If you need a reminder, goal #3 was to go to Tokyo Disney and goal #11 was to karaoke in Japanese. Check and check! Long post coming. You have been warned.
How did I accomplish these two goals, you may wonder? Well, I had 3 holidays in a row ("silver week") so if you include the weekend, I ended up with 5 days of vacation! A perfect amount of time to go to Tokyo with Sarah.
So... let's begin with Saturday. Kim and I were taking the same shinkansen to Tokyo, so we went together to Nagano first and had some Mister Donut. I am up to 42 points, so I almost have enough to get a little cell phone charm! Of course, I am going to keep saving them so I can get the lion with the donut mane, but I have a long way to go for that... Funny part of this story, we left from the little platform near my apt, so in the process we saw TONS of my students. They had something in Nagano, but it was so funny because they would walk up to the platform, see me, and gasp in shock! Some were excited, "Elissa-sensei!! DisneyLando! Tanoshii!!" And others were just panicked to see me outside of school, so I got a bow and a very nervous-sounding "good morning." Haha, they are so cute.
So fastforward to arrival in Tokyo. (Shinkansen ride was fine... the train had pokemon on it!) Sarah and I managed to book trains that arrived at essentailly the same time, but we did not take into account that Tokyo Station is BUSY! Like, WHOA. So she calls me when she gets there and says "stay where you are, I am coming." No problem, right? WRONG. So very wrong. It seems that she asked quite a few people where to go and they all told her different things, but 30 mins later we found each other, had some lunch at the station (Japanese version of croque monsieur) and then went to our hostel. Snaps to Sarah who knew how to get to the hostel... it was on these crazy backroads somewhere by Tokyo Daigaku, but she got us there! The hostel was...well, I guess cute is a good word. It was a more traditional rooming experience, so we left our shoes at the door of the hostel, wore slippers up the steps (very dangerous, by the way, cause the slippers slip off your feet...I don't think thats why they are called slippers though....) ANYway, our room was a cute little tatami room and we opened the closet to discover that the beds were inside! Futons, ahoy! Luckily, we left and when we got back that night, the futons were magically set up for us! Fantastic, because I would not have been able to figure out what to do with all the pieces and blankets and sheets. My only issue with the hostel was the showers. They had a public bath and one family bath. So the baths were onsen style, where you go in and sit on a little stool and wash, and then you get into the bath. The family one was smaller and the door could be locked to give you privacy, or the public baths were separated by gender, but otherwise open to all. Clearly I chose to use the family bath, but it was a hot commodity. One night I had to wait for like 25 mins for this couple to come out. Also, the water was WAY to hot for me, so I did not even get to enjoy the bath part. (it was like 43 C=109F).
Next, we wandered around Tokyo Daigaku (thats university) for a while and then we went to the Tokyo Dome hotel. There is like a little amusement park there and then a HUGE hotel and the Tokyo Dome which is a stadium/concert hall. Funny story here: we go up to the top of the Tokyo Dome hotel to take some pictures of Tokyo. We sorta figured there would be somewhere to do that, but we get to the top and there is no such place. So Sarah uses her awesome Japanese skills and asks one someone who works there if there is an observation deck or something. No, was the answer BUT, he said there was room we could go into for like 5 minutes. He shows us into this room which turns out to be set up for a wedding reception! Cake and everything! No guests yet, but still, in the US, they would have just been like "nope, no such place. go away." Gotta love the service in Japan. So next, we made our way to Harajuku which is like a cute little shopping area. I think on Sundays they dress up in some very interesting outfits or something, but we were not there on a Sunday. I did get some nice pictures of some Japanese guys from the idol shops. Haha... It seems I am turning into a "fan girl" I love Arashi, though! Sarah does not think MatsuJun is cute, however, but that is ok.
Let's move on to Sunday. DisneySea opens at 8, so we roll in around say 9:30 thinking it will be good. WRONG. S.O M.A.N.Y P.E.O.P.L.E!!!!!!!!! Lines and lines and lines of them. We waited to get into the park for about 40 minutes. I am so glad we bought tickets ahead of time. One of my JTEs suggested that we do that because it would be crowded. I actually heeded her advice for once, and that was a goooooood call. When we got there, they had already suspended ticket sales until 5pm. That should give you an idea of how many people were ALREADY in the park. When we did finally get inside, most of the fast pass return times were already to 8:00pm. We did some of the shorter rides and shows, but most of the big stuff like 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and Journey to Center of the Earth will have to wait until a less crowded trip. The Little Mermaid show was pretty awesome... but the lipsyncing with the English songs was pretty awful. They were all suspended with wires though, so it was cool. Ariel was actually Japanese, too, unlike many of the other characters we saw. Peter Pan, Aladdin, and Jasmine were all gaijin.
Monday: DisneyLand. We decided to be smart and get there at 8 to avoid the entrance line. We were a little bit late, but it would not have mattered. We still got to wait for a half hour or so to get inside. Same deal with the fastpasses, though we did get some for Space Mountain with a reasonable return time. Yay, we got to go on a ride!!!!! One of the rides, however, "Ride and go Seek" which is the new Monsters Inc one had a 350 minute wait when we got there! 350 minutes! Do the math.......... Why would anyone even wait that long?! Do you know what you can do in 6 hours? A LOT! So again, we stuck with the shows and shorter waits. We did go on "It's a Small World" which I have not been on since I was 5. That brought back some memories. They sang in Japanese though for part of the ride, so that was cute! AND the most important part, when I left the ride, I did not have the song stuck in my head (thank you, Arashi).
Post Disney we did some shopping at this pretty awesome mall and then we just headed back to the hostel.
Tuesday: We met up with Kim in Ikebukuro to go shopping and go to Namja Town. Namja Town is like a big maze amusement park type place. Kids can get these sensors and you go around the whole place, holding it up and then when it lights up, you are supposed to do what it says. The whole thing was in Japanese, so we did not try it, but, in theory, it is fun. When I say maze, though, I mean it. We spent a lot of time just trying to find where we wanted to be. We had some fantastic gyoza for lunch, though, and REALLY good gelato. I had chocolate, of course, and it was the most perfect chocolate flavor ever. That is saying a lot, because I have had many many different kinds of chocolate ice cream. I also won a pretty big Doraemon from one of the UFO catchers. The guy who worked in the game room complimented my technique. Haha.
ALSO on Tuesday, here is the karaoke part! After a bit of waiting at the crowded karaoke place, we managed to get a room and we sang! I sang in Japanese!!! YEAH! Well, more like I mumbled a bit along with the song. Normally with kanji, they give you "furigana" aka how to read the kanji, but for some of the "more common" kanji, they left off the reading because those are the kanji that people should just know how to read, which resulted in some mumbles on my part. I think I learned a few new kanji, though, because they kept popping up in the songs I was singing. Either way, it was fun.
Let's see... one other funny story. I can't remember where it fits into the timeline, but at some point, Sarah and I were trying to get somewhere on the subway. So we come up the escalator and our train was there! I was in front so I walked right onto the train and I turned around to see the doors closed and Sarah waving at me from the platform! Whoops! Somehow we missed the little "ding dong" sound that tells you the doors are closing. I really do not remember hearing it at all, but there I was, alone on the train. HOWEVER. the trains in Tokyo come really often, so I went one stop and got off and got on the next train with Sarah. Conveniently, in each station, the cars stop in the same place, so I got off and just stayed put, which meant that when I got on the next train, Sarah was in that car! It was funny, really. In DC, though, that could have been awful because the trains are so randomly spaced and so inconsistent.
Alright, I think that is all for now. Long, ne?
