Gulliver's Travels

Sometimes its good to change direction.

For instance - say you're going around a big lake checking out stuff like White Beard Temple:

...and discovering the biggest garlic know in Western Japan:

...when, suddenly, you come across:

Gulliver Village!

Gulliver's Travels (original title: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships) is well-known in Japan, and on the way to the village, a hard-hat wearing electrician was very amused to see a large-proportioned foreigner going there.

Also on the way, well-labelled signs excite your curiosity - what extremely large and extremely small things could they possibly have come up with?

The map at the village gate isn't really helpful at all - there really isn't a big statue anywhere. Instead, there is...

... a room with some plastic and ceramic toys arranged in it. Here is Gulliver. Clearly, he is not Japanese, which is already slightly disappointing, but also the visitor does get the sneaky suspicion that he originally was used to sell ice cream or tea at a fun fair, and this is his point of retirement, with legs shortened.

Our suspicions deepen when we see this - a board explaining that this display was made for the 1990 EXPO flower exhibition, and moved here because they had nowhere to put it. They also had a display of dried butterflies - yes, I know they're small, but that's really quite a stretch from being connected to Guliver's Travels.

However, this statuette makes up for the disappointment somewhat, as her foot has broken off and she has the correct expression to match:

Now, I was willing to give the cafe-restaurant the benefit of the doubt. Even when I saw the look of it (not a single massive chair or tiny menu), I was still holding out to be served by a talking horse. Sadly, not only was the cafe in no way connected to the adventurous Gulliver, but also, they weren't even trying - by the till, as a toy mascot, they had a penguin!

After this seeing the rest of the place was clearly going to be a waste of time, even though the curry udon was passable - after all, how good can it be, given the lack of effort in the restaurant?

And this is very much like the market - when you find compelling evidence, you should make up your mind, and, if necessary, change direction.