Japan has a long history of dealing with Mother Nature’s mood swings. From typhoons to earthquakes to tsunamis, its people have learned the importance of preparing for the worst. Foreigners who move here and wish to develop a similar sense of environmental awareness might want to dedicate an afternoon of their lives to roaming the Ikebukuro Bosaikan.

Even if you are fairly secure in your apocalyptic response capacity, this safety “museum” can be very entertaining if you go with the right crowd. The staff will guide you through various simulations of common emergency situations. For starters, you and your companions can sit around a table in the fake kitchen and role play the proper way to react when your whole world starts to shake.

Afterward, you can evaluate your performance (and giggle at a number of inadvertent plumbers’ cracks) while watching the video playback. There is also an opportunity for you to crawl through a twisting corridor outfitted with fog machines. This section is designed to recreate the atmosphere in a burning building.

You must crawl within a certain distance from the ground in order to complete the obstacle before “dying” of smoke inhalation. Your mission is to make it out on the other side and avoid burning yourself on the knobs of any unsafe doorways. No visit to the Bosaikan could be considered complete, however, without a trip to the fire extinguisher practice theater.

In this area, you will learn (and likely forget) the appropriate Japanese warning phrase to yell out before dousing a projected image of a flaming car with actual streams of water. Finally, don’t pass up the hyper campy earthquake dramatization film near the entrance. I say this because you might think you are too cool for such nonsense, and that would be a mistake. The heartrending performances, kitsch backdrop and perplexingly stunted dialogue are not to be missed.