Photo: PR Times
lifestyle

Squish, pop, and roll your way through Tokyo’s new bubble-wrap play park

13 Comments
By Katy Kelly, SoraNews24

As much as people like to joke about how similar having children is to having pets, obviously, they’re drastically different in many ways. Obviously. But there is one similarity that I’ve noticed, in my experience—no matter how much you spend on an incredible gift for your darling angel, nine times out of ten they will be much more fascinated with the packaging.

I, for one, whiled away many a merry day popping bubble wrap until my thumbs ached. If I’d only known about the pop-tacular paradise that would be unveiled in 2021.

The park, named Let’s Play! Puti Puti, will be installed in Tachikawa City in Tokyo inside a large indoor open space called Play! Park, part of the Play! Museum and Park. Play! Park contains seven indoor spaces but doesn’t install any permanent play sets or equipment. Instead, they work alongside architects and engineers to create experiences like this one. Let’s Play! Puti Puti will take place in one of the large spaces, the “Big Dish”.

▼ The Big Dish is a 22-meter diameter space, now decked out in huge swathes of bubble wrap.

main-41.jpg

Puti puti, pronounced puchi puchi, is the Japanese onomatopoeic word for the pop! sound made by bubble wrap as you squeeze it. The project was brought together over a period of two months, supervised by fashion designer Kosuke Tsumura who also lectures at Musashino University. Student volunteers helped to string up and secure sheet after sheet of squishy plastic while resisting the urge to pop, pop, pop away at all those tantalizing bubbles.

The bubble wrap is arranged in all kinds of ways to stimulate creativity and the desire to play. Strips of bubble wrap dangle from the ceiling in fluttering ribbons, while other kids may want to wriggle inside a rolled sheet of wrap and roll around on the floor. Stalactites of rolled bubble wrap invite kids to punch, hug, and shake them to their heart’s content.

sub5-23.jpg

Yet more wrap adorns the floor in huge, snail-shell spiral circles. Stomp on them! Pick them up! Roll them around! Since the bubble wrap is soft and protective, you don’t need to worry about bumps and scrapes as you might in another playground. If your child is three years old or younger, you can use a much smaller 7-meter-diameter space called the Little Dish so that they can play gently with kids around the same age.

The Let’s Play! Puti Puti playrooms will be available until March 2022, so if you’re in or near Tachikawa make sure to stop by for some safe, bouncy entertainment! You might want to check the prices as they vary based on day, ages, and whether you reside in Tachikawa or not.

Playroom Information

Let’s Play! Puti Puti at Play! Museum and Park

Address: Tokyo-to, Tachikawa-shi, Midori-cho 3-1 Green Springs W3

東京都立川市緑町3-1 GREEN SPRINGS W3

Open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (weekdays), 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (weekends and holidays), with last entry an hour before closing time

Website

Source: PR Times, Play! Museum and Park

Read more stories from SoraNews24.

-- Giant temple in mountains of Japan is also one of its most impressive tapioca bubble tea cafes

-- Create 3-D artworks from hand soap with the Awamoko pen from Japan

-- Mr Sato shows us how to buy bubble wrap from one of the most unusual vending machines in Japan

© SoraNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

13 Comments
Login to comment

My only concern is once the bubble wrap has all been popped, its useless, so its going to have to be replaced, what is going to happen to the bin loads of spent bubble wrap? will it be recycled? dumped? the world is a wash with plastic, lots of containers were sent to verious coutries that sorted it into differant grades for recycling, now the price of containers have skyrocketed is it going to commercially viable to recycle it? will it be incinerated? i hope this company has a good way of dealing with its waste.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Looks very unhealthy, indoors, playing with unsustainable plastic garbage and spreading corona. And for balancing out such obvious bs we all should avoid straws in our beverages and plastic bags or spoons in convenience stores? That’s schizophrenic at least…lol

3 ( +4 / -1 )

This place sounds fun for kids, but not for the planet.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Bubble wrap has many possibilities beyond packaging.

With a more durable plastic, it need not pop under pressure, and could be used as protective clothing for contact sports, floor coverings for seniors prone to falling, interiors of automobiles,..and many more.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

@deserttoroise," Wow, all the sour pusses today!", that is the problem with todays society just live for today, were wrecking the planet with or self ways, have you read the new recently? global warming is a major problem, plastic is in the seas, which ends up in the food chain, anti biotics are now not as effective as they were, yes it fun rolling around in bubble wrap, but you have to consider the wider issues like the energy that goes into making it right from the extraction of the crude oil, transport, manufacturing process, distrabution, then a child plays in it for 10 minute, then its no good, the cost of recycling the material, etc. shurly this is just an extravagant waste.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

A few years ago I needed to buy several large rolls of bubble wrap as we were moving house. At my local home centre, after miming my way through popping the bubbles complete with sound effects, I discovered that it is called Air Packing in Japanese.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Omg, our boy would be in heaven! He lives for what he calls "pops". Just like the author of the article says, our boy is often more interested in popping the "pops" than the gift they held. We take turns popping them. Any time a package arrives at our home with anything, a gift, housewares or something else bought on line, it's an opportunity to bond with the little man popping the bubbles. The dogs don't like it much ( ! ) and it usually sends them running for the doggie door but we sure do. Good fun.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Can it be recycled? Is it burned and polluting the air? We are supposed to worry about plastics in the oceans, then let this happen?

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Puti puti, pronounced puchi puchi

Puti Puti is pronounced puti puti. Puchi-puchi is pronounced puchi-puchi. Find me one English speaker who doesn't know Japanese transliteration rules that would pronounce puti-puti as puchi-puchi. There aren't any, making this transliteration of プチ to puti entirely useless. If they had have written it as puchi in the first place, there wouldn't have been any need for the explanation above.

If it requires an explanation to be able to read it, then it's not done correctly.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

With a more durable plastic, it need not pop under pressure, and could be used as protective clothing for contact sports, floor coverings for seniors prone to falling, interiors of automobiles,..and many more.

In the course of popping bubbles our little boy and I have discovered there is a form of puchi-puchi where all the bubbles are interconnected. Squeeze one and the air just transfers to other bubbles nearby. It seems the plastic is thicker than usual too. Tough stuff. You could pad motorcycle riding gear with it.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Wow, all the sour pusses today! Popping puchi-puchi is great fun. Learn to enjoy life. It's too short to be grumpy and critical all the time.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites