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The story
It has been reported that the Okinawa Development Finance Corporation is in final coordination to provide an additional ¥3 billion in bridge financing to keep cash flow afloat at the “JUNGLIA Okinawa” theme park in Nakijin Village, Okinawa Prefecture. The public corporation also took part in a ¥36.6 billion syndicated loan at the park’s opening, and just this past April added another ¥2 billion in financing alongside Shoko Chukin Bank and Bank of the Ryukyus, among others. With renewed financial support arriving in under six months, 5ch’s reaction split between the cynical view that “the opening-day boost was nothing but pent-up post-COVID travel demand” and voices pointing the finger at the park’s location and facility lineup itself.
The government-affiliated Okinawa Development Finance Corporation has entered final coordination to extend a fresh ¥3 billion loan to the “JUNGLIA Okinawa” theme park in Nakijin Village, Okinawa Prefecture. With the park continuing to run in the red, the funds will be provided as a bridge loan to keep cash flow going. The park’s operator plans to hold a shareholders’ meeting on the 25th to explain its financial situation.
The Okinawa public corporation took part in a ¥36.6 billion syndicated loan at the time of opening, and in April added a further ¥2 billion in financing together with Shoko Chukin Bank (the Central Bank for Commercial and Industrial Cooperatives) and Bank of the Ryukyus, among others.
Source: nikkei.com / Original article here
What people said
Looks like a V-shaped recovery, but that 'dip' was just the COVID slump — the 'recovery' after it is just the natural rebound that would've happened anyway.
So it really was just a fluke.
Can we really believe that, Mr. Vegetable Gyoza?! (nickname for a poster known for over-hyped takes)
That's a dull blade [pun: "Katana" is the name of Morioka's production company]. They'll probably just dot little character statues along the paths between attractions, like the Pokémon stuff at Yomiuri Land.
Having zero indoor, high-throughput attractions like Frozen, Beauty and the Beast, or the Haunted Mansion is the worst move you could possibly make.
What's with this 'look how bad I am at my job' flex?
Legoland managed to pull in the whole Tokai region's population by making annual passes cheap, but Okinawa just doesn't have the population base for an annual pass to work the same way.
An annual pass there would have to be limited to just the main island of Okinawa — not even all of Kyushu, not even the whole prefecture.
There's plenty of them, it's more that they'd rather just go to Churaumi. (Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium)
The bet was that since it's near Churaumi Aquarium, people would stay a night in that area and swing by JUNGLIA too — and that gamble totally backfired.
If there's already plenty of tourists around, there was no need to go build a whole theme park…
Was there really anything around Churaumi worth staying overnight for in the first place?
There's Nago and Nakijin right there.
Makes it pretty clear by comparison that the regional banks are just a bunch of leftover underachievers.
That's their whole playbook here — bring in collabs for indoor-type attractions that don't need outdoor space.
The licensing rights all belong to different companies, that'll never happen.
Even USJ let go of its popular Spider-Man stuff once it went the Disney route.
Koyama Yuenchi: 'Yeah, tell me about it.'
Mukogaoka Yuen: 'Ugh, you're not wrong…' (both are real defunct Japanese amusement parks)
Space World was profitable every single year right up until it closed.
It only shut down because it couldn't renew its land lease.
The government's going to clean up the mess anyway, so of course it'll pencil out for them.
Even with IP, the northern part of the island is just a tough sell.
Even locals only go once a year if that — that's the kind of location it is.
The thing that turned USJ around was Harry Potter, after all.
Better to swallow your pride and use whatever works instead of clinging to some weird sense of dignity — if you actually want to draw crowds, ditch the ego.
I don't think any IP would save this — it's over two hours from the airport.
Unless it's built around a casino as a full integrated resort people can actually stay at, it's just not going to work.
A Dragon Ball & Naruto & One Piece Super Land might've actually had a shot.
Even then, I think it'd still be tough unless it's near Naha.
Background and points of debate
JUNGLIA Okinawa is a dinosaur- and nature-experience theme park built by Katana, the company led by Tsuyoshi Morioka, known for turning around Universal Studios Japan. It opened in 2025 in Nakijin Village, Okinawa Prefecture. Multiple financial institutions, including the Okinawa Development Finance Corporation, had already arranged a roughly ¥36.6 billion syndicated loan before the park even opened; this latest ¥3 billion bridge loan follows an additional ¥2 billion loan in April, making it yet another round of support on top of that. Opinions on the thread were split over where to place the blame for the park’s struggles. Some pointed to the facility lineup itself — few large indoor attractions and low visitor throughput — while others noted that the recovery in visitor numbers has coincided with the broader post-COVID rebound in tourism demand, making it hard to credit the park’s opening itself. The tendency of regional financial institutions to keep lending out of consideration for the local economy was also raised alongside concerns about the park’s actual profitability.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyo G) thread “[Good News] Okinawa Development Finance Corp provides ¥3 billion ‘bridge loan’ to keep JUNGLIA Okinawa’s cash flow afloat.”
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