Warming Up

I think I should write an entire entry BEFORE i publish it. Obviously I could delete it, but fuck it.

Yesterday, I went to USJ (Universal Studios Japan). It was my English lesson. I have never been to the one in the US, so it was a lot of fun. There was a lot of beautiful scenery. The studio looked nice too. I was extra excited because USJ was celebrating Halloween. HAHA. I tried explaining this purely American tradition to some Japanese people before. It didn't work too well. Halloween seems like it should fit in nicely with Japanese tradition, but for some reason, it does not. Also, USJ did not get any help from their US partners. The first performance I witness is a J-pop performance with dancers dressed as traditionally scaring Halloween characters smiling. I tried taking a short video of the performance, but apparently the video is only able to play on my own phone. Next we went Spiderman. We waited in line for at least 2.5 hours. Because of the horrible translations from Japanese to English, I was told it was a small hyper-coaster. WOW. No. You see, roller coasters are called hyper-coasters. The only semblence to a roller coaster was the seating. It was still sweet. It ended up being a 3D movie. To be honest that thing twirled around so many times I had no clue where we were going. This was my first experience with 3D and moving. A couple times it really felt like I was falling, but we weren't ;-). Afterwards we checked out the waiting board and saw that the next coolest ride had another 2.5 hour wait. I made the decision to let that one go till later and go for the less traveled route: Peppermint Patty's Stunt Slide.

Peppermint Patty and her Slide
Originally uploaded by mjbruni.

The one person who has been to USJ before said she's never gone on the slide and that it's for little kids. I am a little kid SO we went. It turned out that slides were semi-water slides. You were provided a tube, but the ride was propelled by water and many signs said,'Beware You May Get Wet.' It was late, as we entered at 3PM to get discounted tickets, and we were all wearing normal clothes. Everyone else started worrying, but I didn't care. I'm never coming here again, so live it up. My enthusiasm for the kids ride finally caught on and all of us ended up trying it out. It was sweet; more for the fact of doing it, though, than the actual thrill. I took a picture of my wet pants. It doesn't do justice. We ended the night on Jurrasic Park the Ride. It is just a simple waterfall drop in a 'wooden boat' that makes a huge splash. This was my first time on one of these rides. It did scare the shit out of me at night as I could barely see anything as we plunged down right before a T-rex ate us.

The night didn't end there. Since the company was helping pay for the trip, one of the guys thought it would be a good idea to go to the Hard Rock Cafe. Good call. There was a wedding going on upstairs so I got to see a little bit of what it's like to get married in Japan. Also, unlike USJ, the HRC knew what Halloween was. All of the wait staff were in sweet costumes. I took a video of them singing Happy Birthday to someone. I was very impressed. I also washed down the Mt. Fuji double bacon cheeseburger with an AL slammer, Jameson on the rocks and a Jack and Coke. Great ending to a great day. This is probably the reason why today has been so hard for me to function in the morning. ;-)