Welcome to the Great Indoors

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

What could be more idyllic than a day at the beach, especially if you're an overworked salaryman with little leisure time to spare? But the weather can also be unpredictable, the waves petulant and uneven, the flotsam yucky. Now those who don't want to risk a less than perfect holiday can frolic at the Seagaia complex in Miyazaki, on the Japanese island of Kyushu, 930 miles south of Tokyo. The ocean that surges and rolls within it, chlorinated and free of salt, has a clearly defined width of 462 ft. and washes a shoreline 280 ft. long, composed of 600 tons of crushed, polished pebbles, all under a 660-ft. retractable roof. The chirping of birds is filtered through a sound system and echoes in the air even as plastic palm trees flutter in a piped-in breeze. When it officially opens this week, 10,000 people at a time will be able to play in the temperature-controlled waters of this man-made beach.

Meanwhile, 440 yds. away is the Pacific Ocean.

Welcome to the latest of Japan's pleasure domes, born of a 1992 decree that the industrious people of the islands must work harder at leisure, in order to make their country not only an economic superpower but also a seikatsu taikoku -- a life-style superpower. The government has vowed to improve working 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.

The 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.

But 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 on a pool of water. Visitors can also sample from the menus of 15 restaurants and peek into the computerized control room that operates the retractable dome -- the largest in the world.

And 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. And does it matter that the real ocean is nearby? "It's great. The water is really wonderful and really clean. I like it better here than at the real beach, because there's no salt in the water. We're coming back."

The world's largest indoor ski slope has no up-close competition from nature -- and that explains the excitement over it. SSAWS, which stands for Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter Snow, is a $366.9 million building shaped like a giant mechanical centipede whose highest hump reaches 25 stories. On opening day two weeks ago, hundreds of summer skiers, eager to escape muggy Tokyo, lined up for the first runs down the slopes. Regular, outdoor Japanese slopes are notoriously crowded -- and SSAWS is likely to be as well when it is fully operational. However, SSAWS is only 30 min. from Tokyo Station -- in contrast to the half-day trek necessary to reach Japan's other ski areas.

SSAWS is also much better kept. The 1,607-ft. slopes are routinely groomed to take out moguls and ice spots that might send skiers crashing into the 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.

Nonetheless, huge numbers of visitors are expected, even at $54 a person for two hours of skiing. The developers expect 1 million skiers a year. To keep the crowds down on the slopes, only 2,000 skiers will be allowed on at any time. Everyone will carry a little electric card that acts as a timekeeper. Once the two hours are up, a customer is charged $3.70 for every additional minute.

Which is incentive to go back to work.

With reporting by Edward W. Desmond and Stacy Perman/Tokyo