Word: seagaia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...conditions and cut hours in the office 9.5% by 1996. The enforcement of leisure time, however, is likely to leave many Japanese puzzled. In a recent survey of Japanese, more than 40% said they wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they had a month-long vacation. Seagaia, like an enormous indoor ski slope just outside Tokyo that opened two weeks ago, plans to profit by showing them how easy it is to enjoy themselves...
...name Seagaia is a paradisiacal melding of the English word for ocean and the Greek word for earth. And the sea labors to be as close to the original as possible -- if not better. A computer creates perfect tubular waves four or five times a day, manipulating 10 large vacuum pumps that suck water into 40 chambers, then spew it out into surfable crests that allow expert hotdoggers to demonstrate their skills...
...visitors get more than water for their tickets ($38 per adult during the peak May-October season). Seagaia also has the Bali Hai zone, where an artificial volcano explodes every 15 min. with a thundering boom and a plume of smoke. The inside of the volcano is open for viewing -- and leads all who dare enter into the Dragon Sanctuary, where a skeletal creature is enshrined in light amid spooky music. Nearby is an adventure ride called Water Crash -- a drip-dry, 5-minute introduction to white-water rafting. The rapids are projected onto a screen as the raft bucks...
...much of the tropical world has been imported into Seagaia. Every afternoon at 3 is the Fiesta del Sol, in which performers in big bouffant skirts, styled to look like coral reefs and Neptune's daughters, prance about and sing tunes like Gloria Estefan's The Rhythm Is Gonna Get Ya. As the party builds to a climax, a mist spreads across the sea, and water streams out from the fake cliffsides. "It doesn't look like Japan here," said Mayumi Murano, a 21-year-old worker at a milk company, who came with two friends during a special preview...
...wall. Every night workers lay down a fine layer of fresh powder. "The quality of the snow is incredibly good here," says Mihoko Ehara, 24, a waitress. "But because it is so good, I think that if you skied here too often you might lose touch." Still, unlike Seagaia, SSAWS really has little to offer apart from snow. The skiing is fine for the first few runs -- and is especially surreal in summer -- but the lack of any scenery, apart from the girders overhead and gray walls all around, becomes tiresome...