Central Japan Day 6 & 7 - Tokyo Disney Resort & Home



View the first post in this series here.
View the previous post in this series here.

05 June 2008

Without any onsen for a morning dip, I was able to sleep longer than usual today. After breakfast at the top of Washington Hotel, we will be headed to Tokyo Disney Resort. Having been to the original Disneyland in the US I had some mixed feelings -- was Mickey going to say "Konnichiwa"? Nevertheless, there is a good reason why Disney Resort is one of the most successful theme parks in the world. It was a weekday and the place was teeming with students right after school.

Breakfast, yummy lemon tea


A large hotel right opposite Tokyo Disney Resort


Now at ¥4500 it is really quite cheap. I think it was only about ¥3600 for students.


Happy 25 Years Anniversary!


Right through the first gate is the shopping area. It's morning and the crowd has not arrived


The famous castle that's present in every Disney theme park, unfortunately it was a rather gloomy day


Our first ride of the day, the ``Pirates of the Caribbean", was actually the best ride I have taken. It comes complete with cannons and guns shooting compressed air overhead (yes your hair will fly). Being a boat ride the ``cannonballs" whizz past and create splashes in the water. Great effects.


There, spotted Captain Jack Sparrow!


These themes just remind me of Roller Coaster Tycoon


We'll be taking a ride here later


That's some amazonian atmosphere down there


Ah the shooting gallery, a piece of cake. I had 9/10. Little did I know that I could get a prize with a perfect score. Darn, I knew I should not have risked it with the dashing/hopping mouse.


The first mini-parade of the day. Being Disney Resort's 25th Anniversary, there will be special events all year round and parades every day.


Da Big Thunder Mountain!


It's one of the sleepy looking bears. I'm not sure what they are called though


Lunchtime! Everyone just has to have a smoked turkey leg!


Unfortunately Pool's Honey Hunt was closed. I was looking forward to taking this ride without physical guidance -- the ride uses a Local Positioning System to guide the carriages, unlike using rails as per normal.


``It's a small world after all" ride. ``We MUST take this", says my friend.


It's a boat ride with lots of animated dolls dressed up in costumes from different cultures


The Haunted Mansion, some cool effects such as projected 3D spooks inside


Wow, pram parking, everything here is exceptionally orderly, the cleaners sweep and clean the floors every few minutes


Another high trill ride, the Space Mountain


Technically we'll be boarding this space craft


Everything here is in the shape of King Mickey


The beginning of the main float parade, thankfully the rain stopped


The princes and princesses


Winnie the Pooh and friends


The Lion King


Some elaborate costumes here


Peter Pan and Captain Hook!


Lilo & Stitch



It's amazing how they can dance in these costumes


Pinocchio!


Monster INC


Cranky hairdo


Now this made me realise something, each float was moving by itself! There were no visible drivers and everything seemed to move autonomously.


This costume wins the most bombastic award


To wrap up, the classic Disney characters make an appearance


After the parade we decided to go try out the rally


Here's my ride. It's a real petrol fueled vehicle


Then it was time to nibble on some Mickey nuggets


Catch a tram to Toon Town where all the toons live


Mickey's house, an audience will require almost 2 hours in queue


Minnie's house. See the ears on those students? Everyone has one. I mean everyone of these students in Disneyland has these ears in different shapes and sizes. It is as if they head for the ear shop right after stepping in.


Chip and Dale's tree house


Ho it's one of the pigs


Back to the castle on the reverse side, the castle is in the middle of the entire theme park


Mosaic decorations on the inside of the castle. The castle also houses the most expensive shops, such as those selling crystals.



Back to the shops, everyone here seems crazy about shopping and the shops were packed with people. Look at this biscuit tin, I'll probably keep the biscuits till they rot. Then, it was time to leave.


At dinner, here's some Kobe beef, it's good because the fat is intertwined with the meat. So for the fat lovers it's great.

We had shabu shabu dinner, lots of sliced beef with golden mushrooms and some Kirin beer to wash them down. There is actually no soup base, the pot contains just plain hot water. Some special peanut sauce is provided to dip the meat in. Well the peanut sauce was interesting but I still preferred dipping the meat in soryu. We were then brought to Narita to spend the night before our flight home the next morning. Exhausted from a day of fun, we quickly fell asleep in our comfortable beds.

06 Jun 2008

Morning came soon enough, we had our last breakfast in Japan and sadly departed for the airport.

Now I haven't had pancakes in awhile


Continental Breakfast


Soba


We stayed at the garden hotel


On board our ANA flight, everyone drinks Suntory, it's a good beer


Lunch


Some saffron rice, and yes more champagne


To top it all off they gave us Häagen-Dazs ice-cream. ANA's a winner


Back home reflecting what I bought from the airport. Here's three erm... barrels of sake


And some shiroi koibito biscuits from Hokkiado, melts in your mouth

All in all our trip to Japan together was fantastic. However I will definitely not take a tour if I'm going back again as most tours still cater to the shopping crowd. Being extremely well connected by rail, there's probably no point in taking a tour except for saving the hassle of organization.

Now that took awhile, thanks to my extremely busy schedule I finally completed my Japan trip posts some 3 months after I returned. Having about 9 GBs of photos didn't help one bit. Now I wonder where to next...

Go back to the first post in this series here.

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