Akita with preschoolers (4–6) 3 spots
Akita is rice, snow, and the home of the Akita dog. Its namahage ogres call at houses on New Year's Eve, and a museum on the Oga peninsula shows the masks year-round.
A theme park the size of four Tokyo Domes, from craft workshops to a planetarium.
Stroller OK · Nursing room · Changing table · checked Aug ’26
A stone museum holding more than 150 Namahage masks actually used in Oga's villages.
Stroller OK · Family restroom · checked Aug ’26
Japan's first museum devoted to original manga artwork, with about 490,000 sheets.
Stroller OK · Nursing room · Changing table · checked Aug ’26
At the Handmade Studio a child can have a go at making something without any fuss. The Spacia planetarium is one of the largest in the Tohoku region, and one ticket buys one show, chosen by programme and start time, with the hall cleared between shows. Wonder Castle has trick art, and the crafts hall and the Akita Museum of Modern Art stand on the same grounds.Spacia runs by programme and start time with the hall cleared between shows, so pick your screening first and build the rest of the day around it. Admission is 700 yen for high-school age and up and 500 yen for elementary and junior-high students. Children up to third grade of elementary school enter both Spacia and Wonder Castle with someone of junior-high age or older. The site map can be printed from the official page and carried with you. The park is open 9:30-17:00.
Three or four days a week, on no fixed schedule, Chiaki Ishikawa, the only Namahage mask carver in the world, carves a mask by hand in front of visitors. The special exhibition corner also shows masks used in folk events like Namahage elsewhere in Akita and abroad.Admission is 660 yen, 330 for elementary through high school students; a combined ticket with Oga Shinzan Denshokan next door is 1,100 yen, 660 for students. The Denshokan seats a fixed number per session, with 13 sessions between 9:00 and 16:30 from April through November and only 6 from December through March. Individual visitors need no reservation, but a call the day before on 0185-22-5050 holds your place. Pamphlets come in English, traditional and simplified Chinese, and Korean.
Workshops run on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, and the content changes every month — September 2026's is built around The World of Thomas & Friends. Preschool children enter the special exhibitions free, so that Thomas show, on through 27 September 2026, is included. On the Manga Cafe wall, blank comic panels are filled in one frame at a time by the artists who visit, so a child can walk the wall working out which frames are done and which are still empty.Once a child is in elementary school the special exhibition costs 300 yen; preschoolers are free. Payment is cash only — no credit cards, no e-money — so bring cash. Tickets come from the machine next to the main reception and are valid for that day only. The Saturday, Sunday and holiday workshops do not take group reservations. In the exhibition rooms reception asks you to hold a small child's hand, and children of elementary school age and under cannot enter without a guardian, so an adult goes in with them. The multilingual audio guide, Manga Museum and a Town Walk, plays on your own phone.