tbutler | Not really Japan, but...

Part of the Japan Pavilion at EPCOT.

It's very much Theme Park Ethnic, to paraphrase what Philip Sandifer says about Theme Park Britain:

Perhaps a better term to be retrofitted when I edit together the book version would be "Britain for tourists." That is, Britain reimagined into a set of fun high concept images that exist on their own merits. A slightly classier version of the Britain depicted in American comic books, described by more than one member of the British Invasion of Comics as one in which Big Ben is visible from every point in London.

Which, yeah. On the one hand, it ends up distilling the totality of experience of a particular culture into (mostly) stereotypes; which at best are one or two removes away from what that culture is actually like, and at worst are caricatures that reinforce a lot of negative cliches. On the other hand... this is probably as close to the original cultures as many, if not most, people will ever get. And even stereotypes can be helpful in broadening appreciation for things outside one's day-to-day experience.

(EDIT: Oh, and to note: I find Sandifer's use of Theme Park to be useful and interesting, most of the time, but I completely disagree with him on the episode he's discussing. Which is fairly common in my reaction to Sandifer's analyses, to be honest. ^^;; )