Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Return to Japan




Last week, I went back to my home away from home, Disney, and I had more of an opportuity to explore Japan. We started at Tokyo Disney, and it was a fun sense of Deja Vu where I felt like I knew where everything was, but in reality it was a different park. We arrived in time for the bright electric parade, which had really cool floats. They even had Pete's Dragon! 

Then we headed over to the rides and made Space Mountain a priority. It's required whenever I vist :)
We rode every big ride, except Splash Mountain, but that was fine with me. (That ride still scares me). We even saw Philharmagic in japanese. Once we finished Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, we headed over to the castle for Once Upon A Time, a show hosted by Mrs. Potts and Chip about all the Disney stories, especially Beauty and the Beast. The castle changed from a sky full of lanterns, to a house of playing cards, to a stained glass mosiac. It was really cool! 
After the show we hurried to Space Mountain, and headed out for our next day of fun. Tokyo Disney Sea. 
We took a shuttle to get there, and we got through the entire park in one day. We even saw the last performance of Legend of Mythica, which drew quite a crowd. 
We rode all the big rides, including the Storm Raider where we went inside a storm and tried to stop it from accelerating. We went on Tower of Terror which had a different story about an archeologist who collected rare items. He brought this Tiki to the museuem, and the Tiki was angry an cursed the elevator to drop. Honestly, I found it spookier than the version at Disneyland.
I finally saw Oswald, after waiting in line for the rain to stop, and we caught him just as he was leaving. 
My favorite snack was the mickey churro, which had a different flavor in each themed land. But I also got to try Seasalt icecream at the Arabian coast. (I couldn't help thinking of Kingdom Hearts) 
After watching a show about Genie, we headed over to the stage for Fantasmic, which gets me every time. It was a wonderful show, and the effects were amazing! 
The best rollercoaster we went on was Raging Spirits, where we were offered to the Mayan Gods as a sacrifice. Our fastpast gave us a time at night, which made the ride spookier, but we got to take some nice pictures of the park at night. 
After a magical day at Tokyo DisneySea, we headed out early for Artina cafe the next day. This place has been on my bucket list, and I'm so lucky that Gabriela and Les weren't too bothered by my fangirling.

The cafe was amazing! Our breakfast was chocolate and banana pancakes with cactuar logos on them, and cappuchinos with a moogle and chocobo in the foam ^_^


 I spent a long time walking around the shop,and taking pictures of the merchandise. 

But my favorite part of the cafe was their music section. They had the entire collection, available to listen to for free, and you could buy the soundtracks for a lot of the games. When I go back to Japan, I'm going there again. The prices were reasonable, and it was such a cool cafe. 
After the cafe, we went for a breath of fresh air to the Meiji Shrine. It was beautiful! I had a sense of calm as we walked in, and I even made a wish, said a prayer and found a tree that looked like something from Inuyasha! 
After that, we headed to Harajuku and found some neat thrift stores that sold name brand clothes and even kimonos for reasonable prices! 
We also found a big mall that had a really random selection of pricy fashion brands, but the top floor had the biggest stationary store I have ever seen! 
After Harajuku, we headed over to Akihabara to see the anime district. I found a few places featured in Densha Otoko or Train Man ^_^ 
There were also displays for the new Sailor Moon single Moon Pride ^_^
And I found some fun merchandise, including Sailor Moon make up, and Dragon Ball Z hairwax! 
Our last day was a short one, but a lot of fun. Unfortunately two places I wanted to go to don't exist anymore. They tore down the Ferris wheel from Dream High, and the Benoist building from Train Man was torn down a year ago. But we had time to go to the biggest anime mall, and I found way too many cool things.
After one last shopping trip, we had to go catch our flight. It was a blast, and a much needed break from the stress I was dealing with last week. I had so much fun! I learned a lot about navigation, and I can't wait to go back and see the historical sites!