Tokyo Disney Sea

(Preface: You'll find that if you double-click most of the photos in this post, you'll be taken to a slideshow)

Day one in Tokyo: Matt hearts beer

Tokyo Disney Sea is cool! All my reservations, that a visit to the Disney franchise as an adult would mar precious childhood memories of delightful days spent exploring the original theme park in Los Angeles with my brother and parents, were immediately dissipated upon our entry. Once inside, we met with a shiny blue and gold globe that was dancing on water, and from that point on we were dancing on wonderment and pure childish enjoyment.

Mediterranean Harbour & American Waterfront

The whole attraction is called Tokyo Disney Resort and is made up of two theme parks, Tokyo Disney Sea (for adults) and Tokyo Disney Land (for kids), which are connected by a monorail that sports very cute Mickey silloutte shaped windows. However, separate tickets are needed for entry into each park, and we only had one day to play with, so we opted for TDS as some of the other ALTs we went with had already been to TDL.

Mysterious Island

Mermaid Lagoon

Arabian Coast

While the place just screams rampant commercialism, and everything is shiny and perfectly painted, it was incredibly easy to forget any niggling bleeding-heart/critical-thinking instincts and get caught up in the spectacle and excitement. The best bits were the Indiana Jones ride (in the "Lost River Delta" section of the park--click the image to the left to see the slideshow--where we had to wait 100 minutes in line), Journey to the Centre of the Earth ride (luckily we got a fast pass to this one earlier in the day and it only a 10 min wait), Raging Spirits roller coaster with its 360 degree turn, the Little Mermaid live show (which involved puppetry and a lot of suspended rhythmic gymnastics) and Aladdin’s Magic Lamp Theatre. Thankfully this last show came with a DS Nintendo style translator to allow us to understand the story, as well as allowing us to sport some obviously couture 3D glasses which brought the genie's magic to multi-dimensional life, not to mention the automated seats that gave us a surprising kick up the butt.

As you can tell, we had a fantastic long weekend, and we really appreciate Shibata-sensei's help in organising the trip. Matt's last day could have been better: evidently something he ate at Mister Donuts on Sunday morning--probably the frankfurt-in-pastry thing the clerk neglected to heat up--strenuously disagreed with him. Fortunately he made it home still bearing the contents of his stomach, but he tells me that it was touch-and-go on the flight from Tokyo to Osaka, where he was seated next to an old man who possessed a very vocal digestive system and whose red wine and beer nuts were repeating on him at the most inopportune of times. Still, it wasn't all bad news . . .

Matt hearts the election result

Matt and Emma's (Very Brief) Guide to the Federal Election (Senate)

Emma and I have recently received our postal vote forms, and we've been discussing who we will vote for (and in what order of preference). For those JETs who are reading this, the Australian Embassy in Japan website has information on overseas voting, but you basically have a choice of either pre-poll voting at your nearest Australian consulate, voting at the Embassy or at a selection of consulates on polling day, or postal voting (a form for which is available here).

If you want detailed information on how to vote, your best bet is to consult the relevant pages at the Australian Electoral Commission website:
How to vote for a Member of the House of Representatives
How to vote for a Member of the Senate
But the long and short of it is that at the polling booth (or in the mail, if you're postal-voting), you'll receive a green House of Representatives ballot paper and a white Senate ballot paper. While on the House of Reps paper you must mark all of the boxes in order of preference, the Senate ballot paper is slightly more complicated. There you have the option of either marking all of the boxes below the big black line in order of preference, or placing a "1" in the box next to the party you want to vote for above the line (leaving all other boxes unmarked).

Now, remember: Australia has a preferential voting system, and this includes voting for Members of the Senate. Each party (actually each "group" on the Senate ballot paper: candidates for a particular political party are grouped together, but so also are some independents) lodges with the AEC a full ticket of preferences to all candidates who appear on the ballot paper. It's called a group ticket. Why is this important? Because if you vote above the line, you're consenting to having your preferences allocated according to the group ticket. Apparently more than 95% of voters use this option--this is why you hear of various parties doing "preference deals" and so forth--and I'm betting that relatively few of these are aware of its implications. If you're thinking of voting above the line, I suggest you take a bit of time to look at your state's group voting tickets first.

Anyway, here are the websites of the parties (and independents) that appear on this year's Senate ballot paper:
Nationals
Citizen's Electoral Council
Christian Democratic Party
Non-Custodial Parents Party (Equal Parenting)
Democratic Labor Party
Liberal
Australian Democrats
One Nation WA
Family First
Senator On-Line
Carers Alliance
Australian Labor Party
Eric Wynne (Christian Independent)
Kevin Fitzgerald (Independent)
Climate Change Coalition
Socialist Alliance
Jennifer Armstrong (Secular Party of Australia)
Michael Tan (Secular Party of Australia)
What Women Want (Australia)
Conservatives for Climate and Environment
LDP
The Greens
Richard McNaught (Independent)
Edward Dabrowski (Independent)