Day 81
I was ready to go early this morning. Had to be. We're going to Tokyo Disney Sea!! It's the happiest place on Earth. I was worried, though, because I could not get a hold of Yuri. Communication purely through email (unreliable email at that) is difficult. Thankfully I got an email from her right before we got off the ship. She gave me train directions to Disney Sea and set a time and place to meet up. I was going to meet her in the Tokyo train station at the Uniqlo store at 10:30 pm. So I made sure to find that place on my way to Tokyo Disney.
We had to take two trains to Disney Sea (and Disneyland). Not surprizingly, there were serveralother SASers on the trains. Gregg the videographer was even on the main line from Yokokama to Tokyo, so maybe there'll be some footage of me on the DVD. (Update: there wasn't.)
After finally arriving at the park, Kayla, Jillian, Nicole and I pranced
inside to be greeted by Pluto. There were decorations for Christmas and the 25th anneversary all over the place. It was truly magical. We decided to stick to circumnavigate the park as we had been the rest of the world for all these months. Disney Sea is similar to Epcott in that there are all different countries represented. The difference is that every place you visit in the park is a big city on the water and there's a huge lake-type thing in the middle.
We started our sea adventure by getting line pass tickets for the Journey to the Center of the Earth ride because the line was enormous even that early in the morning. We would just have to stand in line for the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride; you can't have more than one line pass at a time. From there we jumped on Sindbad's Storybook Voyage. I thought this ride would be an adabtation of Aladin (there was definitely a picture of Genie), but it turned out being much different. Good music though. I'll have to watch that movie on Hulu sometime, I guess.
Lost River Delta was the next destination on our journey. We soon found ourselves on the Raging Spirits ride. Everyone agreed the hightlight of the ride was when they shot out fog in front of you so you c
ouldn't see where you were going next. At that point, it was time for us to hit up the center of the earth. They went all out for that ride. There was a huge worm monster trying to eat us and all kinds of other stuff my earth science book did not never said anything about.
After some studying of our map, we decided t
o get lunch in New England. The place was so cute! A big ship, which everyone thought was the Titanic (that would make no sense – it sank before reaching the US), was the highlight. They also had a colonial-looking area called Cape Codde that had a lighthouse. We rode the Tower of Terror ride and took pictures with Cruella Devil, who sounded like an American, before walking by the Mediterranean Harbor to watch the BraviSEAmo performance on the water. It was great. To the Japanese visitors' entertainment, we danced around to the japanese versions of American songs.
One of the best parts about our visit was the japanese garb. The guys looked pretty
normal, at least nothing sticks out in my memory. But the girls...man. To start off, a majority of them were wearing heels. Why would you torture yourself like that? I knew my feet would be hurting by the end of the day in my most comfortable shoe
s, but heels?! They also looked impossibly cute, as if they were headed to a party I wasn't invited to. Think harijuku. Cute clothes and cute hair.
All the girls were wearing their hair in a high, high bun. They somehow got it to look messy, but neat at the same time – something I have not been able to duplicate.
On top of that, most of them were wearing some form of a Minnie Mouse hat. It was almost too much.
So, we stayed for the Christmas performance and huge fireworks show right before the park closed. Both were pretty spectacular, I improved upon them by getting some frozen yougurt. Then, it was back to the train station.
I waited in front of the Uniqlo store for Yuri. As I waited, I was afraid I wouldn't recognize her. It had been a long time. Luckily, we didn't have that problem because she definitely could recognize me; I stuck out like a thumb.
I was hoping we would go out somewhere, but she had class in the morning, so we just decided to head back to the ship. She thought it was really funny to go to the pier because, apparently, in Yokohama that is a date activity. Of course, she thought the boat was enormous, but I explained to her that it's really not, in comparison. We really didn't get to hang out for as long as I would have liked or expected. But I guess at this point I've learned to be patient and flexible and not surprized when things don't turn out the way you expected.
Comments