Stuff I Did Not Take Pictures of on Halloween

Everything I did this past weekend sounds good written out, but really it was fairly meh.

Saturday I went clubbing. Now, under most circumstances, this would have been awesome. You get dressed up, even MORE dressed up for Halloween, dance, talk to boys, drink a little, and end up counting down the minutes til first train. It certainly wasn't terrible, but I've had better non-holiday nights. I did take away some valuable lessons:

1. Don't go clubbing with boys.

2. Don't go to international mixers if you are a gaijin girl looking for a j-boy, because everyone there is either an English-speaking j-girl who's looking to marry a foreign man OR a shameful neckbeard foreign man.

3. Offensive costumes are OK! Blackface? No problem, there are 10 other people doing the same thing! Large weaponry? Go big or go home! Appropriating other cultures? It's an "international" mixer, duh!

Sunday was spent sleeping and eating Vietnamese food. I found this little Saigon restaurant off bento.com and I thought I'd be able to get a bowl of beef noodles reminiscent of Pho777. Walking off the elevator this place smelled legit, but I was slightly disappointed by the pho.

Tastes amazing, but thick noodles? Only a 4-page menu with less than two dozen dishes? Where's my Lazy Susan with sauces and spices? And no side dish piled high with bean sprouts and greens? The only thing that made up for these things was the Vietnamese coffee. I could use a glass right now.

On Monday I went to Disneyland for Halloween! The only way I could tell if people were Official Disney Cast Members was if they had a person dressed in safari gear with them taking photos. There were A LOT of great costumes, I kind of wish I had gotten a photo with the one Mary Poppins I saw all day. I did get a photo with a Japanese Jack Sparrow, who played the character VERY well!

First churro, cinnamon flavored~

You can't see him well but Barbosa has a stuffed monkey on his shoulder.

Best Japanese Jack Sparrow Ever.

I dragged them to It's a Small World.

They didn't mind :)

Second churro, strawberry flavored~

Curried meatball soup. DELICIOUS.

I needed the last two nights to recover from my weekend, but it's okay because I get to enjoy a national holiday tomorrow! I don't even know what we're celebrating!

DISNEY SEA

This past Monday Tracy and Marissa half-dragged me to Disney Sea. I'm not normally a big Disney person and I'm not attached to many cartoon characters here in Japan (at least not attached like EVERYTHING I OWN MUST BE _____ ), but I went along since I've never been there. I went to Disneyland with John way back when, which was fun but I wasn't left with a burning desire to go back. I figured Disney Sea would be the same.

As far as I can tell from my other post, prices haven't gone up - 6000yen for admission and about 5000yen between food and souvenirs. That translates into a higher dollar amount but what do I care, my paychecks come in yen bwahaha. I was told Disney Sea is more about the *atmosphere* than rides and attractions, which was kind of true. Just walking around the park was nice and some of the movie-themed places were REALLY well done, but I'll get to that in a bit. 

They split up the rides pretty evenly between the two parks. Disney Sea has Indiana Jones, Tower of Terror, Journey to the Center of the Earth, among others. I was forced into going on all of them, much to my dismay. Had Tower of Terror lasted one more second I would've thrown up lunch, and I didn't realize that Journey to the Center of the Earth's ride was the one where you're blasted out the side of the volcano. THAT WAS A BIG SURPRISE omg.

Have some photos!

Mickey's head is everywhere! Kind of like Hello Kitty's...

GLORIOUS KETCHUP AT LUNCH.

Almost threw up all over poor Marissa,
who managed to survive with a numb arm the rest of the day.

LAMEST RIDE EVER!

See that loop in the middle? I went on it. FML.

Indiana Jones, take 1.

But for me, one of the absolute best parts of the day was stumbling upon part of my childhood. I have been told many, many, many times that I watched The Little Mermaid everyday as a toddler. I knew all the lines and could sing all the songs, and my father and older brothers still make fun of me for it even though it was 20 years ago (omg I can't believe I just wrote that).

The Little Mermaid portion of the park is an indoor bit that's aimed at entertaining the young kids; it reminded me a lot of Puroland. The ground is that spongy stuff that you find at public parks in America, the rides are fairly lame, and the place is packed with strollers. It wasn't great and we almost decided to forgo any exploring to head straight to the gift shop, but I just wanted to see around this one cave. You know what I found?

ARIEL'S GROTTO.

We all took turns taking pictures with Prince Eric.

I'm not a very sentimental person. My reaction to most things in life is, "Meh." I STOOD IN THE ENTRANCE AND MY JAW DROPPED. I always loved Ariel's grotto in the movie and for just a little while I felt like maybe Disneyland was a magical place. I'd go back to Disney Sea just for this.

After at least half an hour, we managed to pull ourselves out of the grotto and continued with our day. Tracy and I had a few gyoza dogs (steamed manapua buns with gyoza filling in a hot dog shape) and Marissa became addicted to the curry popcorn in Aladin land.

We ended our glorious day in the medieval science castle place, looking at optical illusions and astronomy things and riding this contraption some old dead white guy designed.

All in all a day well spent. Someone tell Marissa how they make their curry popcorn.

Disneyland ni ikimashita!!!

I wish I knew how to write the title in Japanese.

I WENT TO DISNEYLAND TODAY YAAAAAAAAY!!! THE HAPPIEST JAPANESE PLACE ON EARTH!!!

I left the dorm at 730 this morning to get to The Japanese Magic Kingdom at 945. Tokyo station is just... unnecessarily LARGE; it took me like 10 minutes to get between the lines I needed to take. I was kind of scared to take such a long journey by myself, but John had to do it so I couldn't complain. I haven't seen dearest John since December 2005 so it was good to see him.

I saw *maybe* 15 gaijin the entire day, it was kind of weird. There are more foreign tourists at Asakusa on a given Saturday than there were in all of Disneyland. I suppose foreigners don't come to Japan to go to Disneyland, especially Americans since we've got two of those in our great nation, but it's still *Disneyland*.

Japanese society never ceases to amaze me. In the 8+ hours I was in the Disneyland park -- eating, waiting in line for rides, walking around, etc. -- I heard two kids cry. TWO KIDS. No tantrums, no fussing; some complaining and fidgeting but I sympathized. I really thought I'd get to witness a melt down during the wait at the Haunted Mansion, however. Mom, Dad, 4 year old son, and maybe 2 year old daughter were in front of us; Dad had just returned with water and gave a bottle to the son. Mom told him he had to share with the sister, and the sister had the biggest grin on her face sipping cold water from the bottle, watching the brother, SHE WAS SO SASSY. I feared the worst from the son, but it never came! You could tell he was getting anxious, but he never complained and was perfectly happy when Dad gave him the water back.

WHATEVER I KNOW YOU WANT PICTURES.

Entrance to *Tokyo Disneyland*!!!

John bought me Minnie Mouse ears, I bought the churro.
Why they have churros at Tokyo Disneyland I'll never know.
Please note the American flag in the background.




HI MICKEY! YAY! LET'S ALL WAVE! Everyone, adults and kids, waved at the characters. It was almost rude not to.

Anyone who knows me well knows that THIS IS MY RIDE...




... even if I'm not allowed to do stupid things in the boat.


Lunch at the Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall.


Heart-shaped hamburger!!!


Possibly worth the $18.


BYE BYE!!!

We hit up most of the big attractions -- Big Thunder Mountain, The Haunted Mansion, Star Tours, Pirates of the Caribbean (featuring new life-like Jack Sparrow being weird everywhere), Buzz Lightyear, I forget what else. I think we waited the longest for the Haunted Mansion, more than an hour, but it's like that in America. We found out toward the end of the day that some of the other big rides, like Indiana Jones, were in DisneySea next door. Damnit. I enjoyed what we did see, though. Buzz Lightyear was interesting:

I was wondering about the whole language thing before I got to Disneyland. Do the speaking characters speak Japanese or English? Would the songs on the rides be different? Can you really translate something like, "Savvy?" I'm not sure what Disney is trying to aim for with what they chose to change and what they didn't change, but it was all mixed up. The Greeting Parade theme song was English, but Mickey always spoke Japanese; some recordings were in English and some were Japanese. I heard English and Chinese instructions for one ride, but most announcements were in Japanese. So long as no one dies it doesn't matter.

We finished Disneyland at around 7pm. Ate dinner in Shinjuku, and did PURIKURA!!! I unintentionally chose a super girly set of backgrounds, but these things are supposed to be hilarious in my opinion.

My feet are tired and I am broke. Disneyland cost me about $100 ($60 ticket, $25 in food, the rest in small souvenirs) BUT I HAD FUN. I wanna go again. Damn you, Mickey!