Universal Studios Japan

After our night on the town in Kobe, we planned to get up early and go to Universal Studios Japan, in Osaka. Unfortunately, we were held up by some trouble at the hotel during checkout and arrived over an hour later than we wanted to. When we got there the entrance was packed with thousands of people waiting in line for tickets and a steady stream of newcomers on the way.




The express pass that allows you to skip the long lines for rides comes in 2 forms: a 7 ticket booklet, and a 4 ticket booklet. The 7 ticket passes were sold out so we settled for the 4 pack, but it was well worth the price. We saved more than 3 hours of wait time with our express tickets and the one attraction that we did wait in line for was so exhausting that we decided to leave after it finished.




First we bought some overpriced food, as we had skipped breakfast to try and get there in time for the express pack. Delicious it was not, but the energy was more than welcome. If you've ever been to one of these amusement parks you know that there is no shortage of merchandise. We wandered around for a while looking for some interesting things to buy, but there wasn't a lot of great stuff.


The first ride we tried out was the Amazing Adventures of Spiderman. We skipped past an 80 minute wait time, tried to follow the Japanese dubbed story animation, put on our 3D glasses and sat in the car-thing. The ride was incredible. Spiderman and the villains look great and the cart responds almost perfectly to what is happening all around. I even found myself bracing as our cart "fell" towards the ground, only to be saved by a spiderweb. I was so excited that I threw away 2800 yen on a spiderman mask. I know what I'll be dressing up as for Halloween for...ever. Georgia and I also picked up some cool spiderman pens.





Our next ride was Back to the Future. Now, I had recalled somebody telling me that it was a really great ride, so we chose this one over the Jaws attraction. Big mistake. There was a very long lead up of Japanese dubbed Christopher Lloyd video explaining what was supposed to be going on. Then we got into our Delorean with 6 other people (including some other English teachers... they stuck all of us gaijin together) and watched as the machine shifted around to match the activities on screen. Obviously, the technology has improved from the time the BttF ride was constructed to the Spiderman installation, because we were underwhelmed.




After that, we went to the Jurassic Park ride and passed by a 100 minute wait time. We decided not to buy rain ponchos because we hadn't seen anybody walking around soaking wet. There was an amusing video of a big, fat, white idiot doing stupid things like eating and smoking on the ride, to inform everyone how to behave. The ride was great and the T-Rex was especially spectacular. There is a big fall at the end and you can feel the boat lose contact with the water for just a moment before you land... it was great.



With our last express ticket we went on the Hollywood Dream ride. Annoyingly, you have to put all of your stuff in a locker before they will let you on the ride. And, as a side note, Japanese people are surprisingly disorganized when it comes to queing up for lines. It's really difficult to tell if you are lining up behind a couple of people who are just standing around, or if you've found one of the two or three actual lines (we've noticed this many times a Mcdonald's, where you will happen upon a large group of people in complete disarray, and be forced to just pick a spot and stand there until enough people give you the "I think it's your turn" look). The rollercoaster was exciting and you get to choose from 8 different songs... but it's so short that you only get through about 1/3rd of your song before you're out of your seat.

(This was not taken after the Terminator 2 "experience")

Now the weather was cooling down beyond a comfortable temperature and rain was beginning to spit from the overcast, so instead of waiting 120 minutes for Jaws (if you go... get the express pass) we headed to the Terminator 2: 3D show. 70 minute wait. This was almost a complete waste of time and certainly not worth using up valuable energy for. It is possible that if we had been able to understand and of the 30 minute long build up (this show happens in phases) that it would have been more enjoyable... but we raced out of that theatre as soon as the light broke through the exits.


Our energy and desire to stand in lines extinguished, we left park and decided to eat steak at the Hard Rock cafe after weighing the chances of a taxi being able to take us directly to an Outback steakhouse. Neither of us could afford the New York Steak Sandwich (only steak on the menu), so we got a couple of burgers and fries. We were there for about 40 minutes (the only customers for half that time) and we were forced to listen to 5 Aerosmith songs... it all makes sense.



Ranking the rides:
1. Spiderman
2. Jurassic Park
3. Rollercoaster
4. Back to the Future

We then returned to Kobe after a few miscues and backtracks on the Osaka transit system.

KOBE

Wow, we really didn't post since November. Sorry about that. I think we just started posting pictures and things to facebook and forgot to update this.

We're back now with some new happenings.

First! We made it to our week off and decided to go on a little road trip south to Kobe and Osaka. Originally we had intended to take a ferry to Hokkaido, but the cost and cold weather were too strong of disincentives.



Kobe:

We had a little bit of trouble negotiating the Japanese highway system because after all this time we still do not have an English map (a fact which would cause us a lot of grief later). After getting ourselves turned around a few times in Osaka, we found the road to Kobe and eventually Georgia spotted a tiny sign for our hotel.





Hotel:

The hotel turned out to be an incredible four-star business hotel overlooking the city from the foot of a nearby mountain. It was also located directly above a subway station which made travelling downtown very simple.










First up was a search for sneakers for Georgia. She bought some in Tokyo but unfortunately the salesman put the wrong pair in her bag so when we returned home, she was in for some serious disappointment. After a protracted search through the snobbish part of Kobe, we finally found the Onitsuka Tiger shoe store and Georgia found some cool new sneakers.























Next, we were off to Chinatown. We actually put off eating all day because we were looking forward to consuming more Shironpo (spelling might be off), which are basically pork dumplings sold by a street vender in sets of 4, that taste incredibly good. We stuffed ourselves with shironpo to such an extent that we decided not to even go to a restaurant. Instead, we returned to the hotel to do some research and find a night club and a steakhouse for later.












We changed and worked the internet for a while until we finally settled on a bar called Sally's Sports Pub. Supposedly this is a popular bar for gaijin's with a dancefloor and pool tables. It sounded pretty good to us and, besides, if it sucked we could ask some people there about other places in town. Sadly, the bar does not seem to exist anymore and I had numerous people stare at me, as though I were the world's biggest asshole for inquiring about a bar named SALLY'S SPORTS PUB in Japan. Oh well.

We settled for the only pub mentioned in our Lonely Planet guide called New Munchen Bar. It was a German style pub that seemed to only advertise Guiness beer. The place completely cleared out by the time we took our first sips and they ended up forcing us to pay and down our drinks so they could close up shop.


After that we decided to have another quick meal at a restaurant that promised to bring International people together in happiness (on their sign) and happened to have a giant fake watermill. I'm not sure what their international happiness sign was about, because inside nobody spoke English and the entire menu was strict Japanese food. Not bad overall though.



Wednesday night in Kobe isn't a real thrill. After the watermill restaurant we noticed that the crowds had thinned out substantially. Desperate for something to do we dropped by a gambling arcade and played the only non-gambling game in the place: Time Crisis 4.



Finally giving up on finding entertainment that doesn't involve singing (Georgia has permanently vetoed karaoke) we decided to return to our hotel. A little disoriented and with the trains shut down for the night we tap on the window of a taxi and shout our hotel name at him repeatedly until he nodded at us. Three blocks later, with the driver completely silent, we are back at our hotel. Not satisfied with the 10 dollar cokes and things in our mini bar we escape to a nearby Lawson convenience store and puchased coke and whiskey. Our hotel room drinking game consisted of drinking every time we heard 'ne' (nay) or when an NBA player misses a shot. The Jazz vs. Rockets game wasn't a good one because we watched for about 10 minutes and not one player sunk a shot. Shortly after we were done for the night.

At one point of our night we received a message from the front desk alerting us that our credit card payment through expedia had not made it to the hotel. Odd, since we had an email confirming our payment. So in the morning I called expedia.ca and was given a phone number that I had to forward to the hotel manager and he "would know what to do with it". Of course he had no idea and the phone number connected him to a company in the USA that sold headsets... so I called expedia again and was told that a fax would be sent to the hotel confirming our payment. The fax showed only "This page cannot be displayed". Finally, on my third call, the operator offered to call the hotel himself to make sure that everything was taken care of and he put me on hold to reassure me that it would be taken care of shortly and he could confirm.

10 minutes later the manager was still waiting for a phone call and the man had not returned. I ended up hanging up and paying in cash because the phone call was costing the hotel money and I was receiving a lot of pressure to end my wait on hold... besides we were supposed to be at the Osaka Universal Studios an hour earlier to beat the crowd.



As of now I still do not know if the hotel payment has been cancelled but I have a very angry series of phone calls and email to make.