First whole day in Tokyo!
After waking up before dawn and killing some time updating the blog, Matt and I made our way to the 7-11 store. It is a very nice store here. Fresh food and other convenience store products. We were going to get something to eat, but then we remembered reading that the Japanese do not eat while they are walking. It is also bad to put soy sauce on rice, blow your nose in public and they have very specific rules on shoe wearing inside the house. Point of the story: We ended up just getting drinks.
From there we made our way a block to the train station. Now this station is one stop away from the main Chiba station. I had directions from that station and over there everything is in Japanese and English since it is a main transfer point. But not here... We looked at the train map and tried to buy tickets from the automated machine for a few minutes, but that definitely wasn't working. We made our way over to the one ticket booth and like a dumb tourist pretty much just put up two fingers and said Disneyland. The guy told us our total and I paid him and Matt started freaking out, saying we just paid like $130 for the train tickets. We tried to put them in the entrance machines, and they wouldn't work and the guy in the window was pointing back around the corner. We didn't see any other train entrance over there so we went by the buses and the lady was like "No, Disneylando No." We were starting to get frustrated and were already confused when the very nice man from the ticket booth showed up by the bus and walked us back down to the train station and pointed at the ticket we needed to buy and helped us with the ticket machines. Thank god for nice, helpful Japanese people. We then realized that what we bought from him were the actual tickets to get in to Tokyo Disneyland. We were quite relieved that it only cost 450 yen (5 bucks) to get to Disney, and not $130. Having made it through the station gate, we easily figured out how to get there, all the route signs were now in English too. We ride the yellow train toward Tokyo for 23 min and then transfered to the Orange train to Maihama station 12 minutes away, which is right at the entrance to Disney. Easy enough. By the end of the day we had the train system all figured out and were pretty proud of ourselves.
We arrived Disney with mobs of other people. I have never seen so many people in my life streaming off a train and into a Disney park. It was 95 degrees and 100% humidity and we were dying the whole day. Disney here is by far better than any other Disney (according to me, Matt says he still likes Florida best.) There are more people working than I have ever seen, every food cart stand and restaurant is open with no waiting, and there are not a million fat rude Americans plowing through on their ecvs and wheelchairs (there were two wheelchairs in the disabled section for the parade. In the US, they would be fighting over who gets in this area.) I think in Tokyo residents' fantasy world they imagine actually have a little elbow room and that is why the walking paths and park just seem massive and why the lay out is so huge. The parade floats they run down the sreets here would never fit down the paths in the US. They probably need so much room because the place gets so packed too. It's sad to say, but another reason the place is probably so awesome is that it is the one Disney Park complex not owned by Disney. When Oriental Land Company makes gobs of money, they reinvest it in the parks, it doesn't go to shoring up the lagging film studio, television network, consumer products division or whatever other area of Disney that is lagging that quarter.
Anyway, Tokyo Disneyland is awesome! I never in my life thought I would say that a Winnie the Pooh ride was awesome, but Pooh's Hunny Hunt is unbelievable. The technology I have never seen before. There is no track, you leave the station with two other honeypots and you move from one scene to another scene, room to room, moving around each other, sometimes being the first pot sometimes being the last, until finally you get to a giant grand finale room where about 12 honeypots are all zooming around each other and going to see different effects in different parts of the room. You would have to ride a few times to try to get to the variety of areas in this room. I guess it is hard to explain, but it was amazing. I also loved that the roller coasters (Big Thunder, Space Mountain) were so much smoother and less herky jerky than other places. I also found the Country Bear Jamboree Vacation (think Chuck E Cheese show, but better) especially amusing because it was in Japanese and they were singing songs like "On the Road Again," and "Achy Breaky Heart." The Tokyo Disney Electrical Parade "Dreamlights" was the best, longest, biggest Disney parade I have ever seen, so that was the entertainment highlight of the day. They cancelled the fireworks because of high winds... It was sweltering hot but at least there was a breeze I guess. After 11 hours at Disneyland we called it a day and got back on the train to Chiba. We met Ben and Katie and, despite being exhausted, we went to a little restaurant with them where they got a scary, scary salad with raw octopus, tuna, salmon and other gross things. Matt and I got chicken and pork kabobs and pot stickers. I am a super duper picky eater so it is definitely difficult to eat here. It took me about an hour in Disneyland to find something I would eat (chicken and scrambled egg rice.) I ordered a slice of pizza special and it had shredded crab meat and I don't know what else on it. I scrapped the top off and ate the crust.
Back to the restaurant, an interesting thing happened. Katie said it is why they don't really have Japanese friends here, only other foreigners. A guy (who had been drinking) kept peeking around our booth and finally came over and tried, despite only knowing a few words, to talk to us. His girlfriend who spoke more English came a few minutes later. Katie said it is always the same. They find out you are American, ask the same six questions like "Where are you from," "How long have you been here," "What do you do," etc, etc and then they ask to be friends so they can learn and practice English. Well, this is frustrating to teachers who do that for work all day and don't need to practice English because they already know it. They were super polite and friendly but I could see how it would definitely be annoying.
That is about it for today. We went home and crashed. We were crazy tired and other then the short train frustration and sweating like crazy people all day we had a pretty excellent first day.
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