Japan: A quick trip report continued (Days 3-5)

Continuing on with my trip report, we travelled via the Shinkansen to Universal Studios in Osaka and stayed at one of the hotels overlooking the park. The hotel had different themes, even a giant T-Rex hanging from the ceiling at one of their cafes.

Of course we had to go to Universal Studios. Okay, Australia doesn't have many theme parks, especially Universal Studios and Disney, so this is the only place we've been to this theme park and as I understand, it's the only one that you can still go on the Jaws park (my brother's favourite ride). Coming in 2014 a new ride will be opening up, and that's when I plan to come back here. Harry Potter is coming to Japan and all I saw were the cranes signifying they were in the middle of building. Since it was a cold day, we spent ages searching for the one curry shop in the whole of Universal Studios. It was called Happiness Cafe and here you had to order before entering, which was a very different experience. Something else that was different about here was we noticed people finding a table and then leaving all their bags and going to get their food. That is something that would definitely not happen in Australia for fear of people stealing something. So it can be said that Japan is a very safe country with little theft problems. Another place I had to find even though it was a tortured experience was the Hello Kitty Apple Fries (which had to be healthy didn't it, it's made of apples). This was a very pink place with very cheerful music playing in loops, enough to make one go mad. And the staff were chipper, and not the fake chipper either.

Okay, Universal Studios wasn't the only reason to go to Osaka. We also wanted to walk around and I wanted to get "food on sticks". Yeah, I had my mind set on eating things on sticks for dinner and wouldn't settle for anything else, which meant walking around until I found something, and then I found someone standing in a costume. Who doesn't love costumes? I just had to see what he was offering and who would have guessed it, he had exactly what I was looking for, food on sticks or the more technical term "kushiyaki".

So far Kushiyaki turned out to be one of my favourite foods, even though I had no idea what I was eating half of the time, on the trip, and we tried so many different foods.

Here's a question of the day, what's your favourite food?

Japan: A quick trip report (Day 1-2)

Wow, it's been nearly two months since I came back from Japan. I just can't believe it, time sure has flown by, and I thought it was about time I went through my pics (there's about 5k of them) and post a small trip report about what I did and my experiences while over there. Since we had a 2 week trip, I'll split the trip report into little posts so it's not too long (and I won't break blogger).

I had planned this trip to be part culture, part research part geek-dom (you'll see what I mean), and I definitely got what I planned for. After a nine hour late night flight, getting in at the ripe time of 6am, we nearly got lost in the airport as we tried to find both the phone rental counter (this really helped last time to have a phone on us with a plan for unlimited internet, just so that we could use the maps in case we ever got lost in Tokyo... which did happen on occasion), and then trying to find an international ATM (yeah, stupid me forgot to get some Yen out before leaving Australia... not a mistake we'll make again since this is mainly a cash-based society).

The first few days were spent jumping around, which I had planned because we had wanted to see so many places in such a rushed time. So, the first place we ended up on our journey was Odaiba. For those that do not know, Odaiba is a man-made island, and is becoming a very popular tourist site. For us, it also has a very interesting theme park called Sega Joypolis, which is an indoor aracde/theme park. This was also where we got our horror fix with three (yep three) haunted rides. One of them you just sit down with headphones on in a pitch black room and listen to a story (which I couldn't understand a word of), but that's the scariest thing I have ever heard. The other highlight was being chased through a haunted maze by Sadako (she is the horror villain of the Ring books/movies, the American movies translated her name to Samara). That was fun, I think the entire tour group were laughing the whole way through... I don't think that's the effect you want for a horror maze. Odaiba also has a statue that the American's would be very familiar with, sitting right in front of their bay. I later found out that they also had the flame sitting in the middle of the island, I took a picture, I just don't know where that picture ended up.

 The next day was an early start as we had to catch a bus to the foot of the Mt Fuji. Most people who go to Mt Fuji have the intent of climbing it, or going to the lakes that surrounds it, we had a different desire. Our desire was to go to the theme park that sat right at the base. Fuji-Q Highland is just a small theme park, but it has about six rollercoasters that have at one time appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records, they still hold one record for the steepest drop, and I love rollercoasters.

Another reason for this stop was that both my brother and I are big anime fans, and one of those animes are Evangeleon. The hotel beside the theme park had a particular room of interest, just have a look at the figurine that was in the corner of the room. There was even a challenge where we had black lights and had to find a secret message (luckily my brother can read Japanese) and we managed to get some badges for completing that challenge.

The things that I learned on this part of the trip:

1. Always have cash in the currency of the country when you arrive (duh *slaps forehead*)
2. Carrying big suitcases up and down the stairs (yep, Japan doesn't have that many elevators) can give the legs a workout, but also make them really, really sore
3. Just because something is in a capsule machine doesn't make it suitable for children. Stay away from machines that have smiling women on the side of them, you can find some things that you don't want to see (yeah, you can get anything from a capsule machine)

Stay tuned for my other posts on Kyoto & Osaka, Tokyo & you can't forget Disneyland, which I promise will be coming.