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

Postcard from Shinjuku

At or around 630 in the morning of Sunday, August 5th 2007, we landed in a William Gibson novella. (Which one? Probably "The Gernsback Continuum.")

For someone who--as I keep informing anyone who cares to listen--had never ventured beyond his country's borders before, let alone experienced air travel, and who had hitherto spent the overwhelming bulk of his years within the Western Australian postcode of 6025, nothing could have prepared me for the vista that greeted us as we traveled along the expressway between Narita Airport and Shinjuku. (Incidentally--just to give you some idea of the enormity of the place--that's a journey of 50km.)

Skyscrapers. Skyscrapers, skyscrapers, skyscrapers. Stretching from horizon to horizon. Not your dull, prosaic, conservative Western Australian Bankwest-style skyscrapers either, but the very definition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "stately pleasure domes." As far as the eye can see. (Did I mention that already?) Case in point: the view from our hotel room in Shinjuku, an area to the east of central Tokyo, looking east and south-east. (I think.)

That's about as many pictures as I can post for now. All of our photos are on Emma's computer, which is currently out of battery power, so I'll have to give you the grand tour of Shinjuku on a future occasion. And rest assured it is even more breathtaking at night.

On the downside, we haven't really had much opportunity to explore Tokyo, given that yesterday was officially the first day on the job and we have been locked up in seminars for most of the past two days. On Sunday, jetlagged as we all were, a group of us JETs headed across to Akihabara (a.k.a "Electric Town"), which is apparently a mecca for electronics enthusiasts. (We saw the very same camera we bought last year in David Jones in a Wanneroo Market-style stall, selling for approximately what we paid.) Unfortunately, Emma's stomach did not agree with the nine-and-a-half hour economy-class flight from Sydney the previous night, and when we stopped at a sushi bar for lunch, the fragrance of pork and rice, along with the salty miso soup, somewhat stretched the friendship with her still-upset entrails (which was a shame--I thought it was delicious--the meal, that is, not the entrails). And I have forgotten to mention the absolutely stifling Tokyo summer heat, which wasn't helping matters much either. So we headed back to the hotel early--having tried and failed to identify which train to catch (we were rescued at the last minute by a fellow JET, Michelle, who had been to Tokyo previously). But we have since sampled Tokyo's nightlife--including a venue strangely reminiscent of the Hip-E Club--but more on that in a future post.

Tomorrow we board the famous shinkansen (bullet train) for Hyogo prefecture and our new lives. But we definitely plan on coming back to Tokyo.