Malcolm's Japan Trip

Introduction

2006-02-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

I have always been a huge fan of Japan and its culture. As a young kid I was hooked on shows such as Battle of the Planets which were 70's take on Japanese Anime dubbed for Western audiences. I had Japanese classmates who'd introduce me to Origami and Transformer robots (anyone remember one where a tank, a robot and a lion would join up into one super big robot). In the 80's I was hooked on the tales of the Ninja and the influx of cheesy Ninja movies that were prevalent at the time. I was so hooked I even told my career's advisor that I wished to be one when I was older.

Image from www.supershadows.com

At University I diverted from my Computing degree to take a module on the Japanese Business Environment, from which I learnt a great deal about the Japanese mindset and an appreciation for their culture. Around the same time I had started teaching myself the language, buying a few language books and failing miserably to attempt to translate some manga books I'd bought from a large Japanese centre in North London. I had a social circle of Japanese people that I would spend quite a bit of time with. I also spent one night a week at hashi no kai, a club where Japanese and Brits could meet in an attempt to learn about each other's culture. Following University I applied, unsuccessfully to be an English teacher in Japan under the JET program which targeted graduates with the opportunity to spend time in Japanese schools teaching English.

Battle Royale from BattleRoyaleFilm.net

In the last few year's Japanese cinema has really broken into the West with cult films like Battle Royale and those of Beat Takeshi really putting the genre on the map. Of course a good decade ago there was the Anime craze with Akira and Urotsukidoji opening up the West to that style of movie making too.

All of this interest in all things Japanese meant that I knew I was destined to visit the country at somepoint. I was gutted when I didn't get to go after University but I'm a firm believer that if things were meant to happen they would.

I joined the European Coaster Club in 2002 and they had been planning for sometime to visit some Theme Parks in Japan. The trip was announced informally in 2003 and I immediately started saving for it. A year later the official notice was made and the itinerary announced. There were 18 parks arranged for 14 days, the itinerary was extremely tight. I was then unsure whether or not I wanted to do this trip as there was so much that I wanted to do in Japan and I wasn't sure I would have the time to do it. This was after all a Theme Park Tour, not a sightseeing tour, although they had included some time for it.

In the end I decided that I had the funds to do it so why not.

The pages that follow are a report on each place that we went to. To know that my efforts had been worthwhile in putting this together I've enabled comments, please feel free to add your own, good or bad.

Airport & Tokyo

Airport and Hotel

2006-01-04T22:49:00.000-08:00

Well it was after an 11 hour flight from London that we finally touched down in Japan, and also the first opportunity for me to take some pictures. For whatever reason the camera remained in my bag on the British side, perhaps because I thought the Japan holiday doesn't actually start until I set foot there. Note the baggage handler guy beneath the plane. Uniforms play a big part in Japanese culture, it helps unite the workforce to a common goal. Unlike in the West where we put ourselves before the company we work for, in Japan it's the other way around. It's not that they're particularly proud of who they work for but to put your company in a bad light is a big no-no!

In Tokyo, a lot of the signage is written in both the Japanese and English languages. This was the first indication that getting about wasn't going to be that difficult in what looked like being an extremely complicated city.

Tokyo's public transport is amazing and used a great deal by it's citizens. We're quite a car dependant country, America even more so, but this is not the case in Tokyo. Even so it was nice to see a large computerised board indicating the state of the road network around the airport to aid those people brave enough to use the roads. A simple idea that can work in any city but I've only ever seen here.

Leaving the airport it was strange to see the porters bow our coach off. I knew that bowing was very common in Japan but I always thought it was the equivalent of a handshake, that is to say, something that took place between two people. But here it was being used as a replacement to waving a crowd of people off. Quite odd.

En route to the airport the first impression I had was that I could see where the roads in the Ridge Racer video games came from with high walls on either side to deflect the sound away from the residential areas we were driving through. It also became quite obvious that the Japanese people liked their big wheels as we passed several on just this road alone.

We passed Odaiba which is a man-made island off the mainland that has become an Entertainment hub with TV companies and Nightlife based here. Sega Joypolis is situated here so I knew that later in the week we'd be getting a closer look at the buildings and that weird one in particular with the sphere, which is actually part of the Fuji companies offices.

In fact some of the architecture was quite odd, avoiding the norm of utilising rectangular structures. I had no idea what this building was but it made me wonder if something did happen to it and it's people needed to evacuate quickly could they just exit the left-hand-side and slide down it?

After about an hour we made it to our hotel, the Miyako Raddisson in Shirokanedai, situated in the South West of the city. The hotel was perhaps one of the best hotels I've ever stayed at and I think it took the staff and other guests by surprise to see 100+ Westerners staying in there. The purple mini bus was a free shuttle to Shinagawa, one of the major stations nearby. Those that wanted to travel further afield could either utilise the brightly coloured taxi like the one in the foreground or the Tokyo Metro a 5 minute walk away.

Here's the view from the hotel room window overlooking some of the buildings in the area. There are a large number of temples in the area but they're lost in amongst the high rise and more modern developments around them. We knew that the weather had been overcast for a few days before we flew out. The day we landed the southern islands were being hit with Typhoons which is why the sky was greyer than expected.

The room was the standard hotel apart from 2 main differences. The first, which I failed to get a picture of was that we had 5 different pillows on our bed; some were soft, some firm, and one was full of a much heavier filling. This final pillow was good for the spine but also for twatting the room mate around the head if he snored.

The other difference was of course the super toilet that we had in our bathroom. Japan is very strange in that it has both the worst and best toilets in the world. Whilst I wasn't looking forward to the joys of a squat toilet, I could wait to give these super-toilets a go; something that some of my friends were too scared to even attempt. Funnily enough the buttons only work when you're sitting on the toilet so you can't test them to see what they do first. Pressing them you hope that there is nothing too masochistic hidden behind one of the options. As it turns out this model was fine, with water jet and spray options. You could also vary the pressure of both. Elsewhere in the hotel I came across a toilet that also included a massage option. Oh, and for the females out there who hate seeing the toilet seat up, that and the lid automatically close if the toilet is left unattended for a length of time.

Before venturing out in the city for the first time, I chose to spend a bit of time taking in the hotel grounds. This hotel was noted for it's classic Japanese garden with quite large grounds to explore. It contained a few waterfalls beside which to relax, although there were some odd cricket type noises reverberating amongst the plantlife that bothered me somewhat and spoiled the peace. Maybe if I had got used to them I'd have appreciated the solace the gardens offered more.

The garden also had a few statues of religious significance to reflect at. The garden featured a large hill and I was curious to find out what lay at the top, however the overgrown gardens made it impossible for me to get there, not without soaking my clothes on the way, that is. With the garden explored as much as I could, it was time to venture beyond the hotel grounds.

I first heard of Pocari sweat about 20 years ago when Clive James used to have a regular series reporting on his travels in Japan, and I remember the next day at school having debates with classmates about whether or not they really drank sweat in Japan. I had a list of things that I wanted to do whilst in Japan, trying some Pocari Sweat was one of them. Actually, as it turned out, the drink is just a lemon variant. The reference to sweat being that it quenches the thirst and replaces the lost nutrients exercise takes out of you; much like lucozade back home.

Tokyo Tower

2005-12-04T20:50:00.000-08:00

Our first jaunt saw a crowd of us heading out to the Tokyo Tower, a short ride on the Metro away. The Metro wasn't too hard to figure out, a 1000 yen (£5) ticket could be purchased that would give you unlimited travel until the credits on it ran out. As it turned out we got 4 days out of one ticket, bargain!

The Tokyo Tower was built in the 1950s and is modelled on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, although it's only half the weight. It celebrates Japan's rise to becoming a major global player and is popular with tourists and locals for it's views that it offers over the city.

At the entrance to the tower we were welcomed by this collection of wolves, but there was no obvious link between them and the tower. We thought it may have been some sort of corporate sponsorship but we couldn't see any logos to that effect.

The structure offers 2 viewing platforms; one at 150m and the other 100m higher. You pay money to get to the first level then pay again should you wish to ride the elevator to the upper level. As with the airport the staff here were immaculately dressed, this time in red and black bellboy outfits. It was riding the second lift that I first noticed how "robot" like the routines had become for the staff. The young lad in the lift was giving a talk to a lift full of Westerners who couldn't understand a word he was saying. He could have stopped but I guessed he had been told to give the full speech every time the lift rose regardless, and this was what he was doing.

The views from the top level were alright but the glass was quite grubby and spoiled the pictures taken. As you can see by the time we got up the tower night had fallen and Tokyo's neon nightline was starting to come into its own. This top level is actually a popular dating location with Japanese teenagers. In fact this was something we came to notice more and more, especially around La Qua. In Japan dating is done properly with guys taking girls to more and more exclusive and expensive locations as the relationship develops and the girl comes to trust him more.

This shot overlooks the Roppongi district which has become the ex-pat playground where you're more likely to pull a girl by getting them drunk than by doing anything chivalrous like dating there. In fact the locals tend to leave the Roppongi area to the Westerners, preferring to go else where. Needless to say I had no inkling to visit that particular bit of Tokyo! After all I could get that culture back home.

This is the Ginza district which is home to the designer stores and a little bit of nightlife. I just liked the way there were these pockets of neon visible amongst the darkness. Ridley Scott had got the some of the inspiration for Blade Runner from views like this, and this was the first thought that entered my mind when I took the picture.

Finally after having enough of the views it was time to eat. I've never been daunted by Japanese cuisine and I was up for trying absolutely anything. Whilst those less brave found a McDonalds to eat at, a few of us thought we'd give this place a go. There is no waiter, instead you choose your food from a vending machine type selection which gives you a number and feed the money into the machine. A chef then makes your food and when it is ready your number shows up on a board for you to collect it. The main problem we had here was that the menu was all in Japanese although there were pictures of what you were buying, but no detail to what the ingredients actually were. How did I know what to go for? I didn't, I just pumped some money in and pressed a button at random. I ended up with a really nice soup full of vegetables and beef with a duck egg broken over the top. Very nice it was too!

Having had enough of the views of the city that the tower offered, we ventured back towards the Metro station. On the way we passed a temple that contained a number of small dolls laid out in rows each adorned with red material. In Japan the colour red is associated with "expelling demons and illness" and these were therefore likely to be symbolic gestures for good life and wellbeing. I imagine the dolls represent a Shinto or Buddhist deity to whom the request is being made.

Shinagawa & AquaStadium

2005-11-04T13:51:00.000-08:00

A quick train ride to Shinagawa station and upon leaving the station I was handed a pack of tissues by a man outside the station. These packs serve 2 purposes; firstly they offer a means to advertise a club or bar in the area. Secondly as I came to discover later on, the squat toilets in the station don't come with toilet paper and you often have to buy it from a vending machine outside the cubicle. In hindsight it's a very practical way of advertising something and you're more inclined to hold onto this than the paper flyers we have here in the UK, which often end up littering the street.

Across the road from the station was this lovely lit building that gave me a quick opportunity to test my reading skills. The first four characters on the top sign read ka, ra, o and ke and so this was quite obviously a Karaoke bar. Land is very much at a premium in the built up mess that is Tokyo and so you tend to find that shops and stores stacked on top of each other. This is a big difference in the UK where we're used to everything being on a single level, or if it is more its the same store. It was quite odd to have to look at streets vertically as well as horizontally. Karaoke bars are often housed in quite thin buildings and the singing rooms are atop each other looking over the road.

Next to the Karaoke bar was this large car show room that I think housed Mistubishi cars. Mitsubishi is Japanese for "three leaves" (mitsu = "three" and bishi = "leaf") hence the logo. We were in Shinagawa not to visit a showroom but to visit the Prince Shinagawa hotel that stood behind it and it's Aquapark complex.

This hotel opened a few years ago and to attract visitors to it they built a water park (as in aquarium, dolphin shows etc) and another enclosure that housed a few thrill rides. Earlier in the year they opened a launch coaster called Galaxy Express 999, which was going to be our first coaster of the trip.

The ride is based around the work of renowned animator Matsumoto and tells of a boy's quest to travel to the Immortal Planet and replace his human body with a robot one so he can seek revenge for something that happened in his past. The only way to get there is on the space train Galaxy Express 999, perfect backstory to a coaster ride. In the West Matsumoto is best known for the video to Daft Punk's "One More Time" track.

The ride is an indoor launched coaster with a loop that catches you off guard. It's also quite a short ride and is over pretty quick. You spend more time in the two preshows than you do on the ride, which is always a bit anticlimatic.

A quick walk around the other attractions and the theming on them was immaculate. Here is their pirate ship. Odd that it was indoors, even more odd that one side of it was in close proximity of a fake rock wall that doubled as theming and something to add to the thrill of the ride.

Even the carousel was really well themed fitting in with the venue's sea theming. Clever lighting gave the impression of being underwater as the ride ran. Starting to feel the jet lag a bit the decision was made to head back.

This is Shinagawa station with it's massive video screen overlooking the main junction. Wing is the name of the complex that houses the station and a bunch of stores.

Asakusa

2005-10-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

The first official day of the trip and we were off to the North East area of Tokyo to the Asakusa district, an area that used to be renowned for housing the entertainment district in Japan but is now more known for the Temples. On the Eastern bank of the Sumida River is the Asahi building and the Flame D'Or Restaurant and bar. The bar does sell Asahi lager, which isn't really a surprise given its neighbour.

I can only imagine that people collect rubbish in order to make cash and not for the good of the environment. This area which has quite a lot of close-knit low lying buildings didn't seem as well off as some of the other districts. When I think of Tokyo I must admit this image wasn't one I came up with.

In the UK if you want to see a lot of vending machines in one place you have to travel to Alton Towers in the middle of the country. In Tokyo you don't have to travel that far at all as they're all over the place. They sell a variety of items including the usual soft drinks and cigarettes. It is also possible to get ones that sell more extreme items such as used schoolgirl underwear and live lobsters, although I never came across any of them. Crime isn't a problem in Japan and no-one is going to break into these. The same couldn't be said of the UK.

The group was on its way to the first park of the trip, Hanayashiki. It was quite early in the morning but there was still quite a lot of people about. On the way to the park we'd be passing through the largest temple in the area, the Asakusa Kannon-Temple.

This is in the centre of the temple grounds and such stunning architecture that I've seen in theme parks loads of times before but the real thing is just so much more magnificent. The temple grounds consist of a couple of large buildings and is surrounded by a number of smaller ones.

The temple is apparently the oldest temple in the city and has a history that goes back to the year 628 (I'm not missing the "1" off the front). Two men were apparently fishing in the river and found a golden buddha in their net. Even though they threw it back into the river twice (they knew no better) they kept netting it. So they brought it back to the town's wise man who built a temple around it. The temple that is there today.

The entrance to Japanese temples are often signified with the construction of a torii gate. These mark the gateway between the physical world and the spiritual one. Shinto is a religion that worships nature spirits called Kami. In the Shinto religion, three really is the magic number. The gate is usually made of three pieces and people walking through one will clap three times and bow three times. The number 3 is a sacred number in Shinto.

This is the entrance to the main temple with a stunning lantern hanging outside the entrance. I did go inside but I wasn't going to take any pictures. The temple just has a major calmness to it.

These temple grounds used to be the Tivoli of its day, where people would congregate to be entertained by magicians and acrobats. Japanese theatre, known as Kabuki, was also very popular here. A couple of week prior to us arriving the temple grounds housed a Samba festival with dancers from Brazil coming over to take part. Japan isn't as insular as people expect! This pagoda steals the skyline in the area.

In other countries this whole area would be over run with the tourist trade but in Japan this was being used properly. A large number of the people we saw walking around earlier were actually on their way here to pray or on their way back. Those people who were here to see the temples and not use them were paying the correct respect. This is why there are no pictures of the insides of the temples :D

The whole area was very tranquil, and not just because of the time of day.

Almost at Hanayashiki and my first attempt at buying from the vending machines. With none of these drinks available in the UK it was going to be another opportunity to just pick something at random and hope for the best. I had guessed that the drinks in the top left were tea variants so I stayed away from them. The cloudy thing in the top right was saying "happy guru", which gave no clue to what it was. However the drinks below that included the word "cider" so I thought I'd go for that.

It wasn't cider as we know it but an apple drink which was actually quite nice. Those sharp eyed people out there may have noticed that all the drinks are made by Asahi. They must be the Coca Cola Corporation of Japan.

Never one to miss an opportunity to pose in front of the camera, Keith hugs the vending machine.

With a bit of time to kill before the park opened I took a wander around the streets surrounding the park. Fortunately Hanayashiki has a tower ride that acted as a perfect beacon to indicate the way back. I really had no idea where I was going but which sometimes the best way to go exploring is just to head out there and see what you find. After all Captain Cook didn't follow a map to get to America. This small arcade contained a number of shops getting ready for the day's trade. It also contained a number of cyclists who would head straight for you; something else I would have to get used to I suspect. Captain Cook never had that to deal with!

Some of the smaller shrines within the grounds of the main Temple. A really nice mixture of plants, some of which I had never seen before. Not that I'm Alan Titchmarsh and always in the garden that is!

On the Hungary trip earlier in the year I had planned on making a "buddha pest" joke but didn't come across a statue of Buddha until I got to Italy, which was a shame. But here I am at the start of the trip and I'm surrounded by them. I'm not going to stick my finger up this one's nose though.

A couple more mini shrines which just look stunning. This reminded me of the backdrop in those Karate games I played in the 80s.

A shot of the pagoda taken from near the park. It's time to head back as it's due to open.

I told you the tower ride would show me the way back. I'd walked a fair few blocks to get here. If I hadn't fully woken up after the previous night's trek and jet lag then this brisk morning walk had certainly helped.

Hanayashiki

2005-09-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

Hanayashiki is Japan's oldest theme park, having been open since 1853. It originally opened as a flower garden (in fact that is what the name translates to) and because it has a history going back to Feudal times is close to the hearts of those who visit it. I think it's also the smallest park I've ever been to, easily fitting within a single block. It's possible to see across the full width of the park, in fact it was also so quiet that if I wanted to I could get the attention of people on the other side of the park just by shouting at them.

I did have a worry before coming to Japan that I wouldn't be able to fit into the seats due to the average Japanese person having a much smaller frame than me. However it was immediately obvious that this park was tailored to the kids, not the adults. So there was no way I was going to get into rides such as this animal themed one.

The park has a single coaster but it also has some historical significance. Running since 1953, the unimaginatively named "Roller Coaster" is the oldest steel tracked variant in the world. If a park said it had a ride that circled its perimeter you'd think "Wow that must be huge", but alas, with this park being so dinky, the ride is also quite short.

This is actually the first drop on Roller Coaster. Huge, isn't it? The ride was actually quite enjoyable. Sometimes you don't want to be thrown out of your seat all the time and to be honest having a ride that did that wouldn't really fit with the overall vibe of the park. Look at the concentration on Justin's face as he takes an on-ride picture of all those hands in the air. You can tell that although the girls in row two have their hands up, their hearts aren't really into it.

Japan loves it's big wheels. We'd passed several on the way to the hotel and this park had it's own too. This one was quite small but in the confines of a small park still stood out. This wheel also lacked any air conditioning and it was soon apparent why we'd been handed the fans on the way in.

At the top of the wheel you could see out over the immediate vicinity and the grounds and the Asakusa-Kannon Temple stood out like an oasis of calm in another wise busy city... and this wasn't even the built up part of Tokyo. Beyond the pagoda can be seen the Flame D'Or.

I took this shot just so I could figure out the way through the maze when I came to do that later on. When I did eventually do it I was being told that it was a dead end and there was no way through the metal cages in the right hand end. They hadn't figured out you could swing one bar in each set and squeeze through. Well the Japanese could squeeze through, I had to crowbar my way through it.

And what was the prize for completing the maze? An animatronic drops his pants and pees at you. Charming!

Because of it's small size, the rides were crammed in amongst each other. I do prefer parks that do this as being close to another moving ride does add to the overall enjoyment. Whilst it's no Blackpool it still does this very well.

The park used to be owned by nefarious stand-up coaster maker Togo but when the company started to go under it was sold to toy maker Bandai, who were responsible for marketing Pikachu and the other Pokemon animals found around the park. The craze is still quite prevalent but this machine had clearly been targeted at the little kids. I wonder if Thomas is wondering what it would be like to be as popular as the little electricity generating rodent.

In its prime Pokemon made the news not just for its popularity but also because one episode brought on seizures in a large number of viewers. So it seemed a bit odd that the game within Pikachu consisted of watching spinning lights flash increasingly faster and faster.

Interesting Pokemon trivia. Pokemons #109 and #110 were the two that coughed all the time. In the West they're called "Koffing" and "Weezing" but their original Japanese name were "NY" and "LA", a cheeky reference to the smoking culture that runs rife in both cities.

This isn't the wheel we rode, it offered no views over the city. It was the one for the kiddies and vertigo sufferers. The 1892 refers to the year the RiesenRad company was founded, not the year the wheel was made. Kasse is German for tickets so guess where this ride originated.

The large white building in the corner of the park housed a mixture of bizarre walkthrough rides and attractions. Nudity clearly isn't a problem in Japan in the same way it is back home. One of the walkthroughs featured plenty of that as well as bodily functions.

The standout attraction in that mini-complex was this Sound Illusion attraction where you sit in the dark around a nicely themed dinner table listening to to sounds on some headphones. It doesn't sound that exciting when put like that but the idea of only being able to hear really makes this attraction scary, especially when the sound being played considered of ghost children terrorising you with scissors. Proof that you can have immersion without the visuals. I was particularly interested in this because I wrote a paper on Virtual Reality and Sensual Immersion at University that mentioned this kind of trick.

I can only read the first part of this kana but it says "go-o-su-to-no", which is "ghost". The "no" is possessive turning it into "ghost's".

More squishing together of rides and in this shot my first encounter with the Statue of Liberty sitting in the centre of their Rainbow ride. In the west those on the rainbow would be throwing things onto those in the inverted pirate boat ride, but not in Japan where everyone is so much nicer and respectful.

Those of you that have been in Madhouses such as Hex at Alton Towers will know that when done well this attraction, where you think you're spinning around a room, can be very exciting. This 3 Little Pig equivalent was an example of how to do this badly. The room was tiny and spun at such at ridiculous speed that the effect was lost. However the cute pig is much better than the one-eyed Hex Monster.

This was the park's haunted walkthrough, and was extremely tame. It was also quite short being over before you expected it to be. Nice bamboo fencing though and the building was nicely themed even though it wasn't that good.

You might have noticed that this park isn't particularly busy, and that is because it wasn't. Admittedly we were the first in having waited outside for it to open (I wonder how that would have been perceived by the staff to see 100+ westerners waiting for opening time). It also has a feeling that it's never really that busy because of it's location; the locals have probably been to it enough anyway.

Another of the park's dark rides. The whole back wall consisted of panels that moved from side to side revealing various pictures and the occasional monster to scare the kiddies in the queue line.

Say hello to Anpanman, whose name comes from the fact that he is a man with a head made of bread (pan is japanese for "bread") that is filled with bean jam (an). His weakness is water or anything that makes his head dirty. He regains his health and strength when his father bakes him a new head and is placed on his shoulders. He was created when a shooting star landed in his father's oven while he was baking. He has two special attacks called: Anpan-punch and Anpan-kick. When Anpanman comes across a starving creature or person, he lets the unfortunate creature or person eat part of his head.

Who came up with that for a cartoon character and what were they on?

Now here's a fairground game you're not going to get anywhere else. The aim is to put the babies into the green scoop, pull it back, and launch them past the knife wielding monk dude through the hole to safety. Get it wrong and your baby is going to be chopped up!

Remembering the park was originally a garden, the centre of the park contains this really nice Japanese Garden complete with fish pond (full of huge goldfish) and waterfall. Where's the waterfall you cry?

Here it is, what were you expecting? The Niagra falls?

Now these things were a little strange. They're a way of getting around the park; that's right, you ride them. Admittedly they're extremely slow and you'll soon get give up and end up walking. It's nothing I've seen before though and I prefer seeing these to electric wheelchairs that ruined Disney for me.

As a gentle introduction to the trip the park was fine. The thrill rides were to come later. We were at this park for its historical aspect, not its 5* rated rides. As we left the park it started to rain, hopefully this wouldn't spoil our next park, Toshimaen.

Toshimaen

2005-08-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

In Japan when it's raining, parks will not open their external rides, so it was a little disappointing, although not surprising, to find the main attractions closed when we eventually got to Toshimaen. C'est la vie, shit happens. We did try asking the park if they would open them for us after all we didn't come all the way to Japan to look at a park and wouldn't have minded riding in the rain, but rules are rules and the operators weren't prepared to back down, even after threatening them with a chinese burn (or would that be a Japanese burn?).

Not all was lost though, the rides that were enclosed or under cover were open, so whilst most of the group headed to a very old carousel, a few of us went for the ghost train ride, which wasn't scary at all.

The shuttle launched coaster was partly enclosed but not enough to open it, damn. A real shame as it looked like a nice ride too. Enclosed loops, like the one I'd ridden at Aquapark the day before are disorientating at the best of times, it would have been interesting to know how a partly enclosed one ran. The geeky peeps maybe interested to know that this is one of the few fly-wheel shuttle loops left.

The park consisted of the usual rides you would see in most parks, however there was one attraction that I was really looking forward to riding that we don't have in the UK; Giant Pirate Ships, that totally dwarf the ones we're used to.

I know what you're thinking. This isn't it, by the way..

That's it in the background. A real shame it wasn't running, however there was still a chance of riding one as Nagashima Spaland has them too. The ride in the foreground was one of the coasters that seemed to have quite a lengthy track, circling a lot of the park, but it also had these weird horizontal support structures that made it look like the ride was running on several levels.

The only coaster that looks like they ordered too many bits and so made do with the excess supports as best they could. The park opened at the turn of the 20th Century and is split into a theme park and waterpark. It is the waterpark that is most use by the locals though probably because it has the most ridiculous number of slides.

Looks like a plate of spaghetti and there's certainly plenty of fun to have there, well perhaps if the weather was nicer that is. The waterpark was also closed due to the rain, ironic really.

This is Doraemon, a blue cat thing created in 1969 by Hiroshi Fujimoto and is the Japanese equivalent of say, Yogi Bear or Top Cat in the West. Someone who tries to make the most of any situtation that they may find themself in, always laughing and loud. He is the second most popular cartoon character in Japan and is adored by little kids and older people alike. Doraemon is a caricature of what the Japanese male aspires to be; productive and positive. The most popular cartoon character in Japan is Hello Kitty who is so popular she gets her own park rather than just being an attraction in one. We didn't visit that though.

This is the obligatory shot that everyone takes of Corkscrew coasters, namely looking through the eponymous elements. Usually however the picture includes the coaster going through the corkscrew, but alas the weather ensure I wasn't going to do that here.

This is the Carousel that got a lot of enthusiasts excited. On the majority of rides of these type the things you're riding on go at the same speed. This one however had three rings that moved at different speeds so that some riders would overtake others. If you ever wanted to re-enact the scene in Westerns where someone jumps from the horse onto the wagon, you could probably manage it here.

La Qua

La Qua (The First Time)

2005-07-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

Korakuen used to be the most popular theme park in Tokyo, and has always been a hotspot for dating couples primarily because of it's location in the heart of the city and beside the Tokyo Dome, the city's main concert and sporting arena. A few years ago the site was redeveloped and whilst the dome remained, the park went. In it's place was a major shopping development called "La Qua". However the theme park didn't go away, it just took on a new form.

From a distance, two things stand out; the first is the wheel, a massive structure particularly striking because it contains no spokes. The other is Thunder Dolphin, a huge coaster that runs around and through the La Qua complex, and through the centre of the wheel. The rain hadn't let up by the time we got to this park, so the coaster wasn't running. Whilst we could have tolerated the rides at Toshimaen being unaccessible to us, this was gutting.

So I took the opportunity to run around the complex and take some pictures, hoping that I'd get to ride the coaster another time. The wheel is called the "Big O" (nothing to do with orgasms I would imagine) and is the first spokeless wheel in the world. Wheels definitely steal the skyline in Japan, and in the centre of Tokyo this looked great.

The pink and blue building is the main shopping complex in the La Qua complex. The tall building behind it is a block away and houses more shops and a train station that enters the building on the 3rd floor. Fortunately for us very few people were about because of the weather.

Tokyo Dome was opened in 1988, can seat more than 50,000 and is the home stadium of the Yomiuri Giants and Nippon Ham, two professional baseball teams. Concerts, festivals, Sumo bashos and other events are held in the stadium when there are no games. The Tokyo Dome when first built was given the nickname the "Big Egg" but this isn't used so much now.

Part of the complex is under a roof and so it wasn't a complete washout. One thing I like about some of the names for Japanese rides is that they are descriptive and not branded like we have in the West. This one for example is called "Spinning Coaster Mahime" (the final word is a derivation on machine).

Some of the group managed to get it to spin. I however failed miserably. Even though I thought we had the balance correct so that we would spin wildly ours remained pretty much stationary for the duration of the ride. Leaving the coaster despondent it was time to see what else there was to try out.

Bemani (short for "beat mania") games are huge in Japan. These are video games that don't rely on joysticks and buttons but have you playing drums, guitars, dancing, or kung fu in time to a piece of music (I tried them all, the kung fu one was tiring). This industry has started to encroach into the West, the DDR machines being the most common. All of these games seem to be more popular with girls and guys who really should know better. This is "Toy's March" that has you hitting a drum and cymbal in time to the music. Once the girls had finished I had a quick go and it wasn't too bad, however there was another drumming game I would find myself playing more.

This is "Taiko no Tatsujin" or "Wadaiko" and features you hitting a drum in time to the music. The drums (called Wadaikos) themselves are important to Japanese culture and are often used in religious ceremonies. This was to become my favourite game on the trip. It's very straightforward to play, you either hit the drum or the rim in time to the symbols on the page and there is a nice mix of J-Pop, Classical and Western tunes to choose from.

Managing to drag myself from the game it was off to try the other indoor coaster called GeoPanic. This was at the end of a TV studio that was presenting a show aimed at the teenagers. There was a big promotion going on around La Qua for couples. As they did the various attractions they would collect stamps in a book. Once complete they would then bring them back here and could win the chance to appear on the show that was being filmed from this building. I had said earlier that the dating scene was taken very seriously in Japan and it was nice to see this place supporting that. Of course there was a commercial aspect to it as it encouraged people to pay for rides they might not normally go on to impress their prospective partners, but there is no reason why we can't do the same here.

This is the warning sign upon entering Geo-Panic. I particularly like the need to "be brave and let's challenge". There are plenty of websites devoted to Japlish (the mixture of Japanese and English, usually when wrong) and this was my first example on the trip; cute though. I also like the "Good Luck" message at the end, and I wonder what running at the platform entails.

The ride itself was a little rough, primarily because it used optical tricks to fool you into thinking the coaster is about to go one way when it goes another and that you were travelling at various speeds. Anyone who has ridden a coaster in the dark then with the lights on will notice the difference anticipation plays in making a ride smooth. This ride messed with that.

This is Zombie Paradise, another haunted darkride. This one however was hilarious and didn't take itself too seriously at all. My favourite bit was the breakdancing zombie spinning on its back. More parks need to include that, and it was the reason why we went back for another go! Following this attraction I put my Japanese language to the test to ask what time the Ultraman cinema show was going to open. 15 minutes time, so we queued up. It wasn't that good really. We were expecting a 4D movie but got a cinema-180 show.

Venturing back outside and the rain was getting heavier now. This is one end of Linear Gale, the first impulse coaster of its kind in the world. These are the kind of coasters that accelerate you out of the station, send you up a spike then you go back through the station to hit the spike at the other end. Like the shuttle loop at Toshimaen, because some of it was out in the open it wasn't running.

The Linear Gale coaster is at the other end of the Tokyo Dome to La Qua and as well as housing the rides was quite a popular photo opportunity for pictures of the La Qua complex.

Another example of the future technology that Japan has. This sink can dispense soap, water and hot air all at the same time. Why don't we have these here?

The 13 doors was the first haunted walkthrough with live actors that we did on the trip. The scariest attraction of this type I had experienced to date had been at Tibidabo in Spain, which threw midget actors into the mix. I had heard great things about how they do these attractions in Japan so wanted to ensure I tried this out. The first surprise was that it was pitch black and we had penlight torches to show the way. The second was it featured Sadako, the crawling-out-of-the-TV girl from Hideo Nakata's "Ringu" movie. This would become a common theme as the trip went on. I couldn't tell you if it was scary or not as we had to proceed single file through the attraction and I was at the back, which didn't get attacked.

Night was starting to fall now and the crowds had started to arrive at the Dome for a Rock Concert that was taking place there. I can't recall the name of the band but they were extremely popular and talking to some of the locals discovered that they were actually one of the biggest rock outfits in Japan. Unheard of in the UK, there was definitely a huge following here.

The Japanese aren't the tallest people in the world and with it raining there were plenty of umbrellas being used. Now I had to get through this crowd to get back to the coach and just about every umbrella was at the perfect height to hit my throat. 10 minutes later and I had made it through the throng. The Tokyo Dome is actually pressurised, just enough to inflate the roof though.

Here's La Qua at night. The wheel put on a mult-coloured show, the coaster remained a constant blue. It was now time to be heading back, but keen to see more of the city whilst we could we chose to not travel back to the hotel on the coach but to head out west to Shinjuku as it was only a few stops away on the metro.

Shinjuku

2005-06-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

Shinjuku is situated in Western Tokyo and is noted for two things: Firstly it is the most cosmopolitan part of Tokyo, housing huge department stores, bars, nightclubs and places to hang out. Secondly it's also the location of the Shinjuku mainline station, which is the busiest train station in the world with 2 million people using it every day; that's pretty busy. The busiest station in London is Victoria station and that sees a mere 300,000.

We had chosen to visit the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in the Western half of the district as they open the top floors in the evening, so like the Tokyo Tower the previous night we'd be able to see over the city.

Here's more neon found on Higashi Dori, one of the main roads in Shinjuku. The ECC being advertised isn't our coaster club alas but a chain of English Language Schools. These are popular with business men, looking to improve their English and there were several of them in the area because this was where a lot of business men worked.

As we walked along Higashi Dori, we started to notice lots of business men getting ready to sleep rough. It was quite late and they may have missed the last train home, but you wouldn't get this here, so it came as a bit of a shock. Because the crime situation is Japan is nothing like it is here, these guys would be safe so they were safe to do what they were doing. This is why it came as a shock to me I suspect. I didn't think it was right to take pictures which is why there isn't one.

Eventually we made it to the Northern building (there are 2, both of which are open to the public). A swift ride to the top and we were welcomed with an immaculate looking top floor bar, complete with grand piano and posh bar. There were no dating couples here tonight, instead we had a couple of older women who had brought their mothers along for a quiet night out. Alas the views weren't that great, partly because of the grubby windows but also because the main neon-lit districts were only visible from the South Tower, we'd picked the wrong one first. This is the view north towards Ikebukero, which is a shopping district. But with the shops closed at this time of night there wasn't much to see.

This is looking back at Shinkjuku (I think). This was the neonscape I had wanted, it was just a pity I couldn't get even closer! After this we tried to make it to the South Tower but it had already closed. More disturbingly however the entrance plaza was full of more business people getting ready to sleep for the night. No pictures again for the same reason as mentioned earlier, it just didn't feel right, even though I'm sure it was no big deal to the people doing it.

It was now approaching midnight so it was time to return to the hotel. Tomorrow we were off to Disney, and it was going to be a long day and I would be taking a lot more pictures there than I did here.

Tokyo Disneyland

Tokyo Disneyland Park

2005-05-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

A new day but still no let up in the weather. The typhoons that had been hitting the southern island had made their way off the southern coast of the main island. The two Disney parks are situated in Tokyo Bay, close to where the Typhoons were running. However when we got there the park was open and fortunately in our favour the threat of the typhoons getting closer had meant a lot of people had stayed away.

Yes, I know I said it wasn't busy but the park had just opened and everyone had to travel down Main Street to get to the rest of the park. I've been to the Disney parks in Paris, California and Florida so this was number four. It was also the only one with a roof over Main Street. Kammy was playing the part of a guide, but our little group had agreed to head over to the Tomorrowland area first.

Here's the castle with Walt and Mickey in the foreground. This was the biggest photo opportunity in the park and plenty of couples were trying to take pictures here. The problem was that one person had to be behind the camera so the shots ended up being of individuals standing in front. So a couple of us hung around and offered to take pictures of couples for them, which was very well received. Being gaijin (Gai meaning "outside" and jin meaning "person") we also had a couple of requests to pose with the locals too.

The familiar sight of the classic Space Mountain building. Fastpass was in operation but with a 5 minute queue we didn't bother with it and went straight on.

When I first saw the loading bay at the Disneyland, Anaheim park I was blown away with the theming. One second you're in a plain white corridor and the next you're overlooking a beautifully retro themed space station with ship suspended over the station. The same theming and effect was here in Japan and it looked just as good.

The ride operations were superly slick too. Japanese parks don't have gates on their rides because people are so well behaved. This benefits the run times as there is no time spent waiting for them to open and close. All they had here were lanes painted onto the floor. This wouldn't work in the West! Ride makers must love the Japanese market as this is how things should be.

The ride was great, really smooth and pleasant to ride. The US one did feature two tracks where the cars would pass by each other. This ran a single operation but still included a couple of pass bys to break the monotony of riding in the dark on your own. The starfield projected inside the main ride was pretty cool too.

The ride seemed to be winning everybody over. People were laughing and smiling as they returned to the station. Signs that you don't need inversions, 400ft towers and super fast launches to get the reaction. Just make the whole experience enjoyable, something that Disney excel at.

Buzz Lightyear was next on the agenda. It's a dark ride where you shoot targets with little lazer guns. Hit the right ones and you'll reveal additional targets that award more points.

This is the amazing anamatronic that welcomes you to the ride. The range of movements that this went through is vast and I can't figure out how they get the facial movements to happen. The giant etch-a-sketch helps Buzz to explain what you have to do.

Micro Adventure is better known in the West as "Honey I Shrunk the Kids", a 4D cinema show starring Rick Moranis and Eric Idle. I had enjoyed this in America but the Paris experience was awful as they tried to make a bilingual show of it and failed. So it was going to be interesting to see how it worked in Japanese. As it turned out they have a couple of rows of seats fitted with headphones and the original soundtrack; how cool is that? On our way in we were directed to the rows in question.

Here's George modelling the headphones and the glasses required to enjoy the full experience. The girl beside him posed without prompting, it was her reaction to seeing my camera. The V-Sign is a bit of a cliche and is something that the Japanese do a lot in photographs, although no one really knows why. One story I heard that I quite like is that figure skater Janet Lynn fell during the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, but still continued with a smile. Afterwards she flashed the V sign and the Japanese media ate it up.

Grand Circuit Raceway is similar to Autopia in other Disney Parks. The weather put me off giving this a go. In fact the idea of sitting in a wet car in wet weather was putting most people off. I was more interested in finding something unique to ride.

The park's Winnie the Pooh ride was just that! Other Disney parks have a ride themed on the honey loving bear, but this ride is unique and we had been told that this was a must do. So we grabbed a fast pass for later and queued up.

The queue line takes you through the chapters of the book, quite literally infact as you're walking amongst giant pages. In this particular page we're told about the time that Christopher Robin "nailed that ass". Well I thought the hip-hop joke was amusing even if it is actually a donkey.

Looks fairly normal so far with the honey pots themed train in the station. However as they leave the train the individual pots split up and head off in different paths. There is no track but the cars appear to have the path programmed into them. You are taken through a few scenes that tell the story then follow take different paths down a river following the bear who is hanging onto a balloon.

After following the bear, you end up in the Tigger Room where you find your car bouncing in time to the tiger, you then go into a bedroom scene where the entire room turns into a starfield as the bear starts to dream. Very clever stuff.

The dream sequence is just bizarre, as the honey pots all start dancing with each other and with other pots full of other characters. Hard to explain really and even harder to photograph due to the disco lights and spinning pot we were in. A final scene involving a room that smelt of honey and you were back at the station, itching to go on again and try a different pot to see what route they took.

Roger Rabbits was the same as in the US, and whilst it was an enjoyable ride, we only did it the once. There was more fun to be had elsewhere. I was never a big fan of the Toontown part of the park anyway.

This is Gadget's Go-Coaster and this has nothing to do with Inspector Gadget. The ride was alright but the ride staff were really friendly and dead chuffed to see us enjoying their ride.

Pinocchio's Daring Journey was an OK dark ride that I hadn't recalled riding at any of the other parks, probably because I was more focused on other attractions. I wonder if they themed a ride about him on a quest for some milk whether they would call it "Pinocchio's Dairy Journey"?

Sing-a-long now, you know you want to!
It's a world of laughter
A world of tears
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There's so much that we share
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all

There is just one moon
And one golden sun
And a smile means
Friendship to ev'ryone
Though the mountains divide
And the oceans are wide
It's a small world after all

It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small, small world

The song that the phrase "repeat ad nauseum" was invented for.

As part of the preparations for Halloween, The Haunted Mansion was closed to be re-themed. I wasn't that bothered to be honest as I'm not a big fan of the ride, but I do know there were others in the group who were pretty upset at that. The building does look really impressive though.

This is Critter Country, home of the Splash Mountain log flume ride which was just as enjoyable as the ones in the states. I don't recall getting too wet on this one unlike the one in California where we got completely soaked, perhaps because the combined weight of the log was about 60 stones.

Big Thunder Mountain has always been my favourite ride in the Disney Parks, with the one in Paris the best of the bunch. This benefited from having short queues but the ride itself wasn't that great.

Here's the castle and it does look stunning. The group of girls posing at its entrance were celebrating their graduations and Tim decided to run over and join in; camera tart that he is. The castle is usually just theming but in Tokyo they have a guided quest attraction within it. It's quite cute in that they ask a little kid in the group to become a hero and kill a huge animatronic dragon with a magic sword. Cute!

Here's Sleeping Beauty and the Price, odd that they're Westerners and to be honest I thought it a little rude to the locals; but they didn't seem too bothered. I bet the people dressed as rats are Japanese. I don't get why the pretty characters have to be played by people from the West.

Adventureland houses the Jungle Boat Cruise, the Tiki Rooms and the Pirates of the Caribbean Ride. By this point the weather was staring to clear up but the park was still pretty quiet.

The Jungle Boat Cruise is exactly the same as the American equivalents, except for one difference; the stand up routines given by the boat pilots were all in Japanese and we had no idea what was being said. I do know that one joke was aimed at us but I had no idea what was said. We took it on the chin, laughed as if we knew what was being said and admired the statued animals on the ride.

It was clearly too much for some of us. Poor Talhat fell asleep on the tour.

This is the Tiki Room that has had a bit of an overhaul and bringing up-to-date. This attraction full of animatronic birds and statues that sing a series of songs was always very popular but had started to age. In 2004 I experienced the overhaul in Florida and it was very funny with disco lights. The Japanese one had gone for a hip hop theme with the main birds decked out in gold chains and sunglasses. It was very enjoyable.

This is the pre-show built into a Tiki statue. I like bad puns but calling the macaw "2-can" was really awful even by my standards.

The Pirates of the Caribbean ride was pretty rubbish but I'm not a fan anyway, so my opinion is biased. Each of the rides in the Disney Park is sponsored, this one by Kirn Beer. They could have bettered the "2-can" pun by naming this ride "Pirates of the Kirin Beer". At least I didn't fall asleep on this as I have done in the past in California and Paris.

With the parade starting those people that had challenged the weather to come to the park all took their places on the route ready for the floats to pass. Any good enthusiast at this point will choose to hit the rides as the queue times will be even more reduced at this point. So guess where I headed off to? Yep, more goes on Winnie the Pooh.

Another shot of the castle and we spent some time taking more pictures of the couples, and posing with them of course.

As I said earlier the park was getting ready for Halloween and as well as closing the Haunted Mansion they were starting to deploy the pumpkins around the park. I have no idea what happened to the one containing the letter H though. Disney parks are renowned for having "hidden mickeys" hidden in the architecture and theming. I doubt that the centre piece of this would count though, it is a bit obvious.

The infamous statue of Walt and Mickey. A friend Tom, had shown me that if you stand at the right angle, Mickey's nose is at the right height to look like Walt's penis. The same isn't true at this park! Well you have to check these theories out. As if it wasn't obvious, the Disney Corporation was celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Here's the proof, Mickey is a little bit shorter here!

It was time to leave so a final look around Main Street and a chance to say goodbye to the castle, and to get a slightly better shot because the weather had cleared up.

Bye Bye Disneyland. I don't know if or when I'll get to see you again but I hope to meet again on a sunnier day. Actually I take that back because it will be busier, in a way I'm glad it was overcast. I did get on everything I wanted to more than once and the mansion was the only thing closed.

Heading back to the coach now and the monorail came past so I thought I'd take a shot. Look at the modifications on some of those cars, especially the people carrier in the centre. Crazy!!

A little more Japlish found in the car park.

This is the big wheel we passed on the way from the airport to the hotel. It's actually not running anymore and so still stands as an impressive structure to steal the skyline.

The Disney park was pretty much the same as the others around the planet, without the electric chairs and crowds (on this day at least). A near-to-perfect Disney experience as you're ever likely to get.

La Qua

La Qua (The Second Time)

2005-04-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

With the weather having let up and a little bit of time to spare I checked with hotel reception to see if Thunder Dolphin was running. After a little convincing that Thunder Dolphin was a roller coaster and not two words put together at random, the receptionist called the park and we got the confirmation that it was but would be closing soon. Knowing that the Metro was unlikely to let us down, there was still enough time to get up there and ride it.

When we eventually arrived at the station platform we could see that the ride operators were being more efficient than we had seen so far. All loose items had to be put into the lockers including those securely fastened around the waist regardless of whether they were under a jacket or not. They really weren't taking any risks and I guess with a busy city under you there was a high chance of an injured pedestrian should something fall. They also insisted that you queue in the first available seat, the concept of waiting for the front or back seat didn't matter. Some other members had skipped the journey back to the hotel from Disney and made their way up here and were already riding. It looked like they had been trying to position themselves in the right place to get the back seat but kept failing. So it was fortunate that having just joined the queue at random I found myself getting them.

Before the ride departs the station the ride operators put on a little show, which I think was linked to the dating promotion the complex was running. Funny how they can change from being super draconian when you board to super friendly when you leave.

And how was the ride? It's not as exciting as Expedition G-Force (it's sister ride in Germany) but it does have some great views going for it, especially at the top of the first lift hill. Not being stuck behind a piece of reinforced glass as happened at both the Government Offices and Tokyo Tower meant that the view was as pure as you were going to get it, up until the coaster train starts it's descent that is. The course is pretty gentle really, only the first drop having that "whoooooooooa" moment. The dive through the hole in the building comes on the exit to a corner so you don't get the time to appreciate it. Similarly going through the wheel, looks great from the ground, but the wheel is so damn huge it loses impact when you're on the ride. A piece of trick track on the final lap throws you from side to side and looks great if everyone has their hands in the air. There's a lot to be had for having high thrill rides that offer views of the cities they're in, particularly at night when everything is lit up. I was blown away when I rode the Big Shot at the Stratosphere in Vegas, and riding this had a similar effect.

Shinjuku

Shinjuku Again

2005-03-02T03:07:00.000-08:00

With the evening still young after our aside trip to La Qua it was time to go sightseeing again. The nearest entertainment district was Shinjuku, so we decided to go there again. Shinjuku is split into two parts seperated by the main railway line. The Government buildings that we went to the previous night were in the Western half so we decided to go to the more lively Eastern part on this occasion.

Rather than get out of the Metro in the middle of the neon I thought it might be nicer to approach it on foot, and you can see the neon dominating the background here. This also meant that we wouldn't have to deal with the miles of tunnels that Shinjuku station has. If I was going to get lost (and at the station it's certain) I'd prefer to do it a street level.

This is in the centre of Shinjuku with plenty of hustle and bustle, just like Picadilly Circus back home. One of the many metro station can be seen on the right, the curly "m" logo is the clue. There are actually 2 companies that run the network the Metro line, and the Toei line, and it can be a bit confusing if you travel routes that involve changing from one network to another, but like anything you soon get the hang of it.

The complex directly ahead stands on the edge of the railway line and housed eating and shopping places so we chose to explore that for something to eat. The buildings looming behind are the Government ones we ascended previously.

A typical Tokyo street corner haha! The white writing at the top says "sa-ku-ti-y" and is written in the Hiragana character set. Unlike Katakana, which is used for borrowed words, Hiragana is for Japanese only words so as well as being able to read the characters, you also need to know what the Japanese word they spell means; which in this instance I don't. The store actually sold a load of different stuff depending on the floor you were on.

At one of the main public squares in Shinjuku I had the choice of taking a picture of Gap, or Green Peas. I went with the latter obviously. Quite an impressive lighting display I thought, you don't usually see green and red stores like this whereas you see Gaps everywhere. So what do they sell in an establishment with the name "Green Peas" you might be asking, well it's quite obvious really (if your brain is a bit warped and word association is not your strongest ability). Green Peas sells books!

The restaurants in Japan usually have wax models of the meals on display and not being able to read the menus, meant that this was the only way of knowing what each place sold. We eventually decided to do Tempura, which is popular in Japan but actually originated in Portugal. It was the sea-faring traders that introduced it to Japan. In short it's food, usually seafood, cooked in a light breadcrumb. In fact make that an extremely light batter, nothing like we're used to here. The food was superb but Talhat wasn't up for it and disappeared off for something else to eat; I think he ended up with ice cream.

The complex had glass all on the station side, which offered views of the trains coming and going, or in my example having already gone. The trains run less frequently late at night. I did have plans to try to ride trains during both the rush hour, when they get insanely busy (but still run like clockwork) and at the end of the night when the carriages are full of drunk businessmen heading home after a relaxing post-work. It was getting quite late now and it looked liked I'd be doing one of them tonight. Actually it ended up being a bit anti-climatic, when they get drunk Japanese people just fall asleep.

This is Japan's way of telling you to stand clear of closing doors. My reading skills go only as far as the first two characters, "do-a" which is door. But the rest of the message is quite clear from the picture. Curiously enough I didn't notice any pets in Japan at all though whether it be a cat on the train or a dog being taken for a walk in the park. I can only assume that with space being at a premium, it isn't ideal conditions or affordable to keep the animal there.

The final walk from the station to the hotel and I pop into the supermarket to buy something completely at random. Tonight's choice was ready to eat green tea flavoured ice cream. When you do this random russian roulette approach to eating, sometimes you get it right like with the tempura earlier in the evening, other times you get it wrong. On this occasion I got it very wrong and the taste of frozen tea remained with me til the morning.

Tokyo Disneysea

2005-02-01T23:51:00.000-08:00

This was the park where I went postal with my camera and took an absolute load of pictures so I am splitting this up into a number of smaller posts. The park opened in 2001 and is an indication of what a park can look like when money is no problem. Everything in the park is sponsored and Japanese companies invest fortunes into it, and boy does it show. It obviously has a sea theme to it, what with it being on the coast and the park is split into seven themed ports each looking totally different to the other. All benefited from the sea-breeze though, actually make that the tail end of the passing typhoons.

We got there in good time and fortunately the threat of stormy weather appeared to have kept a lot of people away. I had heard some amazing stories about this park but also a few bad ones where the thousands of people in the park meant you would only get on 1 or 2 rides. I was hoping this wasn't going to be the case here. Getting here early would mean that we could rush to the rides and get them out of the way.

When we were finally let in everybody started rushing towards the rides and although I knew I had to do the same I really wanted to just take the theming in. The obligatory globe welcomed us in. I can only assume this was here to show that the water takes up a significant percentage of the planet. But I didn't spend too much time contemplating that, there was a lot more to sea (bad pun, apologies).

This is the entrance into the first themed zone, the Meditteranean harbour and the attention to detail is amazing. It's hard to believe that this is just theming (admittedly they hold shops and restaurants) the domed tower on the right looked particularly realistic.

The walk down main street in any other Disney parks offers a magnificent view of the castle. Not so here, the centrepiece to the park is a smoking Volcano. Beneath it runs the "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" ride, which would end up being our first port of call (I have to stop with the puns!!).

Meditteranean Harbour

Tokyo Disneysea - Meditteranean Harbour

2005-01-01T21:13:00.000-08:00

The first port in the park is the Meditteranean Harbour and contains no rides but a few attractions. The building at the foot of the volcano is the "Fortress Explorations" which is a child play area with a few interactive displays to keep them entertained. Rather than have an Electric Parade and running the risk of all the water shorting things out the park has a water-based parade that takes place here as well as a light show called "BraviSEAmo". Now if Disney can do bad puns then I can too! Two waterborne means of transport also exist in this zone, a paddle steamer that takes you to Lost River Delta and a Venetian themed Gondola ride. Having been to Venice I didn't bother seeing that.

A view from the bridge with the Fortress on the right and in the distance the American Waterfront centrepiece, the ridiculousl huge piece of theming that is the SS Columbia. I don't know if the rocks are real but if they're not then the attention to detail is amazing.

Another shot looking back at the buildings overlooking the water. The church houses one of the main souvenir shops and the Gondolas are based behind it.

Amazing attention to detail in the carvings on this Italian looking building. This is the entrance that offered the volcano view but looking the other way.

I can only assume that these buildings, like those that overlook Main Street in other Disney parks, house the offices of the Disney staff. I bet the balcony at the top offers an amazing view of the shows that take place in the evening. VIP seating perhaps?

Here's the view looking back towards the entrance with all the Meditteranean theming and hundreds of people still pouring into the park. Time to get a move on Malcolm! Journey to the Centre of the Earth isn't too far away.

Mysterious Island

Tokyo Disneysea - Mysterious Island

2004-12-01T20:29:00.000-08:00

In the centre of the park is the Mysterious Island, themed around the workings of Jules Verne. This part of the park features two attractions; The Journey to the Centre of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues under the sea.

This is one of the shops in the area, not just a shop but a really well themed shop! It's a shame that the theming is so strong that you're more inclined to stay on the outside and look at it than walk inside and buy anything. Well that's how I saw it.

Here is the infamous submarine from the Leagues movie. It is just theming however and you can't board it, which is a shame. But when the park was initially designed a 10 year plan was put in place and there is plenty of scope to put new rides in. It could be that in a few years time there will be a ride here that uses it. Actually it turns out that the park already has a submarine themed ride.

Another shot of the shop and Nautilus submarine. The stairs leading down to it don't go anywhere else and are only there for photo opportunities. You really don't mind getting lost in this park!

The walkway around the central lagoon and the ramp opposite is the queue line to the Leagues attraction. Even the queue lines are great here!

This pencil drawn sign on the queue line shows the layout of this part of the park, they've even managed to make this look authentic.

Looking up towards the top of the volcano, the magma pouring down the side of it and a custom built mining arrangement working into the rock face. The cave at the top left is where the cars on the Journey to the Centre of the Earth emerge.

The first attraction of the day was the "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" ride which uses the same ride system as Test Track at Epcot but themed a million times better.

The initial queue takes you to a series of lifts that descend into the body of the Volcano. Actually this is a visual trick; the lift actually takes you up.

On departing the lifts a little more queueing and you're soon boarding the vehicles ready to descend deep into the Earth's core. They've even themed the steam coming out of the pipes that power the ride.

The cars are 6 seater vehicles that hit a top speed of about 40 miles an hour. Because the car is enclosed visability is impaired particularly out the front if you're in rows 2 and 3. However the stuff to look at is all out of the side so nothing much is missed.

The ride takes you past some flora, fauna, animals and rocks, that get stranger and weirder the deeper you go. The staff had no problem with us taking pictures, which was great.

As you get deeper the light starts to diminish and you get the sense that something evil is looming around the corner. The ride has also been continually going down and you know that at some point you have to start going up.

You then turn a corner and if you're on the right-hand side of the car you come face to face with this animatronic monster living at the Earth's core. As it roars at you the car picks up speed and accelerates up and out of the volcano and back to the station. If you're on the left-hand side of the car you get a partial view but the same ride experience (or the else the car would have to split Herbie style). Quite a fun ride and because the queue was very short we ran back and had another go.

This is the queue line to the 20,000 Leagues attraction. The ride is an inverted powered ride which, through some clever visual tricks, gives the illusion of going undersea and exploring its depths. The seating arrangement is a little odd with pairs of people looking out of portholes either side an in the front. You can manipulate searchlights that allow you to explore and interact with the scenery. They have really clevered made the scenery move as if it was underwater and there are some really cool pieces such as the submarine getting a push from some strange mermaid alien creatures who you can't see other than from their shadows out of the side windows.

This was supposed to be a picture of the car, which it is but you're all no doubt looking through the window and wondering why I took a pic of a sleeping kid. Well when I took the picture I couldn't see through the window, the flash did that and I only discovered it when I downloaded the pictures from the camera.

Mermaid Lagoon

Tokyo Disneysea - Mermaid Lagoon

2004-11-01T19:14:00.000-08:00

The third area is themed around The Little Mermaid movie and is another playground for the kids with the majority of the attractions housed in a enclosed area called Triton's Kingdom. I didn't visit this bit as there was nothing for me but those in the group that did visit it said it was really well themed, hardly a surprise to be honest.

Here's another view taken from a short distance away. I think this area is perhaps the smallest of the seven zones but certainly big enough for the kiddies. Triton's Kingdom is in the background beneath that weird sealike architecture. In the foreground is Scuttle's Scooters one of two rides outside the undersea Kingdom.

The other outdoor attraction is "Flounder's Flying Fish Coaster", one of the park's pair of coasters, and the one aimed at the youngsters. Not too bad really but you know what you're getting with these kiddy coasters.

In keeping with the undersea theme, you do get wet as a the ride has a couple of waterjets that spray you. This is the only reason I could think of for including signs banning umbrellas from the ride.

Nothing in this park is put in place without a ton of care and attention given to the theming. You wouldn't get stained glass lampshades within arm's reach at Alton Towers.

Arabian Coast

Tokyo Disneysea - Arabian Coast

2004-10-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

Themed around the Aladdin movie the architectural theming is particularly great in this area. This is the mosque type building that greets you having crossed a bridge from the Mermaid Lagoon. This part of the park houses three attractions; Sindbad's Seven Voyages, The Magic Lamp Theatre, and the Caravan Carousel.

With the crowds off elsewhere this part of the park was very desolate. Now if those two people could have gotten out of my shot I could have said I had the park to myself. Ah well I should really be grateful that the weather was bad, although looking at the sky you wouldn't have thought it.

This is the main square and the entrance ahead leads to The Magic Lamp theatre. This is a 3D cinema with live actors. A chest opened on the stage, when opened releases the genie that is projected above the stage and with the aid of the 3D glasses reaches out over the audience. Not a bad show but Terminator 2 is still a better example of the genre.

This is the carousel, which looks particularly great housed in the building it's in. WIth no-one in shot I can now say that I had the park to myself, although you're not going to believe me now.

No sooner did I have the park to myself then other people decided they wanted it to themselves too. So I left through this archway that joins the main square to the gift shops. The little building on the other side of the arches is one of the shops themed in small area made to look like an Egyptian market.

Here's the rest of the shop area. On the other side is the Sindbad attraction and over to the left is the rainforest that marks the edge of the Lost River Delta area of the park.

Plenty of shade in this area offered some respite from the sun that was starting to emerge. It looks like we had been fortunate with the weather and it was actually becoming quite a nice day. Hopefully it wouldn't get too nice to lead to an onslaught of people; I was loving the park being as empty as it was.

Lost River Delta is in the background. Show this picture to anyone who hasn't seen this report and they'll never guess this is Tokyo.

The Sindbad attraction is the most popular attraction in this part of the park, not that there is much competition here. It's a small world type animatronic kind of ride, which fortunately doesn't contain any nauseating repetitive singing. It tells the tale of Sindbad and his quest to spell his name right; where did that middle "d" come from?

The ride is pretty decent and goes on for quite a bit. The low light levels and me being too scared to use a flash meant that most of the pictures didn't come out as I'd have desired. Here Sindbad is in the claws of some giant bird, and he doesn't seem too bothered by it does he? I guess you're more likely to be picked up in a similar manner if you choose to wear hooded tops. Something Bluewater may want to consider to get rid of the chav yobs that flock to the place.

Lost River Delta

Tokyo Disneysea - Lost River Delta

2004-09-01T17:25:00.000-07:00

This is the bit of the park that is themed around a rainforest with Mayan type temples and a jungle river with trader stalls. The new attraction in the park was Raging Spirits the park's second coaster built within the confines of one of the temples. When we first got to it it wasn't running but time was still spent just taking in the theming.

Not sure where those people were going, maybe they just wanted to make sure they were at the front when it did decide to reopen. It all looks so good you wouldn't bat an eyelid if Indiana Jones came running out of that. But his attraction was further along the path.

The Mayan (or is it Aztec) god standing at the front of Raging Spirits. Getting good pictures of the ride must be quite tricky as a lot of it seems to be buried in amongst the stonework.

When it eventually opened Raging Spirits turned out to be a good ride, but not a great one. The car was a bit shaky and there wasn't much legroom. Even with these problems the ride was still extremely popular and people were re-riding a lot. It is still the best coaster in the park but Disney could do so much better.

As suspected getting a nice photo of the ride was going to be difficult. A mass of metal coupled with a huge arrangement of stone meant that there was always going to be something in the way of the shot such as this tight dive half way around the circuit.

One unblocked shot of the ride, well it is the brake run so not that exciting.

One interesting story that shows how good Japanese ride operations are. One of the group is particularly large and when the ride ops saw him join the queue, they marched him to the front to see if he'd fit. It took 10 minutes to get the harness down but they did manage it and he got his ride. No one in the queue line complained however. This girl would be waving and cheering all day, you wouldn't get that at Thorpe Park!

At the heart of the structure is the loop which is extremely tight and quite intense when you get on it. As rides go it is definitely the best the park has but it's still not great.

This is perhaps my best shot, taken in the exit line by the front of the attraction. The car comes flying through a wall of smoke as it travels under the stone God shown earlier.

From Raging Spirits it's a short walk down towards the Indiana Jones ride but along the way you can take in the views. Here the jungle camp has taken post in the grounds of the temple. This is actually the back wall of the park and you can't get anywhere near it.

One of the small trading stalls selling merchandise and snacks. My language skills had progressed to being able to specify large or small drinks. "Ookii" is large and "Chisaii" means small. The girls behind the stall gave me a little round of applause for being able to order in Japanese. The temple in the background is part of the Indy Jones ride. This was also closed so we had to head off elsewhere.

Some of the themed areas are seperated by the others by bridges, in much the same way that they do at Islands of Adventure. This part of the park however uses the river as its central attraction with the boat ride back to the Meditteranean area. This area is effectively split into two with the theme rides to the right of this shot behind the trees and restaurants, more stalls and the Mystic Rhythms to the left.

I'm not sure it was due to the weather, the lack of people in the park, or the time of day but no-one seemed to be using the river boats. A shame as they would take you through bits of the park that you can't access on foot, unless you're Jesus and can pull off the walking on water trick.

The walk along the shop area. I think the restaurant is on the left :D The weather was definitely getting a lot better now. We had been extremely fortunate today.

The Mystic Rhythms show housed in the Hangar Stage complex was stunning. A great mix of acrobatics, music and stuntwork that is as classy as a Cirque de Soleil show and was filled to capacity even though the park was quiet. Plenty of staff were around to welcome you to the show.

More over the top theming. I'll let you decide whether or not the food is fresh. Put this in any park in the UK and you can be assured they'd be ripped open and the contents thrown about. Theme park designers must love Japan because there is no vandal culture that we have in the West. This allows them to do everything they could ever want, and with the lack of financial constraint that this park has the park is allowed to look as detailed as it is.

The Indiana Jones ride opened later in the day and for those who have been on the Indiana Jones ride in California, this is the same thing, but with a slightly different name and different theming on the ride.

The problem was that when it did open, everyone rushed to it. We were able to benefit from the fastpass for a ride later but still decided to face the queue line so we could get another go. Our decision to queue was also helped by a downpour of rain that came from nowhere, actually it came from the clouds as normal.

The line takes you through a very well themed temple. Here it all becomes a bit too much for Tim and he became quite emotional. When you got bored with the sights, you could always try chatting to the Japanese, if they weren't too shy to respond that is. The ride itself is a lot of fun, just like it's American counterpart.

It's extremely scary though!

Port Discovery

Tokyo Disneysea - Port Discovery

2004-08-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

The part of the park protected from the sea by the defence wall in the background. This is the futuristic themed area and contains a few attractions. On the right is the Centre for Weather Control, a simulator ride through a typhoon (eery, that given the current weather warning). On the left is Aquatopia, a small water based ride.

There is also a train ride that takes you to the American Waterfront part of the park. This is the station on the right. It overlooks the main rides area.

The Weather Control Centre is a pair of simulator rides that start out like any other. The story is around two planes chosen to fly into the eye of a storm. As you do so the weather starts to smash the craft you're flying in apart. Water comes pouring in and pieces of machinery start smashing through the walls. What started out as just a standard simulator became something so much more. The wettest ride in the park by a long long way. Don't take pictures during the pre-show, I got told off.

Another example of Japlish. This T-Shirt says "We learn that it's better to be rational do feel anything they're not likely. Let you know stereotype of the English"
I have no idea what message it is trying to explain, but stuff like this can't help any Japanese people trying to speak English when they travel to the UK.

The Weather Centre as seen from the Aquatopia queue line. A lot of the detail here is superfluous but is only there for effect. Can you imagine how the theming meetings must have gone. "I want an endless number of radar dishes", "done". "I'd like bits of metal sticking out in random directions", "done". "Aerials, we must have aerials", "done". It's like the guy who gives the OK for everything is Jimmy Saville.

Another shot of the complex this time taken from the train station. I think we were extremely fortunate with how empty this park had been. This place must look horrendous when it is busy.

The statue on the right is the logo for Port Discovery and in the background is the volcano. The winds were starting to pick up a little but it was still a nice day.

Welcome to Port Discovery! The Disney Ears were very popular with the Japanese Girls with Minnie ones being the favourite. The most odd looking ones would have to have been the Stitch ones.

This is the walkway leading from Port Discovery back into the Volcano and the Mysterious Island part of the park. Notice the complete absence of Electric Chairs in this park. I love this place! Actually this is an area in which the cultures differ perhaps in a bad way. Theme parks here typically don't cater to disabled or lazy people, partly because of there being no litigatious environment where anyone felt hard done by can threaten to sue. More disturbingly though disabled people don't integrate into society as much as they do in the West.

Perhaps the most ridiculously themed toilets ever, but in a good way. You're certainly not going to miss finding these should nature call. I wonder where the waste goes.

Well fortunately it doesn't go into the water directly behind the toilets. If it did this water burst must have been due to someone with really bad gas. The small paddle like fans on the weather vane double as oars for tall people should they wish to go boating on the water, although they wouldn't want to do it with whoever it was on the toilet when I took this. (This is all made up)

Aquatopia has two circuits; the wet course to the left and the regular course to the right. I decided to try the former thinking it would be the more exciting of the two. I'd already gotten pretty wet on the simulator ride so it would be interesting to see how this compared.

I took this picutre in the queue line not because of the theming, nor the magnificent print on the back wall, but for the T-shirt that the girl was wearing. Clearly a play on the Burger King logos of the 80s this one read "bugger heck". I'm certain she had no idea what it said, which made it even more curious.

OK, Here's a little bit of the picture mentioned previously. The detail in this is stunning and whilst clearly a celebration of future transport systems it had a nice Final Fantasy look to it.

Each car sits three Japanese or two Western people and uses the same system as the Winnie Pooh ride in the other Disney Park. The cars don't run on rails but instead follow a preprogrammed route, although these ones seemed to be assisted by clearly visible lines just beneath the inch of water that the cars travel through. This gives the freedom to allow the cars to dance around each other and in this case fountains and whirlpools too.

As it turns out it would have made no difference which circuit we tried. The weather had meant that the additional water effects, such as the waterfall at the back here, had been turned off. The two cars in the foreground were actually waiting to return to the station, but rather than just stop, the ride keeps you moving around until a space is available for a car to take.

Taken from the train leaving for the American Waterfront you can see the Aquatopia cars doing their dance and the whirlpool that you spin around at the middle point in the ride.

The best theming in a park I'd visited prior to this one was Universal Studio's Islands of Adventure in Orlando Florida. It's signature monument is the lighthouse that stands outside its entrance. Being a sea themed park I'd have thought there would have been a superb lighthouse, but this was the only one I could find. Whilst not as grand as the IOA one it still looked pretty good.

American Waterfront

Tokyo Disneysea - American Waterfront

2004-07-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

The final zone in the park is also one of the better themed ones but it lacks any attractions worth visiting it for. Themed around New York at the start of the 20th Century it contains docks and seaside warehouses that wouldn't look out of place in Titanic or Gangs of New York.

Speaking of the Titanic, the centre piece is the SS Columbia, an actual ship that currently contains only a posh restaurant. When I said that the park has a 10 year plan, this was one example of constructed space that can be used to house a ride in the future. It would be perfect for a Haunted Swing type attraction themed around the ship capsizing. In effect they also have a hotel here, maybe that will happen in years to come.

The pierside buildings house a number of stores and restaurants. They also offer a vantage point to a couple of shows that take place here during and at the end of the day. As it happened those shows ended up being cancelled due to the weather.

The train line from Port Discovery brings you in at roof height to the buildings in this area. It's nice given the number of billboards themed here. If you entered at ground level you'd be less inclined to notice this.

Construction was under way on the park's attraction for 2006/7. Tower of Terror is already up and running in both California and Orlando. In 2007 France will open their's. This one is due to open soon. It does have a lot more theming than any of the others so I imagine it'll take some time to open. To be honest I don't think this attraction will fit with the rest of the park. It's almost as tall as the volcano and so will eat the skyline, which is currently dominated by that.

One of the eating establishments in this area, with some of the group trying to decide what to eat. I was quite happy just taking in the sights, although the thought had entered my mind to try to hijack the taxi and take it for a joyride. I chickened out though when I saw how little legroom there was.

For that authentic American theming you have to include a shoe shine stand, don't you? Good to know that Harry is always going to be about should you need to have anything buffed.

The steamship warehouse housed another restaurant. Boy, those American people sure eat a lot, huh!

More theming just for the sake of theming, although this propellor did seem to be a popular meeting point, perhaps because the raised platform offered a fairly good view of the area.

[picture comes from www.clydesite.co.uk]

The SS Columbia was actually built in a shipyard on the River Clyde in Scotland near where I was born. It completed building in 1902 and sailed regularly between Glasgow and New York. In 1929 it ended up in Venice where it was eventually scrapped.

If they used that as inspiration for this they did a pretty good job. Other than the smoke stacks being angled it looks pretty close.

It was nearly time to head back to the coach, fortunately I wasn't too far away with the Meditteranean area clearly in the background. If you were done eating in all the eating places here, a little snack stand offered a final temptation.

Overall, the park was great, and is easily the best "themed" park that I've ever come across. It does however lack rides that make it a truly world class park. Tokyo Disneysea is however still a very young park and it has a great footing on which to build a better and better park. To be honest if I was here when it was busy I would be happy with taking in the scenery and detail. A park for photography fans as well as the theme park ones.

Journey back to the hotel

2004-06-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

Not much to report here really other than I was at the front of the coach and got some pictures of the roadways and a truly amazing sunset. The high banked walls on the expressway definitely have a "Ridge Racer" vibe about them. The wheel on the left is in Odaiba and as the sun goes down it begins its light show that runs all night.

Red sky at night, photographer's delight. How stunning is this sky? This bridge is the Rainbow Bridge, quite appropriate given the colours in the sky. It is a little under a kilometre in length and crosses Tokyo Harbour. The top level is for the expressway with a smaller road, train line, and footpath running beneath it.

Ginza

Ginza District

2004-05-31T02:57:00.000-07:00

Another evening free to do as we chose and I wanted to go and visit the Ginza district in the East of the city, but before we left it was time for more random food to try and on this occasion I'd gone for some shrink wrapped squid tentacles. Keith doesn't think too much of his tentacle.

I thought they were a bit too salty but I still ate them, after I'd finished posing with them that is. The one escaping from my nostril was the only one not to be eaten, for obvious reason. I think that one ended up being thrown at Keith. I just realised I did get photos of the pillow assortment after all, you can see them in the background. The dark one is the "snore breaker" heavy monster.

One of the many rather amusing posters on the Metro with muppet characters telling passengers to keep the music down. I was wondering if this was a problem with tourists to the area as I wasn't aware of any locals doing this and I suspect the English wording was aimed at the real culprits.

The main reason for visiting Ginza was to see the Godzilla statue there. When we got out of the nearest station, I asked a girl handing out flyers to a karaoke bar where the statue was. She didn't tell me where it was, she walked me to it. How friendly was that! The statue was actually smaller than expected, a part of me would have loved to have seen a full size recreation, haha!

Created in 1954 by Toho Co. Ltd, the giant lizard has starred in over 20 films and destroyed Tokyo way before the Power Rangers did the same thing. In fact the site of the statue was chosen because Yurakucho Railway bridge nearby was crushed by his big reptile feet on more than one occasion. The creation of Godzilla is linked to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War 2. It's radioactive anger an indirect comment on the risks prevalent with large scale nuclear devices being used against mankind.

The Ginza district is home to the rich designer shops that a lot of people can't afford to shop at and they'll visit the area to window shop. Historically the district's exclusivity came from it being the first area to replace wood with red brick, the belief being that this would offer greater security from earthquakes (not true as they realised some time later). At night it's another neon lit district. It's also on the edge of the main city park in which the Imperial Palace is situated, another reason to visit the area.

One of the main roads on the edge of the park with the Tokyo Tower in the background. The darkness to the left was the first sign that I might not be able to get to the Palace, I had no way of seeing where it was as unlike other cities it's not spotlit at night.

In fact it sooned turned out that the palace closes at 5pm and there was no way I was going to get to see it at all, especially not at 11 at night. In fact in attempting to walk to it we had somehow managed to get past the first line of security being eventually stopped by a guard further in. Oops. So with that particularly mission failing miserably I took the opportunity to get some night shots of the city.

This corner tower was the only part of the palace that was lit, but barely just. Poor Keith at this point was starting to flag, I guess all the walking in the park and then me dragging him about Tokyo all night had taken it's toll on him.

Tokyo isn't as insular as the West perceived, this poster for an art exhibition shows that the borders are open. I have no idea what the exhibition would entail but I suspect German Fairs wouldn't be part of it. The first two characters in the kana are the symbols for ni and hon (Japan) and the final three spell do-i-tsu which is the Japanese way of saying Deutsche, or Germany.

Another example of cartoon characters being used in public service communications. I think this one was going on about the construction work taking place around the corner. The yellow imp thing on the other poster is the logo for the police force.

This is Japanese roadworks taking the piss out of the rest of the world. These guys were working through the night to get the road repairs done, and you can be assured there wouldn't be anything left in the morning when the rush hour starts. This was outside Tokyo train station, another major station in the city and if these roadworks were still there the next day it would be pandemonium.

This is Tokyo station, although it looks uncanningly like the town hall from Back to the Future. With the traffic being as congested as it was, even at midnight, there is no way you'd get a DeLorean reaching 57 outside here.

Deciding to get something to eat we stumbled upon this establishment where everyone gets their own cave in which to cook their own food, like a little barbecue. This was a lot of fun, even if all the chef had to do is cut the meat. I ended up spending time with the waiting staff here learning how to order in Japanese. They in turn practised their English with me. You can guess as to who's was better!

It was now getting late and the decision was to head back into Ginza to get the train home. Along the way we passed this place that seem to contain electronics from every company you could ever think of.

No idea what this was advertising but it must have been some long running promotion. The character next to the 2005 represents "year", the one next to the 3 represents "month" (it's the symbol for the moon) and the the one next to the 25 represents "day" (it's the symbol for the sun).

At the end of the building was this huge video wall running a series of commericals. It was quite odd that this building was away from the main lit up area but didn't seem to matter. Well I guess I saw it, shame I was unlikely to buy anything being advertised however. This is actually the bic building which caused an uproar when it became the first building to sell cheap goods in what is an otherwise affluent area.

One of my favourite pictures of the trip showing a smaller street in the Ginza district still littered with neon, and the immaculately polished taxis reflecting the lights.

It was Keith that spotted this near to the Ginza Dori. I never had a Sega Dreamcast so didn't ever play Jet Set Radio, although it did look pretty good. Apparently this clock sculpture is in the game.

The main junction in Ginza and home to all the best shops in the area. This area becomes overrun with pedestrians on weekend, so bad in fact that they close the roads to traffic. This is also one of those junctions where you see diagonal zebra crossings, something that is always associated with Tokyo.

One of the main corporations based in Ginza is Sony, who have their main retail outlet here. This 8 storey building (which looks like it should have more) contains massive arcade halls and the opportunity to try all the machines, although I suspect a Playstation 3 wouldn't have been ready when we were there. Alas the building was closed so we didn't get to go in and find out, so we headed back to the hotel.

Yoyogi Park

2004-04-01T02:09:00.000-08:00

Yoyogi Park is one of the main parks in Tokyo and I wanted to visit it to see two things; the Meiji Shrine and the Harajuku crossing. With the itinerary sending us to Yomiuriland I decided to do some sight-seeing first thing in the morning.

So I got up at the crack of dawn and made my way to Shirokanedai station. I took this picture for two main reasons; firstly to show how clean the station is but more importantly to show the ridiculous hour that I was up at. A short train ride and I was at Harajuku station.

Exiting the station and I was faced with this monstrosity of a shop. I guess if you ever wanted to visit a place with more Snoopy merchandising than you could ever want, under one roof, then this is clearly the place to go to. It was about 5.30 in the morning and there was no way it was going to be open at this time.

In the centre of Yoyogi park is the Meiji Shrine and marking it's entrance is the largest torii gate in Japan standing 11 metres tall and constructed from 1600 year old trees imported from Taiwan. The guy walking beneath it would be returning from morning prayers.

Following the path through the gate and you soon arrive at the main compound. The prayer ritual involves people washing their hands and mouths before entering the main shrine. The little building to the left contained the water with which to do that.

Another torii gate leading to the centre of the compound. Whilst impressive it is nothing compared to the one that I walked through earlier.

This is the centre of the compound. The tree in the corner contains hundreds of individually written prayers, the monks remove on a daily basis and take into the main shrine. I am unsure what they do with them once they have them there, but I'm sure it's good.

This is the Odaiko (big drum) found within the shrine. I think during some of the rituals drums like these will be beaten by the monks. It must be pretty physical; imagine how big the sticks have to be if the drum is this big, and they'd have to swing them from behind their backs and over their heads. It makes you wonder how good the monks would be at the bemani version of the game I'd played a few days earlier at La Qua.

This is the actual shrine itself and is dedicated to Emperor Meiji, who reigned between 1860 and 1912. Opened in 1920 it is used as shrine and not a tourist attraction, which is great! Shinto weddings take place here throughout the year and at New Year crowds can hit a million as people come here to celebrate. I'm glad I managed to take pictures that show the solace, rather than the herd.

This is the gate you pass through to reach the main shrine. Brings back memories of all the Kung Fu games I played as a kid; IK+, Way of the Exploding Fist and Yie Ar Kung Fu. At this point I had seen all I wanted to see of the shrine, again taking no pictures inside the temple itself.

Knowing that the crowds can become huge I fully understand why the paths are so wide. This is the walk back to the main torii gate and the Harajuku crossing that I had also wanted to see.

And here it is, not very exciting admittedly. If I had been here on Sunday this place would have been full of Japanese kids dressed in ridiculous outfits dancing to techno music and just showing the extroverted side to their otherwise restrained personality.

This is what I might have seen had I not been flying into the country on Sunday. Picture courtesy of another website where someone else was able to make it here

Before opening to the public Yoyogi Park was used by the US Military to house their troops then in 1964 it became the Olympic Village, the stadium not too far away (but too far for me to walk to on this occasion). The architecture around the park was littered with references to the Olympics, I couldn't find any reference to it's former use though.

A strange no-smoking sign painted onto the floor near Harajuku. You're not allowed to smoke cigarettes bigger than you I guess.

This is the one Olympic building I could see from the little bit of Yoyogi I walked about. This wonderful structure houses the main Gymnasium in the city. When not housing tumblers and vaulters, the venue is also used as an ice hockey stadium.

The large structure here is Roppongi Tower, in the heart of the Ex-Pat playground that is Roppongi Hills. This building is designed to be a city in a building containing living, shopping, eating and entertainment places all under within a single complex. Opened in 2003 the complex has 100,000 visitors per day rising to around 3 times that at the weekend. I didn't add to that number as I stayed away from that area completely.

Roppongi Tower dominates the skyline to the South, to the North the Sunshine 60 building in the Ikebukuro district does the same. This building has one of the fastest lifts in the city taking you to the top floor in a little over 30 seconds. I didn't actually visit this place as it was quite far out. Toshimaen is nearby however, so I did visit the area.

Here is another shot of the Harajuku crossing with the park in the background and the Meiji Shrine hidden off to the right. The bridge crosses the trainline I had travelled in on and was just about to ride on to Shinagawa, another place I wanted to visit.

Shibuya

2004-03-01T01:18:00.000-08:00

A stop down the line is Shibuya, another centre of pop culture and entertainment. If you could imagine Picadilly Circus times 100 and tailored to teenagers and young adults then you have this place. I would have liked to walk around this place at night and see the neon lights, but it wasn't to be. An early morning jaunt and opportunity to see the place during daylight hours, albeit early ones, was all I was going to get.

Just about every building here has a crazy mix of super sized video screens, crazy architecture, over the top signage, and of course the neon.

The Shibuya crossing is one of the busiest in the world, look there are at least 10 people using that crossing at the same time. If I was here at the weekend you would be hard pushed to see any of the road surface for all the people that mill around here.

This is another department store situated above another station; one of the many entrances to Shibuya station is in the left had corner. Women do have a submissive role in Japan but as in the West a big picture of a nice looking woman will sell more than one of a man. These are advertising make-up and don't really prove my point, but then there weren't many around here with men on them, so perhaps I did prove it after all.

This area is one of the hottest areas for targeting products to Tokyo's youngsters. When I was there the big title being advertised was the Final Fantasy VII relaunch for the PS2 and there were huge posters on the buildings in this area.

[edit] I've since been made aware that it's not the game but a movie that is being advertised here.

Role Playing games are huge in Japan and the Final Fantasy series has been one of the most successful to date. It was Final Fantasy VII in its original guise on Playstation 1 that broke the genre in the West and went on to be one of the biggest selling games worldwide. I don't know if it was a case of running out of ideas or wanting to do justice to the original game that had steered Squaresoft to releasing this.

The main road heading west of Shibuya is Dogenzaka and as you walk along this road the shops become crazier and crazier, ending up with the massive department store at the 109 building. When I took this picture I think it was half six in the morning.

An attempt at an arty shot reflecting a poster in a building who's frontage consisted of large mirrored panels.

This is Hachiko, a dog who walked to Shibuya every day to meet his owner a the end of every day. When the owner died, the dog continued to travel to the station for seven years before finally dying itself. The dog's loyalty became legendary and in honour of it they made unveiled the statue and it is now the most popular meeting place in Tokyo.

This wall marks one border of Hachiko square. Oddly enough I managed to miss all of this until I returned to the station to head back to hotel. Maybe I was distracted by all the crazy signs opposite it.

One of the things I was hoping to see a lot of in Japan was western actors advertising odd products. In the hotel I had seen Santori Whisky, the brand that Bill Murray advertises in "Lost in Translation" (coincidentally the Starbucks that Scarlet Johansson drinks at was here in Shibuya), and before coming out I saw ones featuring the Beckhams and Arnold Schwarzenegger. However the only one I came across was this advert for Canon video cameras using tennis star Maria Sharapova.

On the way back I managed to take this picture of a penguin running off with some woman's shopping. Actually I didn't, it's a poster telling you that you can get through the Metro quickly if you use Suica, one of the companies that sell travelcard type passes for the train network. I did enjoy showing this to people on the coach and watching their expression as they tried to figure out what was going on!

A last opportunity to purchase my random foods for the day, and on this occasion I went for apple jelly and vanilla ice cream, both in easy to eat astronaut pouches. Both of these were better than the green tea I had the day before, the vanilla taking the edge. The characters at the bottom left of the right hand pouch spell "ra-ku-to-i-su" which is probably lactose. The three around the flower at the top left spell "ba-ni-ra" which is actually vanilla.

Yomiuriland

2004-02-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

Yomiuriland lies in the South-Western corner of Tokyo and was a fair drive away from the hotel, so an early start was in order. Having already been up for 3 hours before hand this wasn't a problem for me and it was nice to be on the coach bright and alert whilst everyone else was still waking up. Nothing worse than having to share a coach with someone hyper when you're still coming to your senses.

This is the Sunshine 60 building in Ikebukuro that I took a picture of earlier in the day. Now this is in the North of Tokyo and we're supposed to be heading South. What is going on? Maybe the express way is convuluted, perhaps the coach driver was taking the scenic route, or most likely I'd got my facts wrong.

As it turns out, it's not the sunshine 60 building at all but the NTT DoCoMo Yoyogi Completed in 2000 it reaches a height of 240 metres and is very environment friendly, being solar powered, using rain water for the toilets and having a large number of recycling facilities within it's structure. A clock was added to the building in 2002 making it the tallest clock in the world. At night time the upper portion of the building contains lights that indicate whether you need to carry an umbrella or not which also makes it the largest electronic umbrella guide in the world.

Here we are at Yomiuriland (I read the Japanese under the English, honest). I think the Barbaparpa shape on the left indicates the boundaries of the park. The white dog with the painted lines on him is Landog, the park mascot. Perhaps the coolest looking park mascot of the trip. If you stepped away from the entrance building you were offered great views of the 2 main coasters in the park.

To the right is White Canyon, the park's wooden coaster and the one I wanted to try first. I love coasters that dominate the skyline like this; it certainly looks impressive. I only hope it rides as well. We could hear this one having it's test runs.

To the left is The Bandit, the park's hypercoaster painted in a rather garish rust colour which made it look older and more unsafe than it probably is. Great looking helix though. There were no signs of activity from this ride however, would it be down? I certainly hoped not. Landog shows us his arse as we make our way into the park.

Once we're in the park, a few of us head over to the woodie at the back. The credit counters though were pulled towards the kiddy coaster so we left them there. The park operators must have thought they were all really weird. Note I say "they" and not "we", there was no way I was going to join the queue for the kiddy ride when the park was empty. I wondered what kind of view the cable car would offer us so I threw my camera up to the people in it and asked them to take a shot.

and here it is, a very basic layout indeed and wow that queue of people has gone already. The operations at this park sure know how to run their rides here!

Aha! More of those animal riding things that they had at Hanayashiki and these ones have been themed Landog style. It's just a shame that they ride so slowly. If they had a bit of speed they'd be much more fun and I would be able to get to in front of those people up ahead.

This is a weird coaster as it rides differently depending on what side of the station you're on. Now I had said that I wanted to ride the wooden coaster first however the ride ops were playing some banging trance tunes so I was pulled towards this instead.

Board from the left and you're in a stand up car, board from the right and you're sitting down. A piece of transfer track switches the ride from one to the other. I tried the sit down first then the stand up and whilst waiting for my go I, and a few others were dancing in the queue line. Sure beats just standing still!

Another shot of Bandit taken from the Momonga queue line, and the ride is finally up and running. Woohoo!!! But I'm over this side of the park now so I'll head over there later, beside those credit counters on the kiddy coaster will be flocking to it in their droves.

Here's White Canyon and what the hell have they done to the trains, why do they have rollbars? Bandit is painted to look like it might fall apart, this ride gives the impression that at some point it did fall apart and the rollbars were added to prevent a repeat. Actually I loved this ride, especially from the front; although the cars were constrictive they brought in a more focused view of the track. It wasn't Balder smooth by any means and it did have a little bit of the Gwazi 50 pence piece wheels about it but it was enjoyable.

Heading over towards Bandit now and as another cable car passes over head I wonder what the park looks like from up there so I threw my camera up to the people in it and asked them to take a shot.

This is the shot they took, pretty good huh! White Canyon is in the background and you can see the route Bandit took through the park. The white track in the foreground is the SL Coaster which was going to become the highlight of the day.

And here it is, the SL coaster. I have no idea what the SL stands for and I couldn't think up anything witty at the time of writing either. You might have noticed that there is hardly anyone in the park (apart from 100+ stupid enthusiasts). This park was dead, who needs Exclusive Ride Sessions when you have the entire park to yourselves?

On first look, you'd think this ride wasn't suitable for ducks but what it is actually saying is that it's not suitable for children. This park is visited by school kids, in fact there was a group of little 'uns in their uniforms elsewhere in the park. Look at how Landog has his head hanging as if to apologise. Awwwwww!

Here's a picture of SL in action. It is strange, and memorable for several reasons. Firstly it has the lift hill towards the end of the ride, seperated from the station by a final helix; secondly it has trim brakes just after the first drop.

Finally at this point it had a piece of bamboo growing out over the track that sprung off the loco at the front of the train and would whip whoever was in row two in the face. Now the sadist in me was loving this and I encouraged as many people as I could to ride in that seat.

Another cable car passed overhead so I threw up my camera and asked them to take a picture of this great ride.

Nice job, cameraman in the cable car man. Now can I have my camera back!

When I got to ride Bandit I actually found it disappointing. Maybe spoilt by the likes of Thunder Dolphin I expected more from this ride. There were too many straight bits for my liking. Admittedly the ride is almost 20 years old, having opened in 1988 so I shouldn't be so critical. The helix was good though, very intense and one girl in our train had to be carried off the ride by her boyfriend to recover. One downside to the park operations I noticed was that when Bandit went down later in the day the ride op walked around with a sign around her neck saying the ride was down. Great to inform the customer but it was boiling hot in the afternoon and whilst just walking around in the uniform would be bad enough, having the indignity of carrying a sign must have made it much worse. She didn't seem to mind though.

The cable car takes you to the main train station. Having come in by coach we didn't really benefit from this mode of transport, so a couple of us chose to ride it to the station and back to get some pictures of the park. This is some pagoda type building in the vicinity.

At the top of the cable car lift overlooking Tokyo, it's hard to appreciate the size of this city but it's going as far back as the eye can see and then some.

Here's Landog with the big wheel acting as a halo and making him more angelic, a really nice park mascot. It's now time to leave the park and head elsewhere. Some div in the group who had plans to go somewhere else started spreading rumours that we were to leave an hour earlier than initially told. Another person chose to steal some wristbands meaning the organisers had to pay for more. Some of these American members are a little bizarre!

La Qua

La Qua (The Third and Final Time)

2004-01-03T01:33:00.000-08:00

Because the group had failed to ride Thunder Dolphin due to bad weather the itinerary was shuffled about and some room was made available with which to revisit the park and get the rides in. Having already been on it I chose to take some pictures and ride the other rides I hadn't been on yet.

Here's Thunder Dolphin diving through the La Qua building. The ride definitely seems to be well received by those on it.

The ride going through the wheel. As I mentioned in my previous report you don't really appreciate this due to the size of the wheel.

One of the spikes from Linear Gale with the wheel and Thunder Dolphin in the background.

Linear Gale was the first impulse coaster ever built and coincidentally the first I'd ridden. How did it ride? It wasn't great to be honest but then it was the prototype and the concept has gotten better since.

At the far end of the park is a parachute ride from which I thought it would be a great place to take some pictures.

Not only was I allowed to take the camera onto the ride but I was also allowed to choose the pod to ride in. Nice one! Just a shame the ride seemed to be experiencing down time, or the station staff had lengthened the pre-departure dance. The train was nowhere in sight.

Linear Gale overlooking the main road. You have to love inner city parks. Why can't we have one in London?

Still had a bit of time to kill so I ran over to other side of the park to get some pictures of the dolphin, if it was running. You can see from this pic of the second hill that it did reopen, albeit briefly.

To get this picture me and another basically gate crashed a swanky restaurant on the top floor of the La Qua complex. Given the time of day I don't think the staff minded us running in and asking to take a picture of the ride but there was no way we could have done this at night. So we took the position and waited and waited and waited and waited. The ride wasn't running again and we didn't want to overstay our welcome so we took the picture of just the track and left. But the impending sunset made it worthwhile I guess.

And just as we leave the ride starts up again, so here's a shot of the train on the hill. A little bit of a frustrating couple of hours but I got good pictures which was the main thing I'd wanted.

Joypolis

2003-12-03T03:39:00.000-08:00

In the evening the group went to Odaiba a man-made island in the South of Tokyo halfway between the hotel and the Disney parks. Sega's arcade park Joypolis is situated in the middle of it in the Decks complex.

There is one coaster here called, yes you've guessed it, "Speed Boarder". It's supposedly themed around a surfing ride with little camel backs representing the waves. What is particularly odd about this ride is that for most of it you travel in a sideways direction as a surfer does on their board. It's actually quite strange to be honest and I guess can be compared to those mouse coasters but stick part way around turning. One cool bit though is when you find yourself going through a room with a superb view over Tokyo. Just a shame we weren't allowed to take cameras on board. This place had a ridiculous list of rules that prevented just about everybody from riding. The complex had recently re-opened after someone died on one of their rides (the hang gliding one I think) so I guess all the rules were being enforced to prevent a repeat.

With just the one coaster, the rest of the place is filled with simulator rides, arcade games and some walkthrough rides. The best was this skateboarding game called Half Pipe canyon where 4 teams of two battle to see who can do the most spins at the top of the pipe. You do this by rocking the board that you're standing on as you pass through the bottom of the pipe.

Myself and Keith came second in our game losing to a couple of local girls who probably spend every weekend here. The ride has a really good motion to it and the spins in particular are pretty cool. It is quite a physical ride though as it takes quite a bit of effort to kick the pedal that triggers the spins.

Sky Cruising is a hang gliding simlulator/arcade game. You are pulled into a room containing a huge screen and the aim of the game is to get your hand glider through a canyon and down to a beach. The problem was the glider was really awful to control and you ended up spending most of your time ricocheting off everything.

The arcade games on display here are the top of the range models. At the arcades back home this game would probably be just a basic cabinet with a wheel, perhaps a sit in version at the big places. But nowhere would you get a fully hydraulic car to drive as they have here. Does look pretty cool!

The Jurassic Park game is the one you've probably seen in the UK but this one features much bigger screens and an enclosed room with rotating seats. It was whilst queueing up for this that the rest of the group started to head back to the hotel (it was only a quick trip for the coaster really). Myself and Keith had chosen to stay here and make our own way back. I had a real challenge explaining to the girl here that we had chosen to remain behind, she was telling us that we were going to miss our coach.

"hoteru ni densha de ikimasu, basu de ikimasen" approximately means "We are going to the hotel by train, not by coach.". This was the message I should have said to them.

"hoteru ni denwa de ikimasu, basu de ikimasen" is what said to them. This actually translates as "We are going to the hotel by telephone, not by coach".

A basic error admittedly which in hindsight explains why they were giving me confused looks. In the end they got a girl over who could speak English and the explanation was eventually understood.

There were 3 other simulator rides there, one themed around a boat "Wild River", one a jeep "Wild Jungle" and this one around a plane "Wild Wing". All of these were really good and seemed to be set on the same island. They did feature some spraying of water and decent visuals. I knew there was a reason to stay at this place.

This is Final Call 2, another Ring themed haunted walkthrough. The girl running this ride was really sweet and gave us the following warning.

"Do not run through the attraction, do not touch anything in the attraction, but most importantly of all, do not beat up the little girl", which I think was the same girl having undergone a costume change.

The attraction was really good actually, the best bit being when something dropped from the ceiling and head butted Keith, clearly our height hadn't been taken into account.

The scariest attraction however was "The Chapel", which was just a 3D cinema but which featured visuals that would have it slapped with a 15 rating if we had it in the UK. It featured such delights as dogs bursting open á la "The Thing" and as the room was in pitch darkness you were always on edge expecting a human element to scare you. This never actually happened but did build the tension.

Overall not a bad complex, and if the Trocadero hadn't gotten into decline we could have had it in the UK. I was expecting to see more video games, as it turned out I only played one, a House of the Dead type game featuring keyboards instead of guns. You don't shoot the baddies you type their names before the clock runs out. So whilst I did OK with "dan", "sam", "ken" and "ian" the boss "ramasamdamlamatamatoatallada" proved to be the end of my run.

Odaiba

2003-11-03T04:26:00.000-08:00

With the evening left to our own devices we chose to take a little look around Odaiba before riding the driverless Yurikamome Monorail over the Rainbow Bridge and back to the hotel.

This is the bridge which looks quite stunning lit up at night. The original plan had been to walk over it, but time was getting on so that plan got rejected in favour of riding the train.

Odaiba takes its name from the cannons that were placed offshore by the Tokugawa shogunate to protect Tokyo from a seaborne attack. It is now a place for the locals to hang out, particularly in Summer with attractions, food places and shopping areas all in close proximity. The city's Marie Museum is also here.

Another museum here is the Captain Santa museum. Now I have no idea what this is all about but it looks Western not Japanese at all. I'm wondering if it is an import of somekind. Are the people around him reindeers, it's all just a little confusing.

Another import is this scaled replica of the Statue of Liberty, built in France then shipped over here and erected in 2000. You could almost trick people with this pic into thinking it's Manhattan.

Aqua City is next door to the Decks complex and houses more shops and a huge cinema complex. Whilst I would have liked to seen a Japanese Film in Japan, time would beat me on this occasion as we had to be heading back.

The monorail ride was pretty cool, with a nice view out of the front, and excellent reliability of service (well by this point I was used to everything running as it should).

Nasu Highland

2003-10-03T04:48:00.000-07:00

Time to venture out of Tokyo now to Nasu, in the mountains north of the capital.

Fantasy Pointe Nasu Highland, to give it its full name, had the biggest collection of coasters on the trip so it would be interesting to see how it fared. We had a TV crew following us at this park (which explains why we're all wearing the same T-Shirt) and we were also given a little ERS in having the whole park to ourselves before they let (the few) public in.

When we arrived at the park we were greeted with this rather strange sign featuring a woman holding a fish. "Wow, they're promoting fish", "Maybe its Fish day" and "Something is a bit fishy with that sign" were some of the stupid comments being made.
It wasn't until later that I figured out what it was all about.

Unlike Yomiuriland, this park's mascot wasn't that cool. A bird decked out in a stars and strips bow tie. It got me thinking how people come up with these ideas, there has to be drugs involved in some capacity don't you think.

More motorised animals, and a nice mix of beasts this time, particularly the hippy dog thing on the left.

This, if you hadn't guessed, is the children's bit of the park situated just by the entrance. Lego is such a worldwide phenomenon that it has even found it's way to the mountains in Northern Japan. If Linz Hoy was on this trip, being the Lego fan she is, we'd could have left her and she would have been quite content. The majority of us were heading off to the ride in the background.

Panic Drive is a nice name for a children's coaster don't you think? It has that air of having failed the translation from English to Japanese. Did you know that the biggest example of that happening is Donkey Kong, which was originally Monkey Kong but due to a glitch with the fax machine the wrong letter came out the other end (or something). The blue sign is iriguchi which means entrance. The first part "iri" represents a river running into another river hence in. The second part "guchi" represents a gate. Exit is deguchi and the sign for that is a plant exiting the ground. Once you learn that most of the Japanese characters are pictoral representations of the word they're represent, things do become a little easier.

Really nicely themed cars impressed Tim, just look at the excitement written all over his face.

It was actually quite a decent ride offering good height for a kiddie's coaster. This picture was actually taken outside the park at the end of the day. How many childrens coaster's can you see above the outer fence of a park; not many I suspect.

The other kiddy coaster in this part of the park was the Dragon, and you've all seen this type of coaster a million times before (OK, maybe not that many times, but a lot), so I'll skip over that.

We all live in the Yellow Submarine, the Yellow Submarine, the Yellow Submarine. Sorry about that, just singing along to some music. This isn't a yellow submarine but is the garishly coloured building that houses the park's rapids ride.

River Adventure brought to you in oversaturatedgaudilyshadedtechnicolour. To say this building stuck out would be an understatement.

Speaking of garish colours, this is the park's purple SLC coaster called F2, Fright Flight. Now within the club, SLCs get a raw deal with most people hating them. I actually find them alright as long as you keep your head back and assume the Harley Grip on the restraints. I like the trouble they went to on adding the coconuts to the palm trees, like that will make them more realistic looking. Why purple you might ask? All will be revealed in a bit.

Now if someone can please tell me how the inline can be taken without hitting the corkscrew bit I'd be very pleased as these 2 elements seemed to be too close to each other to be viable. When we got off this ride the cameras were filming our responses so we ran up to it excited shouting "That was RusselVanTassel". Although it sounded like something great and exciting, Russel was actually just another member of the group with a cool sounding name.

This is the Batflyer coaster, and I have ridden this type of thing before once I managed to squeeze myself into it that is. These things aren't designed for adults and you have to squeeze your thighs into the ride if the door is to be shut. Rather than suffer the indignity of going through the embarkation twice I chose to ride this just the once.

The park is built on the side of a mountain with the entrance at the top and the main attractions down at the bottom. The entrance to the coasters is themed around a 50s diner with some great looking hot rod cars that are only there for theming.

These hotrods however are used as seating in the restaurant area I assume to give the drive in feel that was commonplace in that decade. Thomas seems to like the Marilyn statue, I don't recall him checking what was under the skirt, but he may have done.

Boooooooo, the Schwarzkopf coaster was closed, and had been for some time. Looked like an interesting layout all the same. This coaster at the bottom of the mountain was black, the park also had a red one, a blue one, a yellow one, and a green one all in the same area, which I thought was pretty cool. This is why the SLC had to be purple, all the other colours had already been taken.

Here you can see bits of the other coasters, you have to appreciate all this coloured steel in one place. It's almost as if someone painted this; some red here, and blue over there, and yellow there and in the background a bit of blue. Now where's the black, black, black, black, BLACK, BLACK, BLACK (proceeds to destroy everything in the nearby vicinity).

The blue one is big boom, which until the opening of Oblivion featured the steepest drop on any rollercoaster in the world. Oblivion at Alton Towers has cars that feature 2 rows of people. This on the other hand used a normal train of 28 rows. So I will leave it to you to think how taking a near vertical drop in the back row feels being pulled by all the cars in front of it.

OK, I'll tell you how it feels.

PRETTY DAMN SCARY!!!

You really do feel that you're going to fall out and you get a new appreciation for up stop wheels.

The loop that follows is pretty scary too because you've barely recovered from the drop. You have to love the way all this steel intertwines. I tried to find a shot which would feature all 4 cars at the same time, but failed.

The yellow coaster looks quite gentle but the cars rotate, sometimes at a very dizzying speed. Of the four this was actually my favourite. It has been the closest I've been to riding a waltzer on a rail. It differs from most spinning rides in that there cars are still connected as a train rather than running independently.

The green coaster is a standard corkscrew and the worst of the bunch.

The red coaster is the camel coaster and is particularly weird in that it has plenty of length but no steep drops; all the declines and inclines are at a gentle angle. If there was such a thing as a steel scenic coaster then it would probably be this.

One great thing to mention about Japan is their honesty. When I was queueing for the green coaster I inadverantly left my camera at the station. When I returned half an hour later it was where I had left it even though the ride had still been running in the interim. There is no way this would happen in the UK. Man I love this place!

Loving all this steel I decided I needed to get some aerial shots. The park did have some tower rides higher up the slopes so I should be able to get some good shots. The first port of call was the shot tower.

I love this shot, the ride operator had no problem with me using the camera, nor did she mind me choosing to sit in the right row. The park was dead and this attraction was a walk-on. Here you can see most of the rides together, with the closed Schwarzkopf to the left.

One other thing that camera people were taking advantage of was the pedal powered monorail that took you around the rides. Being able to stop the car where you wanted lead to some great photo opportunities.

The park does have a decent selection of other rides to eat up the queues, that weren't there on the day we were. The Pirate Ship was alright but I was really itching to ride one of the giant one.

Perhaps the most colourful Enterprise I've ever seen, certainly looks a whole lot better than the all white models you usually get at parks. I think this worked pretty well beside the wheel which was painted in a similar way.

"and the winner of best use of colour in a theme park goes to .......... Nasu Highland"

Even the spin rides were nicely themed using concentric circles to pull the rides together. This is more appreciated on high up rides such as the parachute ride I was on now. You can just make out the batflyer in the top right and the jukebox entry to the coasters in the centre.

The shot tower with the tangled mess of coasters behind it. Still a good shot methinks. Just a shame the shot tower wasn't running at the time.

The last of the high up shots at the bottom of the park, not that I was getting bored of this, but there was half of the park still waiting to be seen.

Here's the SLC in all its purple glory. It looks a bit out of place not being installed in amongst all the other coasters. I like the colour scheme on the octopus raide in the foreground.

Over in the other half of the park the main attraction seemed to be this 2-storey carousel. They'd definitely done a great job with the theming on it anyway.

If it wasn't for the Yank-Tied Eagle you could convince yourself that you were in a small European backstreet. As you get closer to the sign you'll discover that it's made of lego.

The park has a little model village section and I thought I'd be able to get a shot that made it look like a full size town. However this particular path seemed to be popular with the other visitors and I couldn't get a shot without them being in it. So I gave up.

For a park that has some great theming, their jungle ride seemed to be in a state of disrepair and could have done with a bit of tender loving care. Maybe it was on its way out.

Is this perhaps the most dangerous ride ever made. Given the position of the cars on their circuit and that there is no room in the centre for them to pass you know that as soon as it starts you're going to have a collision on your hands. Unfortunately nobody dared ride it for that very reason, so I never got to find out.

Dark Castle was the park's ghost ride and from what I recall it was actually pretty decent, having a nice long circuit within the building and plenty of effects to keep you entertained. I ended up riding with that Delores woman who seemed a bit lost, but I made sure my pockets were zipped up. Wouldn't want anything going missing.

The park's gift shop contained the normal park fare but also some curios such as this kitten rock band. Now for a country as sensible and disciplined as Japan seeing this was a bit odd to be honest. The best animal show I've ever seen at a theme park was at Holiday Park in Germany a few year's ago (those of you who witnessed this calamity of a show will already be laughing at the mere mention of it). If however this had actually been an animal show, I might have put this to the top of the list.

At the far end of the park was this huge man made lake which actually turned out to be some fishing ponds. The mystery of the woman holding the fish had been revealed. You could actually catch your dinner here. There was a sitting area with some heating areas on which to cook the fish once you'd caught it. The little octagonal building was a foot spa at which you could rest your weary feet from all the walking you've done.

Now why can't other parks have that?

It was almost time to leave so I tried running as far up the hill as time would allow to get a nice shot of the park from a distance. Shame I failed miserably hahah!

I liked Nasu Highland a lot. It has a great selection of rides and being stuck out in the hills, some excellent views to enjoy at the same time.

Tobu Zoo

2003-09-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

The second park today was going to be Tobu Zoo on the Northern outskirst of Tokyo, but it wasn't the animals that we were going for. Owned by the Tobu Railway Company the park is home to the wooden coaster Regina, which I had heard good things about.

The park is split into two sections with the zoo in one half and the amusement park rides behind it. This was another park that featured a mascot, some weird little dog thing.

Actually depending on your size he could be a big thing. Here's the mascot modelled by one of the locals. The writing in red spells Tobu, so I can only assume that that is the character's name. Original, isn't it?

The park had a couple of shuttle buses lined up to take us to the park and I guess we must have looked quite a sight seeing all of us in matching T-Shirts. Actually make that most of us, a couple of people failed to grasp the concept of "wear the club shirt today", whatever their reasons were.

This is the poster for Regina and certainly unlike any ride poster I'd seen before. Someone had clearly become quite adept at their photoshop skills. Regina is Italian for Queen hence the connection to the woman. I would hate to think how the poster would look if we had it here with the Queen airbrushed in the same way.

The park wasn't quite open yet and some of the group chose to assume the "I'm at the January Sales and there is no way anyone else is buying those shoes I saw yesterday" pose ready for the park manager to tell us it was OK to enter. The construction going on in the background is for a new dinosaur area due to open in 2006. (That's part of the park, not the zoo; just to clarify)

Here is a the first bit of the park we came to. The white coaster on the left Mount Rocky Coaster was closed and so wasn't open to us, which was a shame as it looked like quite a nice ride. The carousel was running, but I never got around to riding it. I did however get on both the wheel and the tower ride (peeking from behind the carousel). Both of those would offer great views of the park.

Crazy Mouse was for once, a crazy mouse coaster that lived up to its name. I don't think there are many mice coasters with loops, which this one did. It certainly put it into a higher league than most coasters like this.

More mobile animals including a particularly strange giraffe that had experienced a head transplant, it's neck now not matching the res of the body. Once again the park was really quiet, these parks must have been loving the business we were bringing into park. Either that or the locals had been warned of our arrival and had stayed away.

Tentomushi is Japanese for ladybird and this was their ladybird coaster. The train is a shy and retiring type, not used to having his picture taken. This explains why he is out of shout hiding until he saw me put the camera away.
On my Nasu report I explained the sign to entrance, here you can see the sign for exit, although admittedly you wouldn't need to know the Japanese here as the wording under it is in English.

A few pictures taken from the drop tower, first the wheel, which admittedly looked a bit shaky but was actually smooth. The domed building behind it is one of the zoo building.

Here's the Rocky Coaster. A little disappointing to not be able to ride it. The building with the blue roof is a simulator ride, the kind of which you've probably seen in other parks. I liked the views from up here. It was nice to see the countryside rather than the city all the time.

It's also odd how I'm talking about shot and drop towers like they're observation platforms. I guess I've really become used to these kind of rides now. Apocalypse is an exception though, there's no way I could ever get used to the feeling that ride gives you!

This is Regina, and what a stunning looking wooden coaster this is. Tobu had been one of the few parks to offer us an Exclusive Ride Session and we were going to get the ride to ourselves for an hour at the end of the day. Rather than rush to that, as certain other individuals would have done, I chose to see what the rest of the park had to offer. Now making a decision like that is always a gamble as there's the risk of the ride breaking down, but I had every confidence in the park that this wouldn't happen here.

Another bit of Japlish, but this one isn't their fault really. In Japan there is no distinction between the R and L sounds and this is the biggest mistake made by Japanese when translating the English language. One famous example of this mistake is when an American president visited Japan and there were a number of banners congratulating him on his erection.

Here's a shot from the wheel looking back at the tower ride and the lake on which is stands over. This park really was dead today, you can count the number of people in the park on one hand, just about.

Strange Street was a haunted walkthrough and very tame when compared to some of the others we had come across so far. The Kana here reads "su-ri-uu 2" which I can only take to mean surreal, but I'm guessing. Sometimes it's not so easy to make out what the borrowed word is that's being spelt out.

The park had a jungle themed go-kart race track and here's the queue line waiting for people to ride. If I said this part of the park was the quiet bit you'd be right to look confused. You can't get much emptier than this park.

I took some time out from racing to take a picture of the back end of the park with Regina peeking through the trees. That explains the tyres in the foreground stopping me from driving the kart into the lake.

Night fell quickly and it was time for the ERS on Regina. Although we were supposed to have exclusive use of the ride it seemed cruel to deprive the 4 local girls who were also in the park and they joined us. Neither group could understand what the other was saying but the girls seemed to be playing a game in the queue line where whoever lost "scissors paper stone" would have to say an English phrase that I can only assume they'd got TV or movies. So you'd get all this high pitched screaming as they play the game followed by one of them shouting "I didn't want to buy one anyway" and other random phrases. All quite surreal.

So how was the ride? Really good to be honest but these kind of wooden coasters are becoming common place now. Of the two I had ridden on the trip, White Canyon at Yomiuriland was the better. Although I can't stand rough woodies, that one just had a good balance of wrecklessness that made it more enjoyable than this predictable air time monster.

Tobu Zoo doesn't really offer much to an enthusiast other than the wooden coaster, everything else is pretty much general run-of-the-mill stuff.

Shirokanedai

Shirokanedai Night Time

2003-08-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

The last night in Tokyo was spent exploring the area around the hotel as there were plenty of temples to explore. One in particular had significant historic value and it was that over all others I wanted to find.

As it turned out I was noticing a repeating pattern with the temples looking deserted.

Tokyo has a great mix of old and new, and not old for the sake of tourism. Temples were still being used today as they were hundreds of years ago. Japan is a very religious country but you don't associate religion heavily with the country. One downside to this mix though is that you can't easily locate the single storey temples in amongst the towering skyscrapers, a problem I was having on this particular night.

Although I came across plenty of temples I couldn't find the one I wanted. In the end I had to dip into the pigeon-Japanese again and ask a hotel security guard the way. As it turned out I was less than 100 metres away and had walked past it once already, I just hadn't realised that behind a gate was the temple in question.

And here it was, closed! Great.... It just meant that I'd have to come back first thing in the morning when it would be open. At least I hadn't gone all the way to South Africa for a ride that was closed, this was just a walk away.

A final shot close to the temple showing the other and more well known side to Tokyo. Skyscrapers everywhere....

More Shirokanedai

Shirokanedai Daytime

2003-07-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

So it was another morning stroll, fortunately after the practice walk the previous night I knew exactly where I was going.

In temple building wood has always been the material of choice and as in Greek and Chinese architecture, little use is made of diagonal supports; the framing is almost exclusively a system of uprights and horizontals. Elegance to the structures are comes in the form of the refined curvatures in the column outlines, in the shapes of rafters and brackets, and especially in the great overhanging roofs.

The opening of Japan to the West in the mid 19th Century led to the adaptation of the European architectural techniques. After World War I Japanese architects incorporated Western technical innovations into buildings combining traditional and modern styles during the period following World War II. This temple is a good example of the typical western house idea, and something more familiar to those of us from the West.

This building on the other hand is just a rip off of European architecture and has little or no Japanese influence. As a result it looks really out of place here!

I prefer the classic style of temple as seen here. Temples are common place in Japan with a minimum of one in every Municipality. Built up areas such as Kyoto and Tokyo house thousands of them. On this walk alone we saw at least half a dozen, an average of one every 5 minutes.

The number of temples easily outnumbers the number of Police Stations. Yes, this is a police station as clearly indicated by the cartoon rodent thing I mentioned earlier. I doubt we'd see cartoon animals being adopted by our police force anytime soon but if they do, I hope its a pig.

Temples typically consist of a number of buildings with the main building housing the sacred objects of worship, such as statues. In Japan, main halls are usually called kondo, hondo, butsuden, amidado or hatto. This was easily the larges temple I passed on this particular walk, and surprisingly one I'd missed completely the previous night because it wasn't lit up. Just around the corner and I was back at the one temple I had wanted to see here.

This is the Sengakuji Temple, the burial place of the 47 Ronin. Their story is one of the most famous stories of valour and the Bushido code. "Ronin" is the name given to Samurai who no longer have a master. The master, in this case was Lord Asano and he commited Seppuku following an altercation with Kira, one of the Shogun's high officials. When a Lord commits this act, his temple becomes the property of the Shogun and his Samurai become Ronin. Kira then prevented the Asano blood line from claiming their temple back and his behaviour became more and more unShogun like. The Ronin swore a pledge to avenge their Lord's death and went into hiding. Over a number of years they were able to garner enough information from Kira's people to make their attack. Following a lengthy battle in which they killed 60+ guards incurring no losses on their side, they eventually cornered Kira. Choosing not to commit Seppuku as their master had done, Kira was beheaded and his head taken to the burial place of Asano redeeming his honour.

Of course the Shogun wasn't too happy at what had happened but had to balance the act of murder against the Bushido code that the Ronin had followed. After a coincidental 47 days of deliberation he decided that they should also commit Seppuku but as honourable warriors, not criminals.

This they duly did and their bodies were buried beside their master. This story is still told in a very popular kabuki play written in 1748. The graves are cared for by the temple priests and December 14th is the anniversary festival of their revenge, and the temple because extremely popular.

Buddhist temples feature large bells and on New Year's Eve they are rung 108 times, each ring representing the wiping away of a wordly desire. The 108 figure comes from

The 6 senses (eye,ear,nose,tongue,body,mind) multiplied by preferences (like/dislike/neutrality).
The 6 dust (colour, voice, fragrance, taste, touch, object) multiplied by preferences (painful, joyful, neither).
Both of these exist within three dimensions (past, present and future).

Those of you who watch "Lost" will notice that the number 108 has significance in that show. Is this just a coincidence? Perhaps if the writers actually took the story somewhere we might find out!

Buddhist Temples and Shinto Shrines are both places of worship in the Japan but they differ in many ways:

The Shinto Shrines have always had a more simple building style. The Buddhist Temples are much more elaborate and complex.
Buddhist Temples are built out in the open. They are usually located in areas for all people to see. However, the Shinto Shrines are built in isolated, wooded areas. They are more oriented towards nature.
When worshiping in Buddhist Temples, the people go inside. When worshiping at a Shinto Shrine, the people stay outside, while the leader of the ceremony recites rituals inside.

The biggest difference between the two though is that while Shintoism believes that death is a sad and morbid topic, Buddhists believe the opposite and they believe death should be celebrated, rather then feared.

Most cemeteries in Japan are Buddhist and are located at a temple. The Japanese visit their ancestors' graves on many occasions during the year. Although the Japanese are short being buried would still take up a lot of space and with space being at a premium, especially in Tokyo, most people choose to be cremated. In fact only 1% of the population are interred.

At the end is the Asano grave and these other stones are the Ronin, although the small temple area does also house other memorials. Just knowing there is so much history told here made this worthwhile. A true Samurai story, which doesn't feature Tom Cruise.

The building in the background is our hotel, overlooking one of the temples I'd reported on earlier. It was time to head back and get the coach to Tokyo station as we were off to do another "must do", the Bullet Train.

Shinkansen

The Shinkansen

2003-06-10T13:33:00.000-07:00

Ever since I had first seen the Bullet Train as a kid, I've always wanted to ride it and I was pleased that the trip organisers ensured that a journey on it would be included. The second half of the trip was based out of Tokyo in Osaka and heading back to the capital for the flight home. It would be the Shinkansen (the proper name for the bullet) that would get us out there.

Arriving at the platform and this was the sight that met us, how awesome do these Platypus trains look. These are the 700 series of Shinkansen and they've been running since 1999. The fastest models (500 series) are the elite versions of the train and the 700s were made with the aim of being as quick but not as costly.

On the other side of the platform was this "still pretty cool but not as cool as the other one" train. This one is the 300 series and would be the one that would take us to Osaka. Still high speed it isn't as fast as the other two models.

I had seen several Geishas in Tokyo but they had all been very old women, and not so photogenic as this lady awaiting the same train as us. Fooled you! she's not a Geisha although most of us thought she was. She's just wearing a Kimono and is reading her book before she doesn't want to give us any of her attention. Geishas are very rare in Japan now, especially in Tokyo.

The women in pink are the cleaning staff on the train, and knowing the efficiency of the trains I was curious to see if the train cleaning was the same. The train was due to leave in 10 minutes and in that time they had to remove any litter, clean every table, reset the window blinds, turn every seat around to face forward, clean the floor of the train and replace all the cloths on the headrests.

Off you go girls, the clock is ticking.

6 minutes later and they were done. That was very impressive!
Admittedly part of the ease with which they pulled this off was that no one left any litter on the train. As you can see the women left pretty much empty handed (except for their cleaning materials). There is absolutely no chance of doing this in London. It would take more than twice the time to just pickup the Metro newspapers.

With the train ready for us, we did our bit in the super-efficiency of the train company and didn't hesitate to board. We were all sat down ready to go very quickly indeed. Actually the trip organisers were not looking forward to ensuring 140 people made the train on time that wasn't going to wait for any late comers. As it happened they didn't need to worry, we were all very well behaved.

All ready to go and for once David Finkelstein didn't get the front row.

So how was the journey? Very smooth and very quick, exactly what you'd expect from perhaps the most famous high speed train network in the world.

In no time at all we were in Osaka ready for the second leg of the trip. The first thing I had noticed at the station was the lack of English signs. This wasn't going to be as easy to navigate as the capital!

Expoland

2003-05-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

The first of the parks we were to visit in Osaka also happened to the biggest park on this side of Japan. Opened as part of the country's International Exposition in 1970 the park has remained in place to become one of the most visited parks in the country.

The entrance to the park was a fairly low-key affair especially for a park of this size. As with the Tokyo parks it was obvious that we were visiting out of season as the park wasn't that busy at all. The kana above the entrance here reads "e-ki-su-po-ra-n-do", the name of the park.

Warning signs at this park told us that under no circumstances were we to set our dogs on the women in the park, throw baseballs at the heads of young girls and chase people on bicycles and unicycles. So boarding our tandems with our pet tigers in tow and throwing baseballs at the young boys instead we made our way into the park.

The signature ride in the park is Daidasaurus and it was towards that that most of the group made their way to. Not wanting to be one of Finkelstein the shepherd's sheep, I made my way around the park in the other direction and the first coaster I came across was immediately inside the park was their mouse coaster. Nothing to worry about with these rides, I've ridden plenty before and this didn't stand out.

The ride in the centre of the park is the obligatory corkscrew coaster and as ever if the park offers the view looking through the corkscrews everybody will take a picture of it. I said I wouldn't be a sheep and here I am 2 paragraphs later celebrating the fact I'm exactly that. Baaaaa!!!

At the back of the park and directly opposite the entrance is the park's rather big big wheel. It was becoming more and more apparent that these things were perfect for taking aerial shots of the park so although rather slow and boring a ride, it was definitely going to be on the list of things I would do in this park.

This steel beast is Durrrrrrrrrrdasaurus, and at the time of writing is the longest steel coaster in the world (excluding those ridiculously long alpine things). It gets it's name from being pretty old and it taking about a day to complete it's circuit.

It used to be 2 long coasters running side by side but at some point someone saw the opportunity to join the rides together into a single length of track. Perhaps if they had spent some of their energy into finding a way of stopping the awful racket it makes more people may come to ride it. The third noisiest coaster I've come across behind Superman at Magic Mountain and the Roadrunner kiddy coaster at some other park that I can't recall.

Having ridden both the mouse and the corkscrew I thought I'd see if the sheep had made their way off the Daddy'sSauceUs ride but it wasn't to be. The queue was still there, so I thought I'd go off elsewhere and return later. The wheel didn't have a queue so I jumped on to take some pictures.

The white coaster in the foreground is Dadadasaurus and the crazy looking thing in the background is Fujin Raijin II, which would crunch my gonads and compress my spinal column later in the day. Like Nasu, I prefer parks that have lots of steel and a significant footprint of the park taken up with their coasters. Like this one in fact.

I was going to write about how I took this on the wheel as it started to rotate to the top but given the fact the wheel is clearly visible in the background I clearly got it wrong. In fact I can't remember how I got so high to be able to take this one of the Saurus. This drop is as steep as it gets, tame huh?

This one was definitely taken on the wheel and this is the final bend before the station. The ride consists of just two cars, one red and one blue. Given the length of this ride they could easily have yellow, green, purple, black, white and silver cars, but they don't. The combination of long ride and only a couple of cars would explain why there was still a queue.

Here's the corkscrew coaster and in the background the inverter Orochi. So why hadn't I ridden that awesome looking inverted coaster yet? Because it was closed for a lunch break. Yep, you read that right. This has been the only coaster I've ever come across that closes for lunch. Only in Japan. And it definitely wasn't lost in the translation as the teller pointed to the clock, and that's understood in any language.

Another shot of Deadasaurus and Fujin with the station to the former in the lower left hand corner of the picture. The weird face thing on the hill in the background has something to do with the original Expoland but nowadays serves as something to take a picture of and that's it.

Fed up with these aerial shots yet? If you are count the number of people you see, not many are there?

I had said earlier that the (remember Mel and Kim?) Daydaydaydayddddddaydaysaurus ride used to be 2 seperate rides that were joined together. It's on this straight before the final bend that the joining took place. This crossover makes it a mobius coaster like Grand National at Blackpool. Unlike that ride though you can't get out at the end of the first lap and you're sent straight through the station to ride it all again, from the other side.

If you're still bored of the aerial shots then try counting the number of supports in the picture. Then when you've got a life feel free to read on. Alternatively try to come up with some Daidasaurus puns, I'm running out!

Typical, the one coaster I wanted to ride was closed and as soon as I get onto another attraction that takes an age to complete the ride opens and I can only sit back and watch it. Perhaps if I'd looked at my watch a little more often this would have been avoided.

Orochi opened in 96 and takes its name from a mythological dragon with eight heads. Coincidentally the trains on this ride have 8 rows. I don't know how exciting seeing an eight headed dragon would be but this ride looked pretty cool and I couldn't wait to ride it. If this wheel would just hurry up a bit.

But I couldn't do it yet because this wheel hadn't taken me back round to the station yet. To pass the time I took a picture of the corkscrew coaster, a shame though that the train was in the station for the duration of the wheel's revolution. Guess what the name of this "corkscrew" coaster that goes through "corkscrews" is called? Yep, it's called "Space Salamander". Obvious isn't it?

Now, I thought that DoYouThinkHeSawUs was loud but this games arcade was something else. Each stall was manned by a young Japanese girl screaming into their PA systems luring you to play their games. I don't just mean microphones but full blown PA systems. This on top of the ringing noises that the games were playing out and all of this in an enclosed room made it extremely deafening. I did it once, and that was more than enough.

Time to ride Orochi and this by far was the best ride in the park. I'm biased towards these kind of rides anyway but it was great even with it's lunchbreak. With the majority of the park still queueing for Sundaydasaurus I got a few goes on this.

Although the park contains some great coasters it's actually a family park and there are plenty of attractions for the kiddies. A few years ago I had a go at doing one of these pedal powered rides at a park in Germany and it was the most knackering thing I'd ever done. Either my car hadn't been oiled or I was totally unfit (probably the latter). This looked like a cute little ride but I wasn't going to risk going on it for fear of a repeat and causing a tailback as this young girl did here.

Way too much pedalling on both these rides for me to near them. Besides I don't think the leg room was tailored for Westerners. The helix that these rides are circling belongs to the Fujin.

There are a couple of coasters for the kiddies too. This is the better one of the two, how do I know this? Because I rode them both, that's why.

Having met up with some of the group we decided to do a mass takeover of the Fujin ride visting a few little attractions en route (not "en croute" as I'd originally typed although rides covered in pastry would be worth seeing). This as we would find out would turn out to be a big mistake. The Dark is one of the haunted attractions that the park has.

This is a shooting ride where if you score enough points you can win a fluffy animal. All of us who tried this came away empty handed. The skull with one eye reminded me of something similar at Alton Towers, can't think what though ;)

Made by "Japanese company now gone bust" Togo, this is the stand up coaster Fujin Raijin II. If the original Fujin Raijin was the forefather of stand up rides in Japan then this should be given the moniker of "bastard child". It's a truly horrible coaster that, although has some great Gs is unrelenting to both the family jewels and the spinal column. I've been on rides before where I've got an additional click on the harness and on Olympia Looping in Germany I've gone to two; this went to three. Ouch!!!!

This dark ride translates as "Grid War" and is another shooting game where instead of winning a stuffed animal you could win an inflatable one. Those that failed previously failed here too. I know that the Japanese are noted for playing video games a lot but you'd have to be something quite special to be able to win a prize on this. Accepting that we weren't going to win the prize we chose instead to see who could get the better score. I'm not sure it was me on this occasion.

Everything in the park was covered by the entrance fee. The one exception was the park's haunted walkthrough. When we got to it we couldn't figure out where we got the tickets from and I don't know if it was because they were scared to enter themselves or they felt sorry for us, but a group of girls ran over and gave us their tickets. How nice was that. Much bowing and saying thankyou and we were in the queue to give it a go. It wasn't bad with some really nice themed areas including a full Japanese garden but the rooms were quite open with plenty of space to get around the live actors walking around within it. It was here that I discovered Talhat's confrontational side to his otherwise meek personality. He did not hesitate to get in the faces of the actors.

This is the other kiddy coaster in the park and I think this one is the Mini Coaster. It was buried away in a corner of the park hidden amongst other rides designed for people much smaller than ourselves.

In one of my earlier pages I introduced you to Anpanman who's head was a bun that kids could eat when they got hungry. Here we see some of the other characters in the cartoon. They are:

Shokupanman, friend of Anpanman with white sliced bread for a head.
Jam Ojisan, Anpanman's baker father.
Batakosan, Jam's bakery assistant.
Baikinman, Nemesis of Anpanman who's head is made of germs.
Anpanman
Currypanman, friend of Anpanman with a curried loaf for a head.
Dokinchan, Baikinman's female assistant who apparently likes the dudes with white sliced bread for a head.
Derek, not really. I couldn't find anything on this character at all.

Orochi, I like this coaster. Shame about the colour scheme though. Notice how everything in this park except the mouse coaster is coloured white. At least this has a hint of something else, but why pink? You'd have thought for a coaster themed around a fearsome dragon they'd have gone for something a bit more............ dragonlike.

Beside the park is a small water park, and whilst it was too cold to go for a dip walking to the other side of it did offer some nice views of the park, with Orochi in the foreground. It was looking at this pic that I realised that I must have been on the tower ride when I took that high up picture of Daidasaurus earlier.

Here's the water park which if it had been sunnier might have offered a nice respite from the main park. The big netted structure in the background is one of hundreds of golf ranges built within the main cities of Japan. With land as expensive as it is there is no way you'd get a full blown golf course inside the city. How bad a shot must you have to get a ball over that!

Whilst a few of us were enjoying the park, a small number made their way to another park, Portopia, which they all raved about. Some of that group then went on to Universal Studios but that was just mad as they only got time to go on one ride before the park closed. My "it'll be there next time" attitude proved to backfire as Portopia has now closed, although Universal is still there.

Over on this side of the park I came across this map of the park and rather than have it at the entrance they'd put it a bit out of the way. To get to it you had to cross the water park and you could only do that on a scary little chair lift. With no belt of harness of any kind it was a bit exposed and it was quite quick so having to jump out and get out it's way was a bit dodgy. Fortunately there were staff on hand to assist.

Looks like we'd been fortunate with the weather today. Storms were on their way. For those of you that have been Cedar Point firstly I'm deeply jealous. Secondly Orochi's layout is similar to Raptor.

Plenty of white steel, to the unitiated it might look it's all the same coaster. If it was it would be both longer and more exciting than DarthVadersaurus.

Orochi was the first of these kind of coasters that we'd come across on the trip and there was going to be one other at Parc Espana a few days later. It would be interesting to see which one would come out on top. This had set a good precedent!

Back in the main body of the park now and I took this from one of the flying rides that the park has. If you haven't already guessed I wasn't a big fan of the Dial-a-saurus coaster although I found I took plenty of pictures of it. I guess because it covers so much of the park, it's hard to avoid it.

Another shot from the flying thing showing the lift hill of Deirdre-saurus with Space Salamander behind that and Orochi behind that and some trees behind that and Osaka behind that!

The park does have a couple of water rides. The first is this log flume looking out of place because it wasn't white. It's close proximity to the other rides reminded me of Blackpool, in fact, in places this park definitely had that same vibe.

The other ride is a little boat ride that is part scenic part haunted. Once again the girl in the camera gave the peace sign without prompting.

Time to leave the park and a final chance to take a final picture of Fujin. I hate you you nutcrusher!

Festival Gate

2003-04-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

The first evening in Osaka was spent taking a little mini trip to the Namba district and the first port of call would be the Festival Gate shopping complex. As well as containing several shops and eating places, which we weren't interested in, it also housed a custom built coaster, which we were!

The econonmy in Japan had been taking a bit of a hit in recent years and the theme parks had taken a serious bruising, perhaps this explained the low attendances we had seen to date. Prior to our departure we'd heard that the future of Festival Gate had been shaky to say the least and there was a chance that it would be closed, but we headed out all the same.

When we got there we were pleased to discover that the Delphis coaster was running so this evening would be a nice bonus. The place looked dead too so it would be great to have the coaster to ourselves. The reason why it wasn't in the shot was because it was waiting in the station for us to ride it.

When we got there the train wasn't as empty as we'd thought. Another group of people from the club had beaten us to it. We thought we'd left these guys at the train station but they'd clearly found a quicker way to get to here than us, and the first ride of the night would be their's. Jammy gits!

An upside to this however was that the next ride was our's and only our's and so I could also guarantee myself a front row seat.

The ride itself was alright but I think the experience had been enhanced by it's location as the idea of shooting through a mall was an interesting one. If the same ride had been standing out in the open it wouldn't have been as exciting.

The ride did benefit from some nice theming though. In fact the entire complex had a really nice sea-faring theme to it, even though it was deserted. Subsequent investigation has shown that the reason why Festival Gate was no longer turning in a profit was because the recently opened Universal Studios had stolen its public.

Delphis 1997-2006 RIP

Namba

2003-03-12T14:19:00.000-08:00

Having spent an hour at Festival Gate the opportunity was taken to see a bit more of Osaka's nightlife, and just a couple of stops on the Metro was the Namba district, the city's entertainment district, with one unique ride to experience so what better place to go than there.

Upon exiting the station the first thing that was apparent was that this district was full of Neon. Synonymous with the Tokyo Nightlife it was interesting to see it just as bright in Osaka. I had quickly built up preconceptions on entering Osaka that it wouldn't be as good as Tokyo but this district was starting to prove me wrong.

Namba covers around a dozen blocks and is centred by the man-made Dotonbori water channel. Heavily lit arcades such as this one are commonplace in the area. You can pretty much buy everything here. One of the group needed a memory card for his camera and so a search for a "kamera-ya" (ya means shop) was underway. There wasn't one in this arcade however there were people willing to give the peace sign to the camera for free!

It was becoming more and more apparent that the neon we had seen had just been the beginning of what was going to become a crazy amount of neon. We were only walking through the peripherary and lights were already giving the area an articifial daylight.

There we were just a walking down the street singing "doo wa diddy.." when all of a sudden this guy rips off his shirt and starts breaking in front of a large camera that we didn't notice when we walked past. Judging by the reaction of the people around this wasn't planned. Fortunately the ground he was spinning on was not to abrasive. Having attended every B-Boy championship in the UK I am familiar with some of the Japanese breakers, I didn't recognise this chap however.

The area was also heaving with people, which given the luck we had had with the parks so far meant that actually seeing a crowd of people made a refreshing change and you didn't mind being in amongst them. We weren't having much success finding the camera shop, I could ask the question with no problem "kamera-ya wa doko desu ka" I was only able to really interpret the responses from their hand gestures. Although I knew left and right (hidari and migi) I didn't know what "straight ahead" was so if I didn't hear either left or right then I guessed they were saying go straight.

Neon and people as far as the eye can see. This is how I imagined Tokyo to be, it was odd to see this in Osaka, cool though! The artifical light was a bit eery but it did mean I didn't need to use the flash on the camera to take pictures.

This building on the right is Don Quixote's which sells just about everything you could ever want, and a lot of stuff you couldn't possibly dream up under one roof. We didn't go in as we had other places to go. The genie logo was on a lot of buildings around here, and if it was Don Quixote's logo then they must have quite some presence in Namba.

This oddly shaped big wheel on the banks of the Tosabori river was the ride that we had come to see (and have a go on of course). However we had discovered that the shops were going to be closing soon and as this was open til much later we could come back. Attempting to find the camera shop would take priority.

Even the buildings on the banks of the river where the public couldn't get to were covered with neon signs advertising stuff to buy including superman outfits. What are the odds that this is the most photographed piece of neon in the city?

The wheel, if that's what you call it given its shape, is built onto the side of another Don Quixote building; they really do have this area covered, it was just one street away from the other place we'd passed earlier. It was here that I was finally able to get some decent directions from a street cleaner who was quite taken aback to see me asking him questions in Japanese.

Apparently it was somewhere down here on the right. I just hope it was easily spotted maybe with an eye catching neon display perhaps?

This wasn't it, this was a Fugu restaurant famous for it's blowfish delicacy where if it's not prepared properly the eater can be poisoned. I had tried a lot of Japanese cuisine during my stay so far and was up for trying just about anything, including this. However the rest of the group weren't so prepared to take the risk and so we gave it a miss. Deaths from the consumption of badly prepared blowfish have decreased since the introduction of licensing.

This strange building on the junction of these two roads only seemed to contain 3 floors of shops with the space above it containing absolutely nothing but glass to reflect the neon lights. This wasn't the camera shop however. I have no idea wha the name of this building is but I'm pretty sure it's not whatever is on the sign at its entrance.

But this building just across the street was. The last three characters in yellow spelt out "ka-me-ra", which clearly showed me the way. However when we got to it it was already closed. Perhaps the bit of Japanese I couldn't understand was the bit telling me not to bother looking for it as it is closed. In the end we came across a small stall in one of the arcades that did sell the memory cards the guy wanted. With that mission a failure, it was time to go and enjoy the wheel.

Given that most of the shops were now closing, or in the case of that camera store already shut the only people remaining were those who were off for something to eat, or foreigners aimly wandering around.

It didn't take us long to get back to the wheel or kanransha as they're known in Japan. The Don-Quixote chain usually have some sort of attraction either on or inside the building. The one in Tokyo for example has a huge fish tank at it's entrance and in the weeks following the trip built a halfpipe coaster on its roof.

The wheel certainly stole the skyline especially with all the neon. The only complaint I had with it was that it was on the banks of the waterway in the middle of a built up area, which meant it wasn't easy to take a picture of it and also you wouldn't benefit from the view until you were above the building on the other side of the river. The cars on the wheel face inwards until they start their ascent at which point they rotate to view out over Osaka.

Here's the genie logo again. I have no idea what it has to do with Don Quixote. There were two of these on either side of the Don-Quixote building. This one was the better of two being in colour, the other was in a single shade of green. This could be interpreted in two ways either riding the wheel puts some colour in your life, or for those of a nervous disposition makes you green at the gills.

Here's a view taken on the way up and although the view wasn't so good on the way up it would be better as we rode over the top. A lot of couples were using the wheel, I suspect because it was the only place in this heaving district that offered any privacy.

Here's the view from the top, admittedly you'd see more during the day but we weren't going to be here at that time of day. The strangely empty store and camera shop can be seen in the distance.

A final picture of the neon taken on the way back down. The wheel was certainly different given it's shape. Is it an elevator or a wheel though? It would be interesting to see if this style of train could be used to run on other track designs. Having seen enough of Namba now it was time to eat before heading back to the hotel.

The main eating area in this part of Osaka is in Dotonbori and we took a short walk along here to find something to eat, but nothing jumped out saying "eat me eat me".

I'm guessing given the theming at the entrance that this restaurant sold sea food such as fish and ships, which you could wash down with galleons of beer.

In the end we ended up in a Japanese chain called Yoshinoya (just visible on the left), which a couple of German members had tried in Tokyo and liked. We got to eat upstairs overlooking the junction and ate really nice beef bowl meal that they specialise in. Their motto is "cheap, quick and yummy", a perfect description for what is the Japanese version of McDonalds.

Half an hour later and we were back at the hotel. Here's the obligatory view from the window.

This is the hotel room, why do I insist on taking the internal pictures once I've trashed the place. It gives the hotel a bad name I'm sure.

Nara Dreamland

2003-02-12T14:21:00.000-08:00

Nara Dreamland lies just outside Osaka and has been open since 1961 but is on its last legs having felt the effects of the Japanese economy hit. Our Japanese contacts had said that the park would likely close within two years. Firstly Portopia and now this. It's a shame to see any park close, even more so here as I was loving this country more and more.

It was obvious just waiting outside the park that there had been inspiration from the Disney parks here. Just like its US counterparts the entrance was overlooked by the main train station from which you could travel to other parts of the park.

We had got to the park nice and early, we even made it before some of the park staff did. You have to love the uniforms! These guys were the grounds people and maintenance staff. From their smiles they were as happy to see us at their park than we were to be there.

The park's corkscrew coaster doesn't contain any cork so they decided to call it screw coaster instead. Thinking about it, this makes sense even if it leaves the park with a slightly un-PC name for their ride. Fortunately Japan isn't overly politically correct, another reason to like it. Although Disneyish in concept at least Nara have inversions in their park.

Another park offering a camera opportunity through the corkscrews and who am I to resist such an opportunity. Now either these people are loving this ride or they're in agony, I suspect it'll be the latter. After all there's no such thing as a smooth corkscrew.

Here are the parks attempts at the castle and the matterhorn. They clearly don't have the budgetary levels that Disney have which explains the cheap appearance to both, but they're cute all the same.

One other reason for liking Japanese parks is that they don't go overboard to make things safe relying instead on the common sense of their visitors, and the odd yet comical warning poster making things clear. The majority of parks we'd come across so far didn't have gates keeping public back from trains entering and leaving the stations. People would just wait until it was time to board without prompting. The litigatious culture that America thrives on and which Britain is slowly adopting doesn't happen here.

Who needs to check lap straps, just put up a poster showing how to buckle up and the passengers will oblige. It's really that simple. Meisho are ride manufacturers and their posters are great. In fact the club is looking at making them into T-Shirts.

I had said that Japan was occasionally a little un-PC but if they need to warn you to keep your boat balanced by distributing weight evenly isn't this the easiest way to do it?

The second coaster of the day was "Fantasy Coaster" made coincidentally by Meisho too. The ride was pretty pleasant but didn't elicit any fantasies; I wasn't going to ask for my money back. If your fantasy consists of travelling to Japan to ride a fairly OK but not great coaster then it'll live up to its name for sure.

Now although I'm in a coaster club, I did it to give me a reason to travel the world. I didn't do it to find the best coaster in the world or to work out if the front seat is better than the back seat or anything like that. There are however a lot of people in the club that are. We had members from ACE (American Coaster Enthusiasts) with us on this trip and some of them took "enthusiasts" to the extreme. I've had already mentioned people who insisted on being at the front of every ride, although we have similar characters in the ECC. This picture summed up the fun side to the enthusiasts though; an empty train cept for one member in the front and another in the back, both with their hands in the air and all of this on a kiddy coaster too. This pic makes me chuckle!

Bobsleigh (bo-bu-su-raa) is the name given to the park's Matterhorn rip-off. Now I liked this ride because it runs ridiculously close to the mountain walls. I tested this by leaning out to the right and seeing if anyone sat behind me would scream, and they did. I was getting extremely close to the walls, even at the bits of the circuit where the train was at its fastest. Yes I know it's stupid but I am a little bit wreckless and having survived a collision with the wall at Tivoli's Scenic coaster (admittedly my arm only), I've been there before and survived.

Another of those bonker American enthusiasts with his hands in the air even though the train has barely left the station. The two kids in the back were two of only a few on the trip and they were enjoying the trip just as much as everyone else. I thought the trip may have been too gruelling for youngsters but they proved me wrong!

The main reason for visiting this park was to ride Aska, the park's wooden coaster. Whilst plenty of people made their way to this first, I had intentionally gone round the other way and nailed everything else first before making my way to that ride. Why queue up when the rest of the park is there to be seen and you won't have to queue for any of it.

Now admittedly it did look like a pretty special ride, completely out-doing everything else that the park had to offer. This had been the newest attraction for some time and boy did it show.

So what does Aska stand for? Doing some investigations the only meanings I could find were.

Anti SlipKnot Army, well this coaster isn't metal being made of wood. Could be it!
American Karate Shotokan Alliance, they would chop a lot of wood with their hands. Could be it!

In conclusion, aska stupid question and you'll get a stupid answer. Could be it!

As it turns out the name is a compression of Asuka, a village close to the park, which during Japan's Asuka period (538AD - 710AD) was the capital of Japan.

Well it looked like everyone was having a good time on the ride so I might as well give it a go too!

This warning poster informs riders of the best position with which to ride the train. Now to those of us who have ridden coasters in the past the last thing you want to do is put your mouth down by the lap bar as you know you're likely to smash your teeth in. However when the Japanese get scared a common reaction is to put the head down, in much the same way as we put our head down when we get shy or embarressed. Knowing that the warning made a lot of sense.

On the other hand losing your phone and other loose items is just downright hilarious. It looks like the poor sucker in this case needs to go to the toilet he's so upset. The coaster looked like it was generating a lot of air-time so there was no way I was going to risk riding with anything loose.

Usually wooden coasters like this have you queue outside the ride, the middle of the ride being closed off. However Aska's was open as you queued from the centre. This made photography of the ride a whole lot easier than similar rides elsewhere.

Aska came out as the most popular coaster on the trip in a vote of the people who attended the trip. Whilst it was a great ride I tend to prefer rides that offer something unique so with the wooden coasters I'd given the one at Yomiuriland the edge, just because it was bizarre with it's roll bars. I don't want to take anything from this ride though. It was really really good!

I could see how popular this ride was being with the group. As it turned out the club ended up taking over the ride and seeing how much fun the group was having the ride operators joined in and cranked up the sound system placing Beastie Boys at high volume.

I took plenty of pictures of this ride and I can't come up with enough superlatives to say how good this ride was. Let the hands in the air portray it instead.

Tim was loving this coaster so much that he couldn't wait for it to finish before giving it a standing ovation. He's in row 2. The two guys in the front are brothers and one of them had the craziest selection of tie-dye T-Shirts I had ever seen.

At the brake run to the ride it's time for this lot to get off and let me ride. I think I had about 4 goes in the end, others in the group had many more goes than that. I had more of the park to go and see so it was time to say farewell Aska and head off elsewhere. This ride definitely needs to have a new home, it'd be a travesty if it's scrapped when the park closes. At least this bit of the park bests Disney, they don't have any wooden coasters as good as this. Actually that'll be because they don't have any wooden coasters at all.

A quick respite from the rides and a few of us tried the arcade games. Whilst I played the drumming game again, I also tried a mambo samba game where you have three drums to play. Tim took a skateboarding game which you control with an actual board.

The boarding practice came in useful on this weird ride where you rock the cage and shift your weight until you make it go over the top. Time made this look easy whilst Talhat had difficulties. In his defence he did give it a go. I didn't even try.

Keith and Jeppe rocking out in front of Aska. Maybe that Slipknot reference has some meaning after all!

Gallantry was a very strange attraction. Similar to the shooting games at Expoland score enough points and you'll win an animal toy of some kind. However this one differed by playing a welcoming message in English that sounded like it had been recorded by a bored student. Maybe this was the park's version of Disney's Buzz Lightyear.

The castle doesn't feature any attractions just a single shop. The bearskinned guard on the banner is the park mascot. So you have a Disney themed park with a British mascot. At least this kind of explains the Gallantry voice over.

This was a maze building with a difference. You were given a card on the way in and had to find 3 checkpoints inside and get the card stamped. There didn't appear to be a prize for doing this though. I managed to lose Jeppe and Keith inside it.

The park's wave swinger ride was also slightly different in that it had the chairs connected together in sets of three. Maybe they'd heard of me messing about on these rides and grabbing hold of the chairs either side and releasing them when the ride gets to speed. Then again probably not.

Keith gives the ride a quick go and seems to be enjoying it, but then he's always smiling so I wouldn't know otherwise. This was the last ride of the day and it was time to head off and say good bye to the park.

It was only on the way out that I realised the park mascot on the floor of the park's attempt at Main Street. The female guard looks quite cute, I wonder if the Japanese people believe that if we were to have Female guards that they'd dress like that? Strangely enough the shops here did sell Disney merchandise. Whether this was legitimate or not I don't know.

Well bye bye Nara! This park was really cute and Aska is a treemendous ride (because it's made from lots of trees). I would like to think the park could get through financial instability and remains open but the outlook is bleak, which is a shame.

Hirakata

2003-01-12T15:37:00.000-08:00

After Expoland it was off to yet another park. Boy are we nailing them on this trip! Hirakata is located in the north of Osaka and became popular as a hunting ground of nobles and aristocrats during the Heian period (795 - 1192AD). Following WWII there was a quick increase in the population here and in recent years the city has changed once again becoming a University Town. Hirakata currently has six different universities. The park itself has been around for 70 years.

Like DisneySea in Tokyo, the centre piece to the park is a volcano, which erupts at the end of each day, triggering a firework display. Unlike Disneysea it isn't located in the centre of the park but immediately beyond the entrance.

The willow is the "city tree" of Hirakata but the palms here in "Palm Walk" (their take on Main Street) didn't look too out of place either. This bit of the park had a look like Universal Studios to it. The buildings either side housed the majority of the shops and restaurants within the park, and yes that includes the McDonalds. At one end of the street is a ball-shooting dodgems attraction and another one of those shoot to win a stuffed animal games. As with all the similar attractions of this type I'd failed to score enough points to win the prize.

The first coaster of the day was the stupidly named "Fantastic Coaster Rowdy". Here's a good picture showing the kana for entrance and exit. Having it in English made it sure the non-speakers in the group took the right path (pun intended) to enter the station.

The coaster was best described as quirky. It wasn't fantastic or rowdy but just alright. Situated opposite the ride was a much better attraction. Each person is put inside a sarcophagus and the aim is to see at what point you get scared. You have to hold some metal bars and looking into a small window. If the darkness doesn't get you, the scary sounds played into the tomb might. If the sound doesn't then the electric current run through the metal bars might. If that doesn't then the simulated scorpion sting on the back of the hand should probably do it (You get to watch it crawl past the window before it attacks). Certainly different!

The park was built on a hill and sensibly the big wheel was located at it's summit. The coaster we'd just written was at the bottom. This meant the day was going to be spent ascending and descending the hill. Rather weirdly there wasn't an automated means to get up the hill, which meant that the unfit members of the group would have to undergo some physical exertion to enjoy the park fully.

The park had it's own version of Daidasaurus i.e. a coaster that covers a significant amount of the footprint. Theirs is called Red Falcon. Again the drops weren't exactly steep making it look like a water splash ride more than a coaster.

A lot of the kiddy rides also exist at the bottom of the hill, whilst we didn't bother with the majority of them (there's only so many times you can go round on an elephant and still enjoy it) there was one that stood out and attracted us.

How could you not resist an animatronic animal brass band inviting you into the ride? The ride itself was just a standard "Small World" style dark ride but it was quite cute and fun to ride, although the ride operator couldn't believe us going in there.

In 1947, Hirakata became Osaka's 12th city with a population of over 40,000. They must have been elsewhere on the day we were in town, as once again the park was empty compared to what I'm used to. The drop tower would offer us views of the park in a quicker way than the wheel would.

There wasn't even enough people to fill the wave swinger. It would have been a very slow day had they implemented a policy of only running the rides when they were full. Fortunately common sense prevailed and they wouldn't keep people waiting too long.

Final Frost was a rather strange attraction unique to Japan from what I can tell. It's just a refrigerated walkthrough that offers the perfect respite from a hot day. Why other parks don't do the same thing I have no idea, its such common sense to have this kind of attraction. Needless to say we gave it a go and really enjoyed it, not because there was much to do in there other than walk around freezing cold, but just because it was different. The ride op, (or is that fridge op) enjoyed the fact that we had gone in. With the weather as overcast as it was it wasn't popular on the day.

Onto Red Falcon and wow, there was a queue. We couldn't complain at having to wait around as we'd been extremely fortunate on the trip so far. The ride itself was OK but without the steep drops that we're used to, it wasn't that exciting.

At 4,000 metres in length there was plenty of track to go around. Fortunately not as long as Daida, which is twice as long but still longer than most rides I'd experienced.

There was no reason however why the coaster needed over the shoulder restraints as it was very gentle in nature.

Coaster number 3 was the commonly named "Crazy Mouse". This one was crazy however in that unlike every other Crazy Mouse on the planet this one had it's spinning assembly turned off. The ride as a result was just plain odd, just when you get ready to have it rotate it doesn't bother. I have no reason as to why they run it in this manner. Perhaps they don't know about the switch on the car that will make them spin.

It was also the first mouse coaster that I recall that has steps to the station, usually these things are accessed at ground level. I suspect this is probably because the ride has to be elevated to fit the hillside on which its built.

Underneath the mouse coaster is also this strange game, the closest we have in the UK is perhaps the Crystal Maze thing near Oakwood in Wales. On the way in you're given an egg, either red, blue, yellow or green in colour and you charge it up before entering the main enclosure. Consisting of a huge themed maze you have to search for portals to give further charge to the egg. The faster the egg is fully charged the better the animal that will be hatched from it. Although you don't actually get to see that, it's detailed on the certificate you're given on the way out. As it turned out I did quite well in this game, mostly because I had a young Japanese kid acting as a guide dragging me around the maze to the red portals.

The has two kiddy coasters. This is the first one Peekaboo Town the newest addition to the park and very tame in nature. It was quite a stuggle getting into the cars however due to the lack of leg room and the ride not being designed to cater a fully grown adult. Adopting a cross legged pose I was able to get my go on this.

The other kiddy coaster is E.L.F. which is short for the "Episode of Little Fairies". You're probably thinking "that doesn't look like a kiddy coaster" and you'd be right but it's how the park have marketed it.

Making the way up the hill towards the wheel I passed the main stage built ithe style of an ampitheatre. Why bother installing arena seating when you can use the natural geography to give you the seating pattern that allows everyone to see the stage perfectly.

I thought this was quite a nice touch. When the theatre isn't in use the performers are responsible for the maintenance of the venue. They were all out groundskeeping and giving the place a polish.

A picture taken from the wheel overlooking the park and its hard to believe that all the white track belongs to the same ride. The orange coaster in the foreground is the crrrrrrrrazy mouse.

This is the park's log flume, unique in that it features a lap strap. I can only assume the drop on this was steeper than the coasters hence the need for some sort of safety system. Completely pointless of course.

The Crazy Mouse running nicely beneath the Red Falcon lift hill. The mouse coaster is one of the most common in the world and became rapidly popular following the debut of the first one in Dinosaur Beach in New Jersey.

Here's the clearly obvious looking children's coaster ELF and this looked really impressive. It's actually located near the top of the hill on a slightly different side of the hill to the majority of the park.

Looking down towards the bottom of the hill at the Fantastic Coaster Rowdy ride and the Palm Walk.
From ground level, ELF seemed to be hidden within plenty of trees but from high up the trees don't appear to be that abundant.

A better view overlooking the park and you can see the extent that Red Falcon runs to surrounding a significant number of rides within the park. It's from up here that you realise that the park isn't actually that big.

ELF was proving to be tricky to photograph from the wheel because it was running with quite a bit of speed behind it, unlike Red Falcon which was much slower. It was going to be a good coaster to finish the day on.

Looking down at Peekaboo Town. The final straight on the left featured a kiddy coaster equivalent of air time hills with little bumps that shook you up and down. Great if you're a kid, not so great if riding it in some extreme yoga pose that the adults were having to use to get in.

Having taken my pics on the wheel it was off to give that wooden coaster a go. Fortunately there were plenty of signs pointing the way. The first two characters on the top row read "wood made" with the characters after them reading "ko o su ta a" or "coaster" (the hyphen means extend the sound of the previous character). The main characters read "e ru fu" or "elf" although the Japanese don't distinguish between the "l" and "r" sounds.

Well the kiddy coaster ELF has a height restriction of 1.1 metres so it really is a kiddy coaster. Madness! I thought the mouse was crazy but this was something else.

The ELF track looked quite superb, alas I was unable to get any good ones with the car on it because I was on it at the time and they were only running a single train. Ah well. You can't have everything.

As with Aska at Nara Dreamland you could get to the centre of the ride for some further picture taking opportunity. I was feeling quite confident taking my camera onto the ride, but that's only because it was a children's coaster and it wasn't going to be that bad.

As it turns out, the ride was a lot of fun and easily the best ride in the park. Can you tell the American enthusiasts from the locals? A clue, there are four of them in this picture.

Our time at the park was coming to an end so I made my way out of the park. As you can see this side of the park was dead, with no one in sight whatsoever, but then there weren't any attractions down here.

There were however some raccoons. In an attempt to appeal to kiddies there were some animal enclosures down this side of the hill. We're not taking major species like elephants or monkeys, we'd have to go elsewhere for that. The animals seemed happy enough however.

The last picture of the day is of the rapids ride which seemed to be pretty popular with the locals riding it. I couldn't be bothered going on it however, plus I didn't really have the time.

Hirakata wasn't a bad park really but being aimed at families isn't likely to get any major thrill rides that would give me a reason to visit if I wasn't on a trip. ELF was the best ride there by a long long way.

Osaka

2002-12-12T17:14:00.000-08:00

The night after the parks was spent around the hotel area. A lot of the group were going off to Namba based on our reviews of the previous night. Not wanting to go there again I chose to see what was on the hotel doorstep. The hotels were really really good and probably amongst the best I've stayed in. As a souvenir I bought one of the hotel kimono style bathrobes.

A nice touch from the hotel was the welcome message that was waiting for us in each room. They did everything they could to make our stay enjoyable and asked the organisers after the trip if they could have done anything else. I don't think they could have. Admittedly we had spent a lot of money on the hotels but the level of customer service was extremely high, and I don't think it mattered how much had been spent.

Across the street was a Pachinko parlour, which is the most common gambling game in Japan. The aim of game is to steer ball bearings into scoring holes in a vertical style pinball game. Score enough and you win more ballbearings. To get around the legality of gambling in Japan there is no money on site and you can trade the ballbearings in for a crap gift which you then trade for cash at a booth nearby. I did try playing a game but I was rubbish and the machines made far too much noise for my liking. How people can sit and play this for a length of time I have no idea, and judging by the stacks of trays of ballbearings some players had accumulated they must have been there for a while.

One of the myths that I had of Japan was that Western culture hadn't made much in roads into it. Unfortunately the fast food chains had. I knew McDonalds were there, but it was surprising to see Colonel Saunders in Japan too. Did I see what they had in their bargain buckets here? Of course not, I went elsewhere.

I ended up trying a Bento Box, with a selection of sushi and other Japanese delicacies. I bought it from a 7-11 type place about a mile from the hotel (that's how far I walked). When I gave it to the teller she asked something in Japan, which I'd guessed meant "do you want this heated". I'd guessed this by the wall of microwaves behind her. My guess was right! So I hurried back to the hotel to eat it. Very nice it was too.

It was a big day for Japan that day as the nation was at the polls to vote a new Prime Minister. Similar to the UK the vote using a proportional representation system to elect their members. The election led to a landslide victory to Koizumi's LDP, with the party winning 296 seats, the largest share in postwar Japanese politics.

The trip was taking a bit of a weird turn from this hotel. Our luggage was going to travel to a later hotel whilst we went off elsewhere, so for a couple of days we were travelling light.

Drive to Parc Espana

2002-11-12T18:06:00.000-08:00

The next destination was Parc Espana which was a fair drive away. We were saying goodbye to Osaka and following the south coast of the island towards the Mie prefecture midway between Osaka and Tokyo. Along the way we stopped at a service station, which was a little bit odd to say the least.

It was Ninja themed! Now when I was growing up I was madly into Ninjas so much in fact when asked by my teacher what I wanted to be when I was older I said that. Whilst that dream never materialise (I'd have been seen a mile off for a start) the interest has always been there. Because they're long gone now, I hadn't expected to see any on the trip, so it was cool that I did, even if they weren't real.

We really were out in the middle of nowhere here. After years of decline with their agricultural revenues, Japan is avidly promoting agricultural exports as a way to turn the tables. While still a major food importer, the country has set a new, ambitious goal to double exports of agricultural and marine products amid growing concerns about food security.

Another one of those weird looking modded vans, similar to the ones seen in Disney's car park. I couldn't decide if they looked cool or not but i don't think it's anything that "Pimp My Ride" would ever do to the vans if they were brought in for a refurb.

They would however have to make significant modifications to the suspension on most vehicles if they were to carry a wooden ornament like this. Usually at service stations you would expect to be able to pick up refreshments and something for the kids to read to make a journey more pleasant. No way would you ever think of wanting to pick up a magnificent wooden carving as on offer here. I say "pick up" but I don't think there'd be any way that I could lift it.

A couple more shots taken out of the coach window as we made our way to the park. Mountainous Japan is blessed with many rivers and most of them flow very fast, their waters reaching the ocean not long after leaving mountain valleys and basins The many rivers descending from mountainous areas have done much to mold Japan's topography, creating large and small valleys and basins and producing fan-shaped deltas near the points where they flow into the sea.

Along the way we passed this stunning looking castle. I've not been able to find anything else on it since I've been back. I can only assume that its one of Japan's less known treasures, or I'm just looking in the wrong place completely. Regardless of my incompetence it does look impressive perched atop the mountain. Whereas temples are architecturally subdued, castles in Japan are much more elaborate structures, this one even more so with it's gold roof.

There in the distance is the resort with the lift hill of their coaster Pyrenees, and the Flying Island observation platform standing over the rest of the attractions in the park.

We'd be staying in the hotel complex on the left, granting us back door entry into the park. This park also had a Japanese bath so, as that was one of my things to do, I would be doing it here! But first, the park!

Parc Espana