From Arizona to Japan! Japan and TDR Trip Report Nov 10-24, 2012!

[disneyobsessed808]

So things might start to get blurry. It's been more than a week since I actually was in Osaka.

The only thing we really did this day was go to Osaka Castle and ride the Ferris Wheel.

So we headed out on the Osaka subway line, which compared to Kyoto's subway, was a breeze to navigate. The subway to Osaka castle, exits directly to Osaka Castle Park.

Cool fountain and slide at the front of the park

View of the castle from beyond the outer and inner moat. We really need more moats in the United States.

View from the 8th floor of Osaka castle.

It really was a lovely park, so that was a really nice bonus as well

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd...._=1431178066_b9f3acd7d1f2a08a7263ef48dbe29496

We then headed for a restaurant near Osaka Aquarium for lunch. Nearby there was a huge ferris wheel. Japan loves their ferris wheels. I saw at least 6 during the trip to Fu kuoka on the bullet train and two were in pretty small towns.

The Ferris Wheel was pretty awesome and gave you great views of the bay and of the city. The worst part was that as we approached the top, it started raining and hailing so it was really loud in there and nerve-racking

We then headed to America Town to do some shopping - mainly at record stores for my friend, but I also got to go to the Disney store for vinylmation. The area had quite a few interesting shops, including this gem which I'm pretty sure was not officially licensed.

Sweet manhole cover.

After that I mainly waited for Andy to finish record store shopping, and we went to dinner at Nataraj, an Indian restaurant with vegan options. On our way to dinner, we actually got lost, but fortunately found it in time. The japanese address system is ridiculous!

Also some random thoughts about Japan.

- The Japan address system is crazy. It's good Andy has a phone here or we would be lost all the time for sure.
- No Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke. Boo!
- Lots of Kawaii stuff here.

Next up: ***uoka and Sumo!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Loving the fall colour in your pictures. Looks like you're having a great time.

Thanks for the updates!

 

[disneyobsessed808]

Well, I'm up at 4:51 due to jet lag and sleeping on the plane, now that I am back in AZ.

The next day we headed to Fu kuoka, for what was undoubtedly one of the non-Disney highlights of the trip. We went to see a sumo tournament.

So the sumo tournament is an all-day affair, lasting from 8 am to 6 pm or so, with the major players starting around 4 pm.

We got a late start to the day (well, late for me), and ended up leaving from Osaka to Fu kuoka around 11 am. We ended up getting there to Fu kuoka around 1:30 pm. I was actually really impressed with Fu kuoka, as the city looked very nice and modern. My friend tells me it is one of the most livable cities in the world.

So it was too early to head to the hotel to check in, we headed via bus to the Kokusai Center for the tournament with our luggage, thinking there would be lockers at the center for us to store our stuff. Of course, when we got there, we didn't see lockers, so we had to hoof it back to Hakata Station to find lockers big enough for our luggage. (This is when my friend was starting to get annoying because he was getting so flustered unnecessarily)

On the way there, we saw some lower level sumo doing some touring of their own.

So after walking back to the station and then bussing it back to the Kokusai Center, we finally got into the venue. Also it turned out they did have lockers, though they were too small for our lockers anyway.

When I was little, there were three sumo wrestlers from Hawaii (where I am from) that were doing very well in Japan, so sometimes sumo tournaments would be on tv, so it was cool to see a tournament in real life.

(Also, I am a big guy, so two people commented to my friend, who speaks Japanese, about the stables recruiting me )

While the bouts are usually only a few seconds long, it really is amazing to see these athletes move. For big guys, a lot of them are pretty agile.

I have many more pictures, but am not sure of the rules here regarding the content, since they are almost bordering on nude. :lol:

They also had these awesome sumo cookies for omiyage.

After the tournament, we walked 20 minutes to the Tenjin area to visit a vegan restaurant, that we found out had moved when we got there. At this point, my friend was really freaking out, so I decided to hail a cab to head to another vegan restaurant.

It was a really cute little restaurant. But we ended up eating some gyoza, karaage (fried) soy chicken, and other stuff I forgot to take a picture of. He was in much better spirits after that

After that, we headed back to Hakata station to get our luggage and walked to our hotel. the hotel hokke club. Mo pictures, but this was actually the biggest room we stayed in. Not huge, but it was an okay size. the place had a public bath as well, which was pretty relaxing.

coming soon: day 6 in fu kuoka

 

[PrincessInOz]

Love the sumo pictures; such a shame about Disboard rules!

Was that soy chicken a combination of soy/bean curd and chicken or was it a mock-chicken thing?

 

[disneyobsessed808]

Love the sumo pictures; such a shame about Disboard rules!

Was that soy chicken a combination of soy/bean curd and chicken or was it a mock-chicken thing?

it was a mock chicken. i ate mock karaage chicken on three occasions and all were pretty good

 

[afnaechiquita]

Looks like a really fun trip so far!! You're giving me ideas for what to do the next time I make it up there

Can't wait to see the Disney portion!

 

[disneyobsessed808]

It's ridiculous that I have to type Fu kuoka, instead of ***uoka.

Anyway, it was mostly a slow day in that we didn't do that much sightseeing, and I mostly waited for my friend as he did record store shopping.

The main thing we did was head to Canal City to shop. It's a pretty neat mall, with a lot of different stores, including a Disney store, where I got some vinylmation.

One of the coolest stores in there was Muji which was essentially a smaller department store. I really liked the displays they had in there. Floating kitchen tools and toothbrushes!

We then headed over to the Tenjin area so that my friend could do some record store shopping. It was a nice walk. It even went through the "red light district" though it was still pretty clean. A few of the stores had older men or women outside trying to convince us to come in. They were barking up the wrong tree.

Once we arrived at the record stores, I was basically waiting for about three hours. I strolled around the area as I waited, and got lost. I was pretty much freaking out at this time, so I turned on my roaming...bad idea. I turned it on for less than a minute and incurred a $50 charge. Eventually, I managed to find my way back again. Thank goodness. Even after that, my friend was still shopping, so this time I headed just one block to the Mitsukoshi store.

Japanese department stores are so awesome, especially the basements full of food stands! The variety is awesome and everything is so cool. US department stores need these food basements! : They had stands for baked goods, croquettes, dim sum, sushi, sweets and much much more.

At this point it was 15:30, and we had missed the lunch hours at most vegetarian restaurants. So we went back to the same place we visited last night. They had cafe hours, and weren't serving lunch, but were nice enough to fix up something for us since we had a nice chat with them before (or at least Andy did).

More record store shopping after that. As Andy did that, I visited a little temple that was in the area.

Later that night, we headed back to Osaka to stay in the smallest room I have ever stayed in in my life. The bed was flush against the desk and walls. One cool thing about the bed though was that you could raise it so that you could have more space when not using it.

Not raised

Raised

Cool, though I was afraid that Andy might try to squish me.

Next up: Another day in Kyoto.

 

[disneyobsessed808]

On Day 7, Andy and I decided to split up. He wanted to do more record store shopping, so while we planned to visit Kyoto together, he just decided to stay in Osaka, while I went to Kyoto and met his friend Mitsu there (Mitsu is the friend we were staying with in Tokyo).

I arrived in Kyoto around 8:30, where I met Mitsu. He had taken the bullet train over for the day so that he could visit some of Kyoto.

At the train station, we stopped by the Information Center where they sold the 500 yen day bus pass. Again, these were very helpful. With the bus map they give you it was relatively easily to figure out how to get where.

First up, we went to Kinkaku-ji or the Golden Pavilion. Of all the places we visited in Japan, it was the most picturesque. It really is just a beautiful sight. Even though it was raining, it actually made it quite serene and beautiful.

There were actually a ton of people there.

We then headed two bus stops over to Ryoan-ji, famous for its Rock Garden. The temple had a nice pond.

And while it was just rocks, there was something incredibly peaceful and calming about it.

After that, we headed two more bus stops over to Ninna-ji, as the person at the information center had suggested.

After that we headed to the downtown area to a Takashimaya department store. It had a Disney Store inside of it, so I could buy one more blind box and so that we could buy our Tokyo Disneyland tickets.

I asked to head down to the basement to check out the food, where they had these cute buns.

We headed up to the restaurant floors to grab lunch. (I cheated on my vegetarian diet, since Mitsu is definitely not a vegetarian). We got some dim sum and chinese noodles which were delicious.

As it turns out, it was raining all day in Kyoto, and by mid-day it was really coming down, so that put a damper on our plans. I was hoping to visit Arishiyama and possibly, Fushimi Inari, but I was over the rain. We decided to get our tickets for the shinkansen back to Tokyo, and we headed back for the day.

Coming up: Tokyo Disneyland!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Nice update. Lots of rain in Kyoto.

So...you're pretty much a vegetarian? My DH is a vegetarian, although he eats seafood. We love the restaurants that serve the mock-meat substitutes in Asia, if it is done well.

Looking forward to your posts on TDL.

 

[disneyobsessed808]

So...you're pretty much a vegetarian? My DH is a vegetarian, although he eats seafood. We love the restaurants that serve the mock-meat substitutes in Asia, if it is done well.

Pretty much, though I cheat on occasion. Sometimes those poor little animals are just too delicious.

There are some great vegan restaurants in L.A. and even in Phoenix that serve the mock-meat. Sometimes the Asian restaurants are more hit or miss for me. Some places do it really well, and in fact, most of the mock-meat we had in Japan was really delicious. Just gotta find places that do it really well.

 

[disneyobsessed808]

The part you've finally been waiting for...TOKYO DISNEY RESORT.

I actually got to spend three days at the resort. The first two days at Disneyland and the third day at DisneySea. Andy didn't come with me on the second day, so while I could have hopped on the third day, Andy could not.

(For those not in the know TDR tickets are weird. If you have multiday passes, they must be used in consecutive days, on the first two days, you can only visit one park each and you have to pick them ahead of time, and only on the third day on, can you hop parks).

I chose Disneyland on the second day for myself, because Andy convinced me that there was more to do there. I kind of regret not going to DisneySea twice, but we got to go on every ride at DisneySea anyway.

So we actually got a late start. We had to make lunch the night before, since there is only one vegan option in the park and didn't want to eat there twice. In the process, we got into a huge fight that carried into the morning, so while we were up in time, our stubbornness prevented us from leaving early.

Anyway, we finally got to the resort around 10:30 am. It was a Sunday and it was CROWDED. There was a CM just outside Maihama station that was apparently announcing that tickets were sold out over his megaphone. Good thing we got them in advance. We entered the gates, where they have you scan your barcode, and were greeted by this frightful sight.

The Fairy Godmother is the SCARIEST CHARACTER EVER. She really should be a face character.

We walked through Main St---, erm, World Bazaar and headed for Tomorrowland. This should give you an idea of how packed it was.

The wait for everything in the area was insane. Monster's Inc was 2-3 hours. Space Mountain was 2 hours, but Space Mountain still had fastpasses, so we decided to line up for that.

Yes, that's the line to get the fastpass. After picking up our fastpass, we headed back through World Bazaar to go on over to Pirates, since that had one of the shortest waits at 40 minutes. (Andy was able to visit the Japanese Disney website version of Mobile Magic/Mousewait to find the current wait times. It's in Japanese only and requires you to answer a short survey apparently).

The ride is essentially the same as the Disneyland version with a few slight different scenes (for example in the dog/prisoner scene, the dog is close enough that one of the imprisoned pirates could have grabbed the key). Still it was nice to get on a ride. The queue, however, was deceptively long!

Also, it was nice to see the Christmas decorations, but for some reason I wasn't that impressed or I didn't care about them as much. I love decorations at Disneyland, but they didn't seem as impressive - possibly because I was more interested in the uniqueness of Tokyo Disneyland and also because Tokyo Disneyland is more spacious (in terms of walkways) and less intimate than Disneyland CA.

Back to the trip, we exited through the gift shop and saw these awesome little lego toys. I, just had to buy a Pooh one!

We walked through the rest of Adventureland (the real Adventureland portion and not the New Orleans square portion), and saw possibly the coolest holiday decorations.

Stitch is HUGE in Japan, even the Tiki Room is dedicated to him. (We did see that later). We also walked by Westernland. Didn't spend much time in the land since Big Thunder Mountain was closed (as was Star Tours, and Buzz...BOO!).

So we approached Splash Mountain and saw that there was a 2 hour + wait.

Fortunately, from reading other trip reports, I knew there was a single rider line. Andy was skeptical saying they only had it open on some days, but I pushed him to ask a cast member, and the single rider option was available, essentially, you just went through the fastpass line, and once they collected the fastpass tickets, you bypassed the rest of the regular line. There was NO ONE else in the single rider line, so our wait was only 15 to 20 minutes. Hooray! In fact, I ended up getting my own row (I wonder if it was because I am larger).

(The view from Splash Mountain).

Now the Splash Mountain here is slightly different from the DL version I am used to. First, they have a weird owl in the queue, who naps, only to wake up and give you warnings. Also, I feel like all the rooms in the ride are smaller and things are closer together. There are quite a few neat differences, that may be closer to the MK version. Finally, the ride is designed so you barely get wet, which to me, is the point of Splash Mountain. I guess its for the best as the Japanese visitors in the boat with me, did not like the mist that sprayed after the big splash.

Next up, we headed to It's a Small World, which was decked out for the holidays.

Normally, Andy would not wait for this ride in the US, but the waits for everything were so long that he just wanted to find the rides with the shortest waits and it was only 35 minutes long. In the line we ate our veggie sushi.

Another thing I noticed, especially for this ride, was that the single file line system/queue is not utilized as much here until you actually get in the building. Outside, they had just a general waiting "line" that was pretty much 7 people across. We had to watch other to make sure they were not cutting and that we were not cutting (okay, I was less careful about that).

Again, the ride was pretty similar to the Disneyland holiday version, pre-Disney characters. I think the water goes out further to the scenes, but it's still pretty similar and just as fun. As a side note, I told Andy that WDW didn't have the facade, and he was shocked, saying "The facade is part of the experience!" I concur!

Stay tuned for the next installment.

 

[PrincessInOz]

Sold out???


WOW! Busy day at the park. Remind me to avoid November in TDL!

 

[disneyobsessed808]

Sold out???


WOW! Busy day at the park. Remind me to avoid November in TDL!

I was really surprised. The last time I went was in the middle of Summer but it was much much lighter in terms of crowds.

 

[disneyobsessed808]

After riding It's a Small World, we headed over to the Pooh shop to do some shopping, then off to Toontown to explore a little more.

I had really wanted to see the Goofy's Paint and Play house, but the wait was 60 minutes long. I didn't want to see it that much, so we passed. It was pretty fun to see the Christmas decorations in Toontown.

(As a side note, we came on a Sunday to meet Andy's friends, but both of them flaked. Annoying! Especially since we could have gone Tuesday through Thursday instead, and we could have used our Rail Passes for the full 7 days instead.)

The wait for Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin wasn't too bad so we decided to get on that. It seemed to be essentially the same as the DLR version.

We then headed through Tomorrowland, and stopped by Tomorrowland Terrace to get some fries. Literally, the only other thing Andy could eat that was a quick service option. I also got a soda - I love how their large sodas are American small sodas. I also like the different flavors of sodas - though I wish they had diet soda in Japan. We continued to walk through the park, passing by the castle to go on Haunted Mansion Holiday.

So we got into the 2 hour line for Haunted Mansion Holiday. Thankfully, the Santa Village parade stopped right as we got into the line, so we were able to enjoy that for the first 20 - 30 minutes. I'm personally not big on parades, but it was a nice distraction from just waiting.

One thing I thought was interesting was the different characters they have at Tokyo Disney. The Three Little Pigs have their own float. Why?! Are they popular there? They aren't particularly cute IMO. They even have mugs and other merchandise dedicated to them.

Finally, after hours of waiting we finally got onto the ride

The ride itself is pretty much similar to the DL version, though it has more rooms like the WDW version. There are a few added touches because of the additional rooms, and Jack and Sally make an appearance at the beginning of the ride. The Jack and Sally animatronics there are really great. I do miss the Gingerbread House that DLR does.

After that we decided to shop a bit, as we waited for the Electrical Parade to start so we could get onto Pooh with a shorter wait.

Stay tuned for the rest of the day!

 

[disneyobsessed808]

So we did some shopping, since we had about 1.5 hours to kill before the Parade started at 7:30 pm. We walked around World Bazaar and Fantasyland to see if there were any cool souvenirs we could find...which we did, so I'll include a post later. We thought about going to see Philharmagic, as I fell asleep in the show when I went to Disney World and never got to see it. But I wasn't familiar with the show, and they didn't have English translation (I went to see it the next day and found out it wasn't really needed.)

Ten minutes before the parade was about to start, we headed on over to Pooh's Hunny Hunt. While the wait was well over two hours for most of the day, since so many people watch the electrical parade, during that time it was only 45 minutes (even going down to 35 minutes at one point).

The queue for this ride is awesome sauce! It's like you're walking into a beautifully illustrated book.

I told my mom that the Pooh ride is the best ride in both parks, in my opinion. She was saying "How could that be?". Well, as many on this board know, it really is an awesome ride.

When you get in the hunny pot, the ride is NOTHING like the pooh rides in the states. They are trackless ride vehicles, and it's almost like their dancing with one another. The scenes are so much more vivid and visually appealing than the scenes in the US versions, and they include some fun surprises that go wayyyyy beyond any other dark/fantasyland type ride. It is really a travesty that the US went the cheap route with their versions, because they do not even come close.

Naturally as you exit the ride, you come into a gift shop with TONS of pooh stuff. I remember when Pooh's corner at Disneyland had mostly pooh merch, but even then it didn't come close to the shopping nirvana this place was.

There were so many Pooh things, that I could hardly decide what to buy. Of course I got myself a few things. I did want to buy some plushes, but the plush toys there are CRAZY expensive. 1500 yen for a beanie baby sized plush!? No thanks. One of the things I did get was this awesome hat which I ended up wearing for the rest of the trip. I will definitely be wearing it on my next trip to DLR.

After Pooh we did some more exploring. I was kind of surprised (not in a good way) by some of the merchandise they had in Westernland, including some tomahawks and kokopelli.

We decided to watch the Tiki Room with Stitch. Now, Andy knew what they were saying but I really had no clue as to what the story line was. However, it did seem like a very fun show.

We saved the most popular or rather generally longest wait for last. Monster's Inc Ride and Go Seek. It was about 9:15 when we got in line, and the wait was about an hour, so it wasn't too bad. We went on the ride during my previous trip to Japan, and figured since the ride was a bit older now, that there would be less demand. NOPE. Still mostly 2 hours+ all day.

The last time I went on this ride, I didn't quite understand the point of the flashlights. But this time the explanation video in the queue helped me figure out what you were supposed to do with them and once you got on the ride, you could tell which flashlight you had, because each light had a unique character being beamed out (like the batman signal, but with mike, sully, boo, or roz, etc). Knowing this improved the experience so much. I've read that some people think the ride is no better than the DCA version. NONSENSE! I don't get anyone who says that - they might as well be on crack. Like the Pooh ride, it is much better than its California counterpart. Not only does the interactivity make it a unique ride each time; the animatronics and set design are top notch. A small example - their mouths move with their dialogue, something you don't find in DCA's version. I really love this ride, and it is a close second to Pooh for me.

Once we got out of the ride, the park was closed. We headed down World Bazaar and headed back to the apartment.

Up next: Day 9 - Tokyo Disneyland

 

[PrincessInOz]

WOW! Those merch of Pooh looks amazing. Love the hat, too.

Interesting to see that you think some of the TDL rides are so much better than those in the US. Keep it coming. It's a compelling argument to go visit Tokyo.

 

[disneyobsessed808]

i've been slacking. sorry, everyone! just been busy with holiday shopping and went on a trip to vegas last week.

 

[PrincessInOz]

No rush....when you're ready.

 

[vettegirl]

Really enjoying your review!

 

[disneyobsessed808]

And I'm back.

Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been traveling even more. Went to Vegas, then Hawaii for Christmas, and Disneyland for New Year's Eve! It's been a fun month for travel.

I will now pick up where I left off and try to remember as much as I can based on the pictures.

On Day 9, I actually headed into Tokyo Disneyland by myself. It was my first time going anywhere by myself in Japan, though fortunately, I didn't get lost. (Though I did get onto the wrong platform and onto the wrong train at first. Good thing I realized it before the train left).

I arrived at TDL around 7:30 and the lines were pretty much full to get into the parks. The park opened at 8:30 that day, and guests of the hotel were allowed in at 8:15, I guess.

The first thing I did when I got in the gates was to sprint to Monster's Inc for a fastpass. I got to the fastpass line at 8:35, and this is what I saw

Five minutes in and two hours later already, with a 60 minute standby. CRAZY.

After that I did a lot of slow, lazy touring with many breaks. My feet were absolutely killing me at that point from so much walking in Japan. I'm a big guy with big feet and the touring was taking its toll.

I did decide to buy a Donald Philharmagic popcorn bucket, giving up on finding a Pooh bucket. The only other buckets I saw were the Snowman and weird Stocking bucket. I was super bummed that they didn't have a Pooh bucket for sale

I do love the popcorn they have there, especially the shoyu butter and strawberry flavor in TDS.

After that, I did a lot of wandering around just taking in the sights, taking pictures of some of the Christmas decorations. I went on the train ride, which was a nice pleasant diversion. The train doesn't go around the entire park and you get on/off at the same point due to Japan's transportation laws.

There are some really nice views of the River and Westernland from the train.

I then headed back into Tomorrowland to redeem my fastpass for Monster's Inc. I really love this ride. It is so well done and fun.

After even more walking around, I headed outside of the park to check out the Ikspiari and Disneyland Hotel.The hotel is beautiful. I also took a picture of the trams which were decorated with Toy Story Midway Mania decals

I ate lunch at the Buffet in the hotel. It was okay, but the variety was sort of small. I headed to Ikspiari mainly to visit the Disney Store there and see if they had vinylmation trading. No dice, as they only trade at a certain time, but it was fun to walk around the area.

I then walked back through the park to go to Tom Sawyer and picked up a Strawberry and Cream bun...pretty yummmy!

Next up was Tom Sawyer Island. The Tom Sawyer Island at TDL is a lot more fun than the one at Disneyland. In fact, the one at Disneyland does not even compare. I don't remember the WDW one, but the island is so cool there. There are so many places to explore, fun bridges, water features and lots of nooks and crannies (many of which I could not fit myself into).

This is where it becomes less clear, as I have no more pictures from that day.

By the time I left Tom Sawyer Island, it was starting to get dark. I walked over to Toontown to explore and had some Corn Potage (Soup?) Popcorn. WEIRD! Like creamed corn flavored but very sweet.

As the sun set, I decided that I would go on Philharmagic. It was a pretty short 20 minute wait. The waits for all the rides had been crazy all day and still 20 minutes is pretty long for a show (20 minutes before we got into lobby area). In the lobby, my popcorn bucket fell and it broke , spilling popcorn everywhere. Oh well, someone was quickly by to clean it up as I profusely apologized.

The show was fun - having never seen it at WDW (I fell asleep the first time, and I was thankful that I could understand the story without knowing Japanese).

Once I left that I decided to wait until the 7:30 pm Parade started so that I could hop on Pooh with a relatively short wait. At 7:20ish I got in line with a 45 minute wait. Pooh is super awesome as well, and I still wish they had put it in the CA version.

I was soooooooo exhausted at that point, that I headed back to my friend's apartment after I got off that ride. The park closed at 10, but I could not have survived another 2 hours.

After all, I wanted to be ready for Disney Sea the next day!