Dozens of full skeletons stand under a column-free dome in Japan's foremost dinosaur country. Katsuyama has produced a long list of species new to science, and the museum built beside those beds ranks with the best dinosaur museums anywhere. Large dioramas fill the rest of the hall. This is no playground for children but a serious hall of natural history, and the scale of deep time lands on adults as hard as on anyone.
The appeal here is one combination: science, venue and hands-on work. The multipurpose hall and the seminar rooms take lectures, presentations and meetings, while fossil preparation and a field dig put a participant's hands on rock hundreds of millions of years old. Nothing happens behind glass. Participants pick up the tools and work the way a paleontologist does. Add the dinosaur-themed train and the lodging, and the theme runs the length of the itinerary.
A single subject holds the meeting and its entertainment together, and dinosaurs need no translation across age or nationality. Guests meet among the skeletons, dig fossils themselves and ride the dinosaur train, and one gathering turns into an expedition. This is the part that gets retold.