Gifu is the place to go.
Or how about New Zealand-mura, in Tohoku? Maybe you can find out what makes Terrie tick... ;-)