Just a few kilometers from beautiful Nikko, with its serene Tôshôgû shrine lies a sight of a very different kind. Opened in 1973, the “Western Village” was a theme park inspired by classic American and Italian Western movies, as well as the 1973 sci-fi/Western Westworld starring Yul Brynner, which features a menacing host of malfunctioning robots attacking a group of unsuspecting tourists. While the park must have been quite an unusual sight as long as it was officially open to visitors, after its closure in 2007 the unreality of the place…
