So, picture this. You're in Japan, and you have a three day weekend--the third one of this semester, and the second one you're not sick for. What should you do? Go see temples in Kyoto? Maybe go check out Osaka Castle?
Heck no. You go to USJ--Universal Studios Japan.
It's just like every other Universal Studios. It's got the same rides, from the same movies. The same overpriced merchandise. But it's in Japan, and it's filled with Japanese people. So why not.
I actually had to plan ahead for this. You see, the school has this running thing called the "Experience Japan Program." The way it works is that a bunch of Japanese students get together and plan some kind of event, and they take a certain amount of Americans with them. You have to sign up for it.
Now, last month, there was a trip to USJ. The Japanese students had agreed to take about five American students. I went to check out the possible trips, and that one sounded good. So I looked at the sign-up sheet.
It clearly stated that only five people would be taken. There was a line after the five people mark on the sign-up sheet.
So what do people do? After five people sign up, they go right past the line and fill up the ENTIRE DANG PAGE. And then they flip it on the back, and draw more lines, and put their names there.
I have no idea what happened with that trip. I can only assume that the first five people went, and they sent emails to everyone else that said "Hey, you stupid Gaijin. You can't come, and you can't read, either."
But they did the same trip again this month, except with only four people. And better yet, it was during the halloween season, so the whole park would be done up for it.
Well, the day after that trip was announced, I went down to the CIE office and signed up. I was the fourth-AKA last-person to sign up. I noticed this time they put X's through all the other lines. I'll bet some more people still signed up, anyway.
Anyway, come Sunday, the day was finally here. I was psyched. I decided to travel light, only taking my camera with me. You can find all the photos in my photobucket album.
Since I've learned not to trust the bus system, I decided to get an early start. Now, since we were meeting at 9:30, and I don't have any classes before 10:00, that meant that I was getting up earlier than early. I think it was around 7:30, actually. Yeah, I hear you. Boo-hoo, 7:30. Well, it's early for me.
Anyway, when I woke up, I felt like puking, but I usually feel that way when I get up early, so I didn't let it distract me. I got cleaned up and headed for the bus station. Checked the schedule. I had about 20 minutes till the next bus. Bought some grape Fanta. I was thinking, man. I'll be there in plenty of time.
That's about when I remembered that I didn't write down the name of the place we were meeting.
I looked at my watch. I looked at the schedule.
I looked at my grape fanta.
Stashed the fanta on top of the vending machine, and made a mad dash back to the dorm. I had ten minutes to get there, find out where we're meeting, and get back and get on the bus.
I generally make it a policy of mine that I don't run anywhere. It takes me a long time to get tired from walking, but I get winded in about ten seconds from running. It just doesn't seem worth it.
I ran today. I was looking FORWARDS to this, dangit. I wasn't gonna let a little detail like not knowing where I was going get in the way of it.
I ended up making it with about two minutes to spare, which I spent decided whether or not to drink the Fanta, despite the fact that someone might have put a cigarette out in it.
I did.
The bus actually didn't hit any traffic for once, and I showed up half an hour early.
Since I had skipped breakfast, I took the opportunity to try to scrounge up some food at the convenience store we were supposed to meet at. I ended up settling on a peanut butter sandwich, the only instance of peanut butter I had seen thus far in Japan. Not that it tasted like peanut butter, mind you. It wasn't thick and oily and salty... it was... fluffy. And sweet.
But, whatever. It did the job.
Eventually, we all met up. All told, we were me, two Belgium guys, and five good-looking Japanese girls that didn't speak a lick of English.
Oh, yeah. This was going to be a good day.
Friday, October 12, 2007
TIM Goes to Hollywood
After I introduced myself five times, and then forgot everyone else's names, we got on the long train for Osaka.
And so did everyone else.
Now, since this was the "express" train, it just had seats. No rings hanging from the ceiling so you don't lose your balance. But the train was PACKED finding a seat was out of the question. I didn't even think there would be STANDING room for all of us.
Also, since it was express, it moved much FASTER than most trains. So I spent about 45 minutes stumbling around an extremely crowded train, trying not to fall down or step on anyone.
But finally, we arrived. At the most commercialized place on earth.
It was... beautiful.
As I said before, the entire place was decoratd for Halloween, so I have a lot of pictures of the decorations, because I'm such a sucker for that holiday.
Even the workers had their cute little halloween hats.
I wanted one, but alas. Not sold in stores.
Anyway. We saw lots of crazy decorations before even getting into the park, including some that are bound to scare some children.
Once we got inside, we of course had to stop and gawk at the giant Univeral Studios globe.
I even got a quick vid of it, if you want to check it out in all it's misty, rotatey glory.
Anyway, as soon as we got inside, we knew the first thing we wanted to go on.
The Hollywood Dream, the park's only honest to god, no frills attatched, no vr, goes upside-down roller coaster. The line was scheduled to be TWO HOURS long, but we did it anyway. We got in. And we waited. And we waited.
See, they make sure you have hope by having the line almost constantly moving. So you feel like you're GOING somewhere.
Well, you're going somewhere, alright. You're going in a great big friggin circle. Seriously, the way that line snakes around all those metal poles is downright disorienting. Every once in a while, I would look over the tops of everyone's heads and try to figure out: Where have we already been? Where are we going? Where's the actual ride?
But to no avail.
We knew we were getting close when we started seeing cartoon videos of what not to do during the ride. From there, it was only about a half an hour more until the line led us to a staircase.
A while before that, they seperated everyone who had a bag, so they could put their belongings in a locker so they wouldn't fall out of the coaster and kill someone. I just shoved my camera in my button up cargo pocket, figurnig that would be good enough.
But ever since then I had been worrying that it would get pulverized somehow during the course of the ride.
But I digress. We got to the stairs, and before we knew it, we were on the actual boarding platform for the ride. Not that the line was over; far from it. But we could see the END, a big improvement. We finally reached the end of the line, and I gave my camera to an attendant at the last moment so it wouldn't get crushed. At this point, I was psyched. My first ride at Univeral Studios. A real roller coaster. One I had waited in line for two hours to ride.
We lined up and got into the seats. And then they put the safety bar down.
Or rather, they tried to.
Things went smoothly, of course, until they got to my row of seats. And they couldn't get the bar down.
Why?
I was too fat.
I was too friggin big for this little Japanese-person sized ride!
They kept trying, though. The attentent at one point actually braced himself and put all his weight on the bar, trying to squish it into place. It didn't work, but it WAS pretty painful.
Finally, they told me, very politely and apologetically, to get off.
I was pretty dissapointed, but tried not to show it. One of our Japanese girls also got off with me. I tried to get her to go back on, but the ride left before I could.
The bright side of all this was that they gave everyone in my group an Express Pass-- which would let us skip to the end of the line in any one ride of our choice. Just as I was leaving the platform, I remembered my camera just in time to run back and get it.
I don't know how the ride was. No one would tell me about it. But, whatever. On to the next attraction.
We began again to wander through the various movie-themed towns, and at one point we passed a pretty rad Storm Trooper. It really bothered me that most of the decorations I tried to take a picture of always had random kids and stuff crowded in front of it, getting their picture taken by someone else.
But what could I do? I couldn't wait in line for my turn to pose--I didn't want a picture of ME with the pumpkin, I just wanted the freakin pumpkin! But I did what I could, and now a lot of random people are showing up on my blog and the internet in general. I probably don't know any of them, unless I'm in the picture. Every once in a while, I managed to get a clear shot. But not very often.
Anyway. On the way to the next attraction, which I prayed I'd fit into, we passed this sign featuring what looks like Frankenstein's Monster Kung-Fu fighting. It doesn't get any better than that, does it?
As it turned out, the next attraction was Jaws, which was pretty cool. The line was unbelievably long, of course. But at least there was stuff to look at. It was pretty funny, actually. The whole place was set up like an idyllic seaside town, and the line ran through the town's museum. We saw all this quaint, peaceful stuff provided by the Amity Historical Society, and watched videos by the Amity tourism industry. Every once in a while there were ironic hints as to what was coming, like the Amity National Airlines logo bearing a striking resemblance to the famous shot of jaws from below, with his mouth opening. Or a shot of a shadow beneath the waves, only to have it be revealed to be a plane passing overhead.
What we were in line for was a "boat tour" of Amity's waters. I gotta say, they really nailed the run down, weathered seaside town look. Our "tour guide" was this really friendly lady, and she cheerfully showed us the shotgun she had in case anything went wrong.
Things started out normally enough, with her pointing out various sights of the town to see, though of course, I couldn't understand a word she was saying. Then she got a distress call from the boat ahead of us on the radio. The signal cuts off, we round the corner, and right there is the smoking, sinking wreck that was another tour boat, with a giant bite taken out of the end.
From there, it's not too long until the big guy himself showed up, in all his rubbery glory. Sucker must be fast, because he's on one end of us, our tour guide unloads the shotgun at him (big watery explosion), and then he's on the other side. I guess every time, the guide nicks him, cause he's a bit more bloody and messed up each time.
Eventually, she misfires and hits some kinda oil rig, and the thing goes up in flames! We're talking real fire here, spreading across the water. We had to wait for it to burn out before continuing.
Of course, we take the logical course, and lock ourselves in some kind of weird building with the shark at one point. He starts trashing the place, our boat stalls, but eventually we make it out. He comes back for us one more time, and our badass tour guide finally manages to finish him off with the shotgun, and we make it back to the harbor. I don't understand much Japanese, but I'm pretty sure that she asked us rather nicely not to mention the nasty shark attack business to any of the other customers. ; )
All in all, a pretty fun ride.
Next up: Jurassic Park. Hell, yeah!
A movie I've actually seen! And it looks just LIKE the movie, too. In fact, I'm going to include this photo, just to prove we were actually there.
On the way to the ride, we got to see groovy stuff like the Jurassic Park tour... vehicles from the movie.
Now, the line was no less atrocious than any other so far. We waited about two hours in this one, weaving our way through a faux rain forest. I saw a few people playing on Nintendo DS's, and our two Belgium friends pulled out ipod videos to watch 300 and a Linkin Park video, respectively. I figure they had the right idea. It really made me wish that my PSP hadn't been stolen at college. Cause otherwise, I could load it up with movies for each of the rides, and then watch the movies as I was in line for the movie's ride. And after the movie was over, I'd only have about another half our to kill before getting to the ride itself!
This line was so long, it had a vending machine selling overprice water and tea halfway through. Yeesh!
Along the way, we got to see videos of happy scientists and Jurassic Park Rangers talking about how great the park was, but stuff kept going wrong; alarms going off, power going out, dinosaurs escaping, etc. This was the start of a trend.
Oh, and I've got some bad news for anyone hoping to hook up with a Japanese hottie while in the country. Sorry, guys.
Finally, we got to the end. It was another boat thing, but without a tour guide. They just strapped us in, and we were on our way.
I gotta say, it was pretty impressive. The animatronic dinosaurs were a bit on the rubbery side, but not as much as Jaws was. Some of them even blinked. It was pretty long, too. We got to cruise through the peaceful part, where we saw all the plant eaters, like Ultrasaurous, Stegosaurus, and many others. Then we saw the broken, sparking electric fence, and we knew things were gonna get hairy. There was a disturbing scene of two smallish dinosaurs fighting over a torn and bloodstained vest. And then we went inside this... thing. There were dinos popping out at us from everywhere, the sides, the ceiling, in front, some of them even spat water at us. Then we started going up and up this steep hill, and we knew the end was almost here. We crested the peak, and HOLY GOD IT'S A T-REX.
At first, it looked like it was blocking the exit, and we kinda sat there as it roared at us. but then, the bottom dropped out, and down, down, down we went, ending in the mandatory splashdown. I gotta admit, I screamed---um, out of the sheer joy of such a great attraction, of course.
On the way out, we stopped at the gift shop, where I saw pretty much the best shirt ever.
We also saw pretty much the most bizzare and blatantly obvious product placement ever.
After that, it was on to the next attraction.
We passed through Back-To-The-Future-ville, where we saw some sort of street performance featuring a Doc impersonator. But it was not the time for back to the future. We were gonna use our express passes, and there was only one ride to use them on:
Spider-Man, the most popular ride in the whole park, with a wait time of almost three hours.
Even though we took the express route, we still managed to see some decorations; mostly just newspaper clippings about Spider Man that the Daily Bugle had put out. But within minutes, we were at the end, we were picking up our 3Dee goggles, and we were on the ride.
I gotta say, it might have been... the most awesome thing I've ever experienced. I almost cried from joy.
Right from the start, you know it's gonna be interesting. It's freaking IMPOSSIBLE to tell what's real and what's VR. Heck, we might have been in the same room the whole time. I don't know. But it looked, and felt, like we were riding all over New York City.
We first caught a glimpse of our friendly neighborhood web-slinger in the classic "shadow of him dropping down, then shooting a web and flying off again" shot.
Then before we knew it there was a *THUMP* and he was ON THE HOOD OF OUR CAR! JUST RIGHT FREAKING THERE! TALKING AT US IN JAPANESE!
It was the most awesome thing ever. I have to admit, I peeked from out of my glasses, just to see whether or not he was actually there.
Pretty soon, he has to leave, and then the villians are all over us. Electro shoves sparking cables in our faces, Doc Oc points guns at us, Hydro actually splashes us with water, one of them freaking uses a flame thrower on us, and you can actually FEEL the heat, and then Doc Oc tries to drop the head of the freaking statue of liberty on us.
Through it all, between Spidey's help and the skill of... whoever was supposed to be driving this thing, we made it out alright. I don't know when I've had that much fun. I was screaming insults at the villians, and shouting "Go Spidey Go!" at the top of my lungs...
It was amazing.
But all good things must come to an end, and so did this ride. We stopped for a while at the Spider Man gift shop. I tried really hard to find a useless, overpriced piece of junk that I wanted, but just couldn't. Oh, well. At least I've got the memories.
By this time, I was feeling pretty dead on my feet. I mean, we'd been there all day. We had started on the trip at like, 9:30, and it was now getting dark. But we figured, what the heck. One more ride.
So we headed back. Back...
TO THE FUTURE.
And holy crap, it's the Delorian. Oh, my GOD, I've wanted one of these cars ever since I first saw this movie. I settled for striking a few poses, instead. Then, it was time for another horrible, horrible line.
Unlike most of the other lines, there were a lot of flat surfaces along the way that you could sit on briefly. Had it not been for those, I might not have made it.
Anyway. We waited through the line, went up and down some stairs, watched some more videos of things going wrong, and finally we were in. The attendants led us down a hall, and locked us in a room about the size of a closet. No freakin' kidding.
There was some stuff to look at, at least, including a Flux Capacitor and a video of Biff trashing the place and stealing the time machine.
Finally, one of the doors opened, and we were led into a room, with our very own Delorian waiting for us! Dang, was that awesome.
We piled in, and pulled down the safety bar. Suddenly, the room went pitch black. Then this fog rolled over us, and all of a sudden, BOOM, we hit 88 miles per hour and were streaming through time. The goal, it soon became apparent, was to chase after Biff and his stolen time macine. We hopped all through the continuum, my favorite being the future, where we had to dodge other flying cars. But we also got to see things like dinosaurs, and... either the distant future or distant past, cause the whole planet was cold and dead.
Anyway, we finally chased him into a lava pit, and he lost control of the vehicle and freaked out. We rammed him, cranked it to 88 again, and went back to the present, taking him with us.
And that was pretty much it!
Before we left for good, we stopped at one last gift shop, a giant one that had stuff from all the attractions.
It
Was
CHAOS.
People EVERYWHERE. Standing in line just to look at the merchandise. Lines to check out going almost out the door. I scoured the place once again for a cheap souveneir. I had just about given up, and was about to find my group again, when I saw one little stand that I had missed. I had a lot of hats on it. Hats of all kinds. Baseball caps that were, like all baseball caps, too small for my ginourmous head. Random weird head decorations, like ears or a Jaws shark going through your head. And some beanies, the only kind of hat that actually fits me.
Well, I knew that I needed a hat for the coming winter, so I looked through them. They were mostly crap. Some sparkly Jurassic Park ones that I had already seen for instance. What i really wanted was a Spider Man beanie,or maybe a halloween themed one--I'd wear that sucker all year round, regardless. But what I found was completely unexpected.
It was an orange and black hat proudly emblazoned with the Mr. Fusion: Home Energy Reactor logo from Back to the Future. I knew I had to have it.
It was priced at 2,200 yen, but I figured, hey, you only live once, so I decided to get it.
I grabbed it, and tried to find out where to check out. This proved to be difficult.
At one point, I got in a line that didn't go anywhere. Really. It was just a bunch of people standing there.
Got out of that one, and found a cash register. Ah, here we go. An "entrance" sign. But wait... there are people backed up out of it. So I followed the line, all through the store. I was about to just leave without paying, since I couldn't find anybody willing to take my money, when I finally located the end and started waiting. By the time I got to the register, my feet were killing me and my head was pounding. The lady in front of me had this little kid that kept getting in the way. When I got near to the end, I was so desperate to get out that I had already counted out my money in exact change.
One of the registers opened up, and the lady was just standing there, looking at stuff. So I tried to go to it myself, and the lady noticed what I was doing, shot me a dirty look, and pushed past me. Yikes.
Anyway, another register opened up, but her dumb kid was in front of it. So I just threw the hat over its head to the cashier. She rung me up, and I threw my exact change over, too. She cut the tags off the hat and passed it to me. I crammed it on my head, and got out of that place.
Whaddya think?
After that, we stopped at an arcade to play an awesome version of Mario Cart. Like, with a steering wheel and everything. I lost pretty badly, but it was still fun.
After that, and losing a few hundred Yen to a UFO catcher, it was time to head back. We said our goodbyes, and it was another long, and if possible, more packed train ride back to the station.
And then I came back to my dorm and fell asleep instantly.
This days' success rating:
As it turned out, the next attraction was Jaws, which was pretty cool. The line was unbelievably long, of course. But at least there was stuff to look at. It was pretty funny, actually. The whole place was set up like an idyllic seaside town, and the line ran through the town's museum. We saw all this quaint, peaceful stuff provided by the Amity Historical Society, and watched videos by the Amity tourism industry. Every once in a while there were ironic hints as to what was coming, like the Amity National Airlines logo bearing a striking resemblance to the famous shot of jaws from below, with his mouth opening. Or a shot of a shadow beneath the waves, only to have it be revealed to be a plane passing overhead.
What we were in line for was a "boat tour" of Amity's waters. I gotta say, they really nailed the run down, weathered seaside town look. Our "tour guide" was this really friendly lady, and she cheerfully showed us the shotgun she had in case anything went wrong.
Things started out normally enough, with her pointing out various sights of the town to see, though of course, I couldn't understand a word she was saying. Then she got a distress call from the boat ahead of us on the radio. The signal cuts off, we round the corner, and right there is the smoking, sinking wreck that was another tour boat, with a giant bite taken out of the end.
From there, it's not too long until the big guy himself showed up, in all his rubbery glory. Sucker must be fast, because he's on one end of us, our tour guide unloads the shotgun at him (big watery explosion), and then he's on the other side. I guess every time, the guide nicks him, cause he's a bit more bloody and messed up each time.
Eventually, she misfires and hits some kinda oil rig, and the thing goes up in flames! We're talking real fire here, spreading across the water. We had to wait for it to burn out before continuing.
Of course, we take the logical course, and lock ourselves in some kind of weird building with the shark at one point. He starts trashing the place, our boat stalls, but eventually we make it out. He comes back for us one more time, and our badass tour guide finally manages to finish him off with the shotgun, and we make it back to the harbor. I don't understand much Japanese, but I'm pretty sure that she asked us rather nicely not to mention the nasty shark attack business to any of the other customers. ; )
All in all, a pretty fun ride.
Next up: Jurassic Park. Hell, yeah!
A movie I've actually seen! And it looks just LIKE the movie, too. In fact, I'm going to include this photo, just to prove we were actually there.
On the way to the ride, we got to see groovy stuff like the Jurassic Park tour... vehicles from the movie.
Now, the line was no less atrocious than any other so far. We waited about two hours in this one, weaving our way through a faux rain forest. I saw a few people playing on Nintendo DS's, and our two Belgium friends pulled out ipod videos to watch 300 and a Linkin Park video, respectively. I figure they had the right idea. It really made me wish that my PSP hadn't been stolen at college. Cause otherwise, I could load it up with movies for each of the rides, and then watch the movies as I was in line for the movie's ride. And after the movie was over, I'd only have about another half our to kill before getting to the ride itself!
This line was so long, it had a vending machine selling overprice water and tea halfway through. Yeesh!
Along the way, we got to see videos of happy scientists and Jurassic Park Rangers talking about how great the park was, but stuff kept going wrong; alarms going off, power going out, dinosaurs escaping, etc. This was the start of a trend.
Oh, and I've got some bad news for anyone hoping to hook up with a Japanese hottie while in the country. Sorry, guys.
Finally, we got to the end. It was another boat thing, but without a tour guide. They just strapped us in, and we were on our way.
I gotta say, it was pretty impressive. The animatronic dinosaurs were a bit on the rubbery side, but not as much as Jaws was. Some of them even blinked. It was pretty long, too. We got to cruise through the peaceful part, where we saw all the plant eaters, like Ultrasaurous, Stegosaurus, and many others. Then we saw the broken, sparking electric fence, and we knew things were gonna get hairy. There was a disturbing scene of two smallish dinosaurs fighting over a torn and bloodstained vest. And then we went inside this... thing. There were dinos popping out at us from everywhere, the sides, the ceiling, in front, some of them even spat water at us. Then we started going up and up this steep hill, and we knew the end was almost here. We crested the peak, and HOLY GOD IT'S A T-REX.
At first, it looked like it was blocking the exit, and we kinda sat there as it roared at us. but then, the bottom dropped out, and down, down, down we went, ending in the mandatory splashdown. I gotta admit, I screamed---um, out of the sheer joy of such a great attraction, of course.
On the way out, we stopped at the gift shop, where I saw pretty much the best shirt ever.
We also saw pretty much the most bizzare and blatantly obvious product placement ever.
After that, it was on to the next attraction.
We passed through Back-To-The-Future-ville, where we saw some sort of street performance featuring a Doc impersonator. But it was not the time for back to the future. We were gonna use our express passes, and there was only one ride to use them on:
Spider-Man, the most popular ride in the whole park, with a wait time of almost three hours.
Even though we took the express route, we still managed to see some decorations; mostly just newspaper clippings about Spider Man that the Daily Bugle had put out. But within minutes, we were at the end, we were picking up our 3Dee goggles, and we were on the ride.
I gotta say, it might have been... the most awesome thing I've ever experienced. I almost cried from joy.
Right from the start, you know it's gonna be interesting. It's freaking IMPOSSIBLE to tell what's real and what's VR. Heck, we might have been in the same room the whole time. I don't know. But it looked, and felt, like we were riding all over New York City.
We first caught a glimpse of our friendly neighborhood web-slinger in the classic "shadow of him dropping down, then shooting a web and flying off again" shot.
Then before we knew it there was a *THUMP* and he was ON THE HOOD OF OUR CAR! JUST RIGHT FREAKING THERE! TALKING AT US IN JAPANESE!
It was the most awesome thing ever. I have to admit, I peeked from out of my glasses, just to see whether or not he was actually there.
Pretty soon, he has to leave, and then the villians are all over us. Electro shoves sparking cables in our faces, Doc Oc points guns at us, Hydro actually splashes us with water, one of them freaking uses a flame thrower on us, and you can actually FEEL the heat, and then Doc Oc tries to drop the head of the freaking statue of liberty on us.
Through it all, between Spidey's help and the skill of... whoever was supposed to be driving this thing, we made it out alright. I don't know when I've had that much fun. I was screaming insults at the villians, and shouting "Go Spidey Go!" at the top of my lungs...
It was amazing.
But all good things must come to an end, and so did this ride. We stopped for a while at the Spider Man gift shop. I tried really hard to find a useless, overpriced piece of junk that I wanted, but just couldn't. Oh, well. At least I've got the memories.
By this time, I was feeling pretty dead on my feet. I mean, we'd been there all day. We had started on the trip at like, 9:30, and it was now getting dark. But we figured, what the heck. One more ride.
So we headed back. Back...
TO THE FUTURE.
And holy crap, it's the Delorian. Oh, my GOD, I've wanted one of these cars ever since I first saw this movie. I settled for striking a few poses, instead. Then, it was time for another horrible, horrible line.
Unlike most of the other lines, there were a lot of flat surfaces along the way that you could sit on briefly. Had it not been for those, I might not have made it.
Anyway. We waited through the line, went up and down some stairs, watched some more videos of things going wrong, and finally we were in. The attendants led us down a hall, and locked us in a room about the size of a closet. No freakin' kidding.
There was some stuff to look at, at least, including a Flux Capacitor and a video of Biff trashing the place and stealing the time machine.
Finally, one of the doors opened, and we were led into a room, with our very own Delorian waiting for us! Dang, was that awesome.
We piled in, and pulled down the safety bar. Suddenly, the room went pitch black. Then this fog rolled over us, and all of a sudden, BOOM, we hit 88 miles per hour and were streaming through time. The goal, it soon became apparent, was to chase after Biff and his stolen time macine. We hopped all through the continuum, my favorite being the future, where we had to dodge other flying cars. But we also got to see things like dinosaurs, and... either the distant future or distant past, cause the whole planet was cold and dead.
Anyway, we finally chased him into a lava pit, and he lost control of the vehicle and freaked out. We rammed him, cranked it to 88 again, and went back to the present, taking him with us.
And that was pretty much it!
Before we left for good, we stopped at one last gift shop, a giant one that had stuff from all the attractions.
It
Was
CHAOS.
People EVERYWHERE. Standing in line just to look at the merchandise. Lines to check out going almost out the door. I scoured the place once again for a cheap souveneir. I had just about given up, and was about to find my group again, when I saw one little stand that I had missed. I had a lot of hats on it. Hats of all kinds. Baseball caps that were, like all baseball caps, too small for my ginourmous head. Random weird head decorations, like ears or a Jaws shark going through your head. And some beanies, the only kind of hat that actually fits me.
Well, I knew that I needed a hat for the coming winter, so I looked through them. They were mostly crap. Some sparkly Jurassic Park ones that I had already seen for instance. What i really wanted was a Spider Man beanie,or maybe a halloween themed one--I'd wear that sucker all year round, regardless. But what I found was completely unexpected.
It was an orange and black hat proudly emblazoned with the Mr. Fusion: Home Energy Reactor logo from Back to the Future. I knew I had to have it.
It was priced at 2,200 yen, but I figured, hey, you only live once, so I decided to get it.
I grabbed it, and tried to find out where to check out. This proved to be difficult.
At one point, I got in a line that didn't go anywhere. Really. It was just a bunch of people standing there.
Got out of that one, and found a cash register. Ah, here we go. An "entrance" sign. But wait... there are people backed up out of it. So I followed the line, all through the store. I was about to just leave without paying, since I couldn't find anybody willing to take my money, when I finally located the end and started waiting. By the time I got to the register, my feet were killing me and my head was pounding. The lady in front of me had this little kid that kept getting in the way. When I got near to the end, I was so desperate to get out that I had already counted out my money in exact change.
One of the registers opened up, and the lady was just standing there, looking at stuff. So I tried to go to it myself, and the lady noticed what I was doing, shot me a dirty look, and pushed past me. Yikes.
Anyway, another register opened up, but her dumb kid was in front of it. So I just threw the hat over its head to the cashier. She rung me up, and I threw my exact change over, too. She cut the tags off the hat and passed it to me. I crammed it on my head, and got out of that place.
Whaddya think?
After that, we stopped at an arcade to play an awesome version of Mario Cart. Like, with a steering wheel and everything. I lost pretty badly, but it was still fun.
After that, and losing a few hundred Yen to a UFO catcher, it was time to head back. We said our goodbyes, and it was another long, and if possible, more packed train ride back to the station.
And then I came back to my dorm and fell asleep instantly.
This days' success rating:
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5 comments:
After five people sign up, they go right past the line and fill up the ENTIRE DANG PAGE."
Comment: If you want to hear a story that involves the insult" domb-ass" let me know, similar situation.
"Anyway, when I woke up, I felt like puking, but I usually feel that way when I get up early, so I didn't let it distract me."
Comment: what I have to say involves your initials; T.M.I.
"I ended up making it with about two minutes to spare, which I spent decided whether or not to drink the Fanta, despite the fact that someone might have put a cigarette out in it."
Comment:TIM, you were supposed to take it with you. You grab that bottle and book it to the dorms, man.
"It wasn't thick and oily and salty... it was... fluffy. And sweet."
Comment: you should try mixing peanut butter with honey... Tasty.
"Eventually, we all met up. All told, we were me, two Belgium guys, and five good-looking Japanese girls that didn't speak a lick of English.
Oh, yeah. This was going to be a good day."
Comment: "Good day"?
And the award for 'understatement of the month' goes toooooo; Timzor!!!!!!1
"One of our Japanese girls also got off with me."
Comment: that was nice... I'm not sure what else to say....
I don't understand much Japanese, but I'm pretty sure that she asked us rather nicely not to mention the nasty shark attack business to any of the other customers. ; )
Comment: hahah.
"Next up: Jurassic Park. Hell, yeah!"
Comment: Woot!!
"On the way to the ride, we got to see groovy stuff like the Jurassic Park tour... vehicles from the movie."
Comment: Joy ride anyone?
"Oh, and I've got some bad news for anyone hoping to hook up with a Japanese hottie while in the country. Sorry, guys."
Comment: blast it.
"Whaddya think?"
Comment: cool.
Like, wow dude. That's so awesome, man. Disney is cool with a capital "x" dude. Shah. Raaaaaadical.
@Quarentine: Domb-ass? Do tell.
The fanta was canned. I couldn't run with it.
"@Quarentine: Domb-ass? Do tell."
In an Email, it's a bit too long for here.
"The fanta was canned. I couldn't run with it."
we must practice techniques when you next visit.
I've never had to get off a ride becuse I didn't fit, but I have had them shove that bar down and it was so tight I had trouble breathing. They really should make those things with bigger people in mind, especially in Japan.
Sounds like an awesome trip.
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