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The first weekend in November, Japan’s largest prison facility, Fuchu Prison, will be holding its annual culture festival! Everyone’s invited to visit the grounds and experience all the fun, food, and friendly atmosphere – things that are not often attributed to prison life. It’s just like the cultural festivals run by high school students, but imagine that the students are all convicts dressed in grey pajamas and locked up in their classrooms. Flyers for the event list educational exhibitions, musical guests, and even a “prison adventure” bus tour behind the heavily guarded walls!

Fuchu Prison, located in the Tokyo region, will be hosting its 38th Fuchu Prison Culture Festival on November 3, from 10 A.M. until 3 in the afternoon. If anyone in the area has ever wondered what it’s like to be imprisoned but isn’t necessarily willing to commit to an extended stay behind bars, this could be your chance!

Emulate the experience of being arrested by climbing inside of a police car! Then, take a trip on the “prison adventure” tour bus, to get a feel for life behind the walls. Taste-test some actual prison food at the cafeteria, which will be serving boiled barley and rice meal sets, or buy a piece of prison-made bread! Then, anyone with kids can take a commemorative photo of their child posing as a heinous criminal at the tiny tyke prison photo-op station. Who says crime can’t be cute!?

If that’s not enough to convince you to come, Fuchu Prison will have special merchandise on sale! There’s also an exhibit in the works, depicting the gates to Sugamo Prison, an incarceration facility in Ikebukuro which has since been replaced by the Sunshine 60 Building, great for business and shopping.

The female pop singer Hitomi Shimatani, will be attending the event as a special guest, and the prison guard band, the Devils, will have a live musical performance during the day!

Forget what you think you know about prisons and visit the Fuchu Prison Culture Festival for a chance to see how fun they can be…at least when you’re able to leave at the end of the day, that is.

Source: Jin115 (Japanese)
Flyer image: garaguda on Twitter

▼ Here are some pictures of the event from previous years.

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▼ This day’s prison food selections were fried chicken in chili sauce or beef curry.

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