The plaza in the theme park Lagunasia. You do not need to change out of your swimming suit to go inside the huge building—the Palace—where you will find the Ocean Silk Road House and other museums as well as souvenir shops. And you can continue from there along a deck walkway to Festival Market, the main shopping mall.

The coastal side of Aichi Prefecture features two large peninsulas reaching into the ocean as if to embrace a corner of it. The eastern side of the bay, which lies behind the Atsumi Peninsula, is known as Atsumi Bay, and alongside this body of water lies Gamagori City. The Japanese have long cherished Gamagori as a quiet tourist resort endowed with a gentle climate and four hot springs, and located within a quasi-national park. It is especially well known among people who love water sports, since Atsumi Bay has gentle waves and is a great place for swimming and sailing.
Laguna Gamagori was established as a resort in 2001. That year a marina with the latest facilities was completed, and the next year saw the opening of a marine theme park with pools to swim in and a seaside shopping mall with restaurants. A condominium complex with rooms overlooking the bay and the marina has also been constructed, and some of the units are already occupied. This year some additional attractions opened on a site looking out over the marina toward the Yacht Harbor. These are a French restaurant, a spa for daytime visitors, and Thermes Marins de Laguna, which is Japan’s largest facility for thalassotherapy, a European method of using marine water for relaxation and fitness.

Festival Market seen from the Yacht Harbor. The Ferris wheel is illuminated at night.

The marine theme park, Lagunasia, is what draws most visitors to the resort. In addition to its five pools, it has an amusement park and museums, and you can enter them wearing only your swimming suit. Visitors are impressed by the pool facilities above all. They include a big wave pool, a river pool 230 meters long, two high water slides with a combined length of 100 meters, a Jacuzzi spring, and a kids’ pool—in short, something for everybody. Careful thought went into the resort’s overall design, which is aimed at reproducing the atmosphere of a Mediterranean port.
More and more people are coming to agree that Laguna Gamagori is indeed something special. One indication of this is that filmmaker Kazuyuki Izutsu, a fan of Lagunasia, chose the resort as the location for his movie Geroppa! So if you get a chance to visit Aichi Prefecture, this is one place you will not want to miss.
(Miho Namba; photos by Seiya Kawamoto)