Tokyo Disneyland 26th March 2007

Tina, Steve and I made our way to Tokyo Disneyland today. It was sooooo busy! It took ages even to wait in line to get into the park. I loved the landscape because there were beautiful gardens there with grass that looked so perfect it was hard to tell whether it was real or fake. It was definitely real though! There were hedges as boarders to every garden and there were pretty flowers in the middle.

We went on as many rides as we possibly could fit into the day. It was hard to get around to everything though because it was so busy. Some lines were a three hour wait! That is almost half the day gone, waiting in a line. It was a little ridiculous having to wait so long. Most of the rides were kiddie rides. They were cute to go on, but some of them were a little babyish. It would be good to take young children to this park. I’m sure kids would get a lot more enjoyment out of it.

The best ride I went on was the Buzz Light Year ride. It was really fun and different to most rides. Tina and I went on it together. We sat in this little spaceship and we each had a little laser gun to use. Every time we flew past a circle with a Z in it, we had to try and shoot at it. Every circle you shoot, you get points for. At the end of the ride, you can see what level you got to depending on how many points you got. I got about 11 000 points and I was on Level Three! I beat Tina because she only got up to Level 2.

Another highlight was looking at the Disney Electrical Parade. They had all these cool Disney characters lit up with thousands of lights – all in different colours. It was so amazing to see. I took some photos of all my favourite characters.




There was about ten minutes to go before the park closed, and we quickly sprinted to Mickey Mouse’s house so that we could meet him. We got there just in time and we got to meet Mickey, take a photo with him, shake his hand, and he even gave Tina and I a kiss! It was cool!

I am glad I went to Tokyo Disneyland, but the next time I go would probably go with kids because it would make it more exciting to see their faces when they go on the rides and see all the characters.

Shopping in Harajuku 25th March 2007

Tina and I went off and did our own thing today, while Steve went to this Animae festival in another part of Tokyo. Tina and I went shopping in the fashion district of Tokyo – Harajuku. There was this big, long street filled with trendy shops where you could buy the coolest, outlandish clothes ever! We pretty much bought the whole of Tokyo that day!

It was lots of fun shopping, but Harajuku also had a great atmosphere. There were lots of young people shopping there and they all had different styles of clothing. They were very loud with their dress sense. We saw one girl with a velvet suit on and a top hat with red paint on her neck making it look like she had cut her neck. There were some other girls who were dressed in black and white dresses and they looked like little maids. They even had the little maid hats on! It was really fun walking down the street and seeing all the different fashions.

We then made our way to Shibuya. This was the place that blew me away the most. When we got out of the train station, we found the busiest intersection in the world. This is a fact, not an exaggeration! When the pedestrian lights went green, thousands upon thousands of people would cross the road. Tina and I stopped for about fifteen minutes just looking at the busy intersection. As soon as the people crossed the road, another crowd of people would stand on the footpaths waiting to cross the next set of lights. It just went on and on like that. Every time the lights went green, thousands of pedestrians would cross the busy road. It was just amazing!

Tina and I enjoyed looking at the shops and the people and it was nice just to be able to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the liveliness of the district. If you ever get to Tokyo, I would definitely recommend you to go to Shibuya.

For dinner, we went to this place called Sweets Paradise. It was an all-you-can-eat restaurant and had the largest selection of cakes and sweets I have ever seen. It was really delicious! We wanted to take a photo of us sitting in the restaurant and we asked the people at the table next to us to take a photo. Then we got them to get in the photo with us and they thought it was hilarious! It was lots of fun!

My new camera in Shinjuku

I bought a new camera! YAY! On our first day in Tokyo, after putting our things in the hotel, we walked around Shinjuku and saw a massive electrical appliances store. We walked in there, found the camera I had been dying to buy, and I bought it! I quickly borrowed Tina’s already charged battery and started taking pictures with it straight away! This is my very first picture taken with my brand new camera!

We looked around the shops in Shinjuku for a while and were really impressed with what we saw. There were people EVERYWHERE! It was so crowded and busy and everyone was dressed really cool. All the guys had cool hair and were dressed in suits and they looked really good. All the girls were dressed to the nines and they all looked really nice too.

That night, Tina and I decided to hit the town in Shinjuku and try and find a place to dance. We walked around for what seemed like about an hour and we couldn’t find anywhere to go. We asked about four people and nobody knew where a good place to dance would be. We were just about to give up, when this African man came up to us and said he would take us to a hip-hop dance club. He took us to one and it was really dead and had no atmosphere so we decided to leave. Then he took us to this other one just down the road and it was the coolest club I have ever been in. It was really small, but there were heaps of guys dancing there and every guy on the dance floor looked like they had just come out of a Brittney Spears film clip! They were amazing dancers. So Tina and I got a drink and sat in awe of these awesome dancers.

Then this old man, who looked like he would have been in his sixties, started dancing on the dance floor. He was a little crazy, maybe a bit eccentric and he obviously loved dancing. I think he went to that club often because everyone seemed to know him. Anyway, he came up to me and got me up dancing. It was just him and me on the dance floor and I felt a little strange because everyone else in the club was looking at us! I soon got over it and ended up having an awesome night dancing with all these brilliant hip hop dancers. They were so cool to dance with and it was totally different to the clubs in Adelaide because they were just there to dance, nothing else…and so was I, so it worked out really well!

I hate train tickets! 24th March 2007

Today was our first day in Tokyo. We bought a shinkansen ticket (bullet train ticket) and were on our way there. I held the ticket in my hot little hands the entire time because I was so scared of losing it! When we arrived in Tokyo, we got out of the train and headed towards the ticket machine where we had to put our tickets through. Just before we got there, Steve asked me if I had my ticket. I looked in my hand and it wasn’t there! I lost my $150 shinkansen ticket and there was nothing I could do about it!

I went to the ticket booth and explained the situation to them in the little Japanese I had. Steve helped me speak to them because he knows more Japanese than I do. The man was getting very impatient with us because he was probably thinking that we were stupid Westerners who had no idea what we were doing…which was kinda true! We asked him what we could do about it and he told us that I had to buy a whole other ticket to get out of the train station! That would have cost me $150 just to get out when I had already paid the money. I was so annoyed. He was thinking one of two things: I was either really stupid or I was a liar. I kept on saying to him that I had lost it and eventually, he got sick of seeing my face (so it seemed) that he just gave me a ticket so I could get through. He must have thought I was stupid. I was happy about that because I would rather have him think I was a stupid than have to pay an extra $150! Tina, Steve and I thanked him so many times and we could just see on his face that he didn’t want to hear our thankyous, he just wanted us to get out of his sight! So we did, as quick as a flash we were out of his sight!

Anyway, I put my ticket through the machine and was so excited that I didn’t have to pay all that extra money. I was free, but I wasn’t free. We still had to put our ticket through the next machine and I realised that I had forgotten to get my ticket out of the previous machine I had gone through. So I lost the second ticket. We then had to spend another ten minutes explaining to the next guy the situation that I had lost my first ticket, then I lost my second ticket…Well this guy was more impatient than the last guy and he just waved his hand to let me through because he didn’t even want to hear my story! So he let me through, not out of kindness, but out of frustration! Well I will never do THAT again, that’s for sure! I tin-assed my way out of that one!

Okayama Wednesday 21st March 2007

The next day, after Universal Studios was a public holiday so Lauren, Tina, Renee and I decided to go on a day trip to Okayama. It took two hours on the train to get there because we got off the fast train and took the slow train half way. We were starving by the time we got there so we went to this really cheap place for lunch. The food was delicious. I ate potato salad, soup, rice and a pork stir fry and it cost me 600yen which is around six dollars. I don’t know why everyone says Japan is so expensive, because it is the cheapest place to eat out. In just about every restaurant I have gone to, I could get a meal for under ten dollars, and descent meals at that price are very hard to come by in Australia!

After lunch, we walked to the gardens and looked around. It was really pretty, but I think the best season to see the gardens would be Summer because funnily enough, in Summer it rains more and everything is green.

While we were strolling through the gardens, we saw this man and woman taking photos after they had just gotten married. The lady was in a traditional Japanese bridal dress and her hair was all up with beautiful clips in it. Her dress was so colourful and she looked like a little Japanese princess! She was so beautiful, so we took a photo of her.

We made our way to the Okayama Castle which is a black castle. Unfortunately, the castle is not the original as they had to rebuild it after World War Two when it was raided by a bomb. There are only three original ancient castles left in Japan and the Himeji Castle is one of them. It was nice to look at, but it had nothing on the Himeji Castle because the Himeji Castle is ancient and had all the original interior and exterior architectural designs. The Okayama Castle was still cool to look at though. We got to sit in a carriage that is used to carry the princess of the castle around. It looked really cool and it was so comfortable to sit in. I fit in it just perfectly. In fact, I think they made that carriage just for me! I was almost going to pick it up and take it with me!

Okayama was a really cool place to go and visit. We missed out on seeing quite a few things there, so it is another place that I have to put on my “Must Go Back and See” list!

The train ride home was almost as packed as the train ride home from Osaka! It was really funny though because just before the train left, there was still a few gaps on the train that people could stand in. Tina said that the train was packed, and I relied back to her, “no, there is still room for at least another ten people to come in” and sure enough, ten more people, no more, no less, came onto the train! I felt like a psychic. So if anyone wants me to tell their future, you can write to me and I will be able to make my predictions!

The next few diary entries will be dedicated to Tokyo. This is where I will be going next. Should be a blast. I can’t wait to tell you all about my expedition! Wish me luck!

The busy train ride back from Universal Studios

After our action-packed busy day in Universal Studios, it was time to go home. We had to pick up our bags from the train station where we had left them so we set off to do that. We were pushing it for time because by that stage, it was 11:00pm and the last train left Osaka not long after that, so we were lucky enough to be able to make the last train home. If not, we would have had to stay in Osaka for an extra night to catch the first morning train back the next day and we didn’t want to do that.

Anyway, we had about ten minutes before we had to catch the train so I quickly went to the toilet. You know how I said I bought these Hello Kitty ears? Well I was still wearing them at the train station. So I came out from the toilet and started walking back to the group when this guy was just starring at my ears because they looked pretty stupid! He wasn’t looking where he was going and he took out this small lady walking along in the station! He almost fell right over and she was so angry at him that he wasn’t looking where he was going. It was the funniest sight because I saw the entire thing and I was bent over laughing my hardest at him. He was all flustered and didn’t know what to do or where to look and he knew that I saw everything. He would have been so embarrassed! Ha! That’s what you get when you look at my Hello Kitty ears! That’ll teach him! I always knew Hello Kitty was a bit cheeky!

We got to the platform we needed to be on and we were waiting in the line and as the train pulled up, it was so packed and busy that we just got pushed onto the train by all the people behind us. There were piles and piles of people pouring into this tiny train – it was insane! I couldn’t believe how busy this train was.

It was so busy and packed that it was funny. So there we were, the only Westerners on the train, cracking up laughing because it was so packed, while everyone else on the train was silent and serious. In case you didn’t know, there is a special train etiquette where you are not supposed to make much noise while you are on a train because it is the time when people rest and sleep. So we were being rowdy and noisy and we couldn’t help it because it was so funny being packed in like a sardine the way we were.

I was holding my overnight back and there was this little old man standing next to me bent over because it was too busy for him to stand up straight. My bag was shoved into his stomach and I was fully leaning on him. The poor man was saying, “itai, itai” which means, “it hurts” and I felt so bad. Then the train stopped and this huge pile of people came rushing out of the train. We just had to go with it and walk out with the people even though we wanted to stay on the train. This poor little old man was still holding onto my bag through the rush while he was trying to get out of the train. I tell you what, I bet he was over the moon when he got to get off that train!

Renee was cracking up laughing at the entire situation because she was in the worst position. One leg was facing one way and the other leg was facing the other way and she felt so unco. Then to top it off, she was fully pushing into people every time the train veered in another direction. It was just the funniest thing to experience and we knew we weren’t supposed to be laughing, but we just couldn’t help ourselves. While we were on that train, we weren’t the most popular people in the world! Sometimes, you just have to laugh, though!

We ended up getting home at 1:00am and were absolutely STUFFED from a literally jam-packed day!

Universal Studios, Osaka 20th March 2007

Universal Studios is a theme park in Japan that is similar to Dreamworld and Movie World in the Gold Coast. I took the day off school on Tuesday to go to Universal Studios with Tina, Steve, Lauren, Renee, Steve, Karen and Jodi. So we had a pretty big group to go with, but it was cool because the atmosphere was so exciting and we were all pumped because it looked so cool!

When we first got to the park, I saw this robot standing around talking to people, but it was a Japanese robot and couldn’t understand English. I said, “konichiwa” to it and it said, “konichiwa” back to me! Then it looked at me and shook my hand and said, “hajimimashite” which means “nice to meet you”. I was so excited that I was having a conversation in Japanese with a robot!

Then we got inside the park and went on some really cool rides. We firstly went on the ET ride. It was OK, but it was a sort of kids ride. We firstly had to walk through the forest where E.T. was and then after we finished walking through the forest we went on the cars and they took us through E.T.’s land. It was cute to see how they had made the sets.

While we were waiting in the line, these sixth grade students were excited that they were standing next to foreigners and they were saying hello to us and we talked to them for ages in the line. Not that I really knew what they were saying to me, but it was still cool that we could communicate with the little Japanese that we knew. They were really cute. I wanted to take them all back to Australia so that I could teach them coz they were so nice. One of the boys had a whole bag full of lollies that he gave to us because he liked us! I could imagine how difficult it would be for a kid to part with a bag full of lollies just to give them to a stranger, so I thought it was really generous of him! Then we took a big group shot of them when we got out of the ride so that we could remember them. I felt like a movie star in the line because they kept on taking photos of us! They were funny!

After the E.T ride, we went on the roller coaster. It was the coolest roller coaster I have ever been on. In their advertisement poster, they had a picture of some people on a roller coaster riding under a rainbow in mid-air with all stars and stripes around them. I thought we were going to get to ride under a rainbow in mid-air, but it wasn’t so! Talk about false advertising! It was still really cool though. We were laughing the entire time!

The ride that took the cake that day was the Spiderman ride. It was the BEST ride I have ever been on in my life and THAT is a big call! It was a 4-D ride where we got to sit in this car thingy and it would go around a circuit and we had to wear special 3-D glasses to see things popping out at us. All of these villains would come up to our car and sit on the edge of it and would be just about to get us when all of a sudden, Spiderman would come to our rescue and save us! He would always come at the very last second just as they were about to kill us. It was so exciting. I really thought they were going to get me because it looked and felt so real!

Then at one stage, we were falling from this building and we were about to land on the ground when Spiderman made a special web to cushion our fall. That was a close call! He saved us so many times that I fell in love with him by the end of the ride. I almost died about seven times in that ride, but thanks to Spiderman, I am still alive! I can now openly say that Spiderman is truly my hero!

I also saw a short movie of Shrek and The Terminator 2 in 4-D which was also really cool. Again, things were popping out in front of me all the time, and it was really interactive in the fact that I could feel the wind on my face, I could feel the spit go on me when the donkey sneezed, I could feel the spiders crawling up my legs on the ground. It felt like I was actually in the movie! Maybe one day all movies will be like that.

I went a bit overboard with the souvenirs though. I got all this gimmick stuff that I really didn’t need, but I just wanted at the time. Tina, Lauren and I bought these Hello Kitty ears with bows and fake jewels on them. They were heaps cute and we wore them all day.


All in all, Universal Studios in Osaka, Japan was brilliant. I didn’t get to go on all the rides and do everything in the park because there wasn’t enough time, so I would love to go back there. It was so cool though and I would recommend you to go there if you ever get a chance to go to Japan.