Parents often want their kids to play indoors because of bad weather, the threat of sunburn or other environmental factors, and increasingly, because of the fear of crime.
Such concerns are fostering a booming cottage industry of indoor play centers.
Shiho Fukube, 31, takes her 21-month-old son, Fumiya, to KID-O-KID, a 1,000-sq.-meter indoor play center run by Bornelund Co. in Yokohama.