東京ディズニーランド！！！

So now it's time for some Tokyo Disneyland! I was super excited on this, but wearing thin in the wallet and getting tired of traveling by this point. It was the big one before I went to Kyoto and Osaka at the end of the month.

I went back to Nagoya because classes started back up (I'm the only American in my class of Britts! >< ) and then had to go back the following weekend I went right back to Tokyo. Oh man... But this time I had a friend come with me because she was joining me at Disneyland. Again, I met up with my friends from the previous visit and after a good night's rest, we headed off to Disneyland. In the morning, from my friend's apartment, I saw Mt. Fuji! It was so cool, but enough of that. (Haha)

We had to travel quite a ways before we got there and once we got off the train, we knew we were in the right area. EVERYTHING was Disney. Even this awesome vending machine was Disney! (Sorry, it's on my phone because I forgot my camera... The pictures on here are from my friend who went with me.)

After the train, we had to pay to get onto the Disney monorail (Disney's private train line) and pass by the actual Tokyo Disneyland. We were actually going to a separate Disney park, not the actual Disneyland (kind of like at the original Disneyland, there's now the California theme park across the way). This was called Disney Sea and it was more for couples and friends than family (which was kind of nice, let me tell you). When you walk into Disney Sea, there's a giant globe that spins on water and shows the countries. We took pictures and I said, "wait...let's see Japan first. I bet it's bigger than California." SURE ENOUGH IT WAS BIGGER THAN TEXAS! We all died of laughter going, "JAPAN'S NOT THAT BIG!" and took a picture of it.

That's when the characters popped up. I rushed to see Donald, but the Japanese who are usually so polite in public and make lines to get into lines suddenly turned into the rude people I see all the time at theme parks back home. I couldn't get in there and just gave up after 10 mins. of chasing him and constantly getting shoved aside. It was ridiculous and I was pissed. The line to see Mickey (there was an actual live) looked WAY too horrendous, so I gave up.

So we FINALLY headed inside the actual park and ended up in Italy. It was great! But surprisingly quiet as hell. You'd never know you were at a theme park... You could actually hear the music! I was impressed. Thep lace was gorgeous and was made to look like downtown Venice. Sadly, Italy held no rides, so we quickly moved away from the shops and all that wonderful pasta into New York in the 20s. They did an amazing job on how it felt. I really felt like we were back in the States in Disneyland. A lot of Japanese people watched us because we were skipping and dancing and that's just what you do at Disneyland. For once, I didn't mind because they weren't staring and thinking, "oh God, foreigners..." and instead it was like, "OH LOOK! FOREIGNERS! AREN'T THEY ADORABLE?! *camera*". (not joking about the camera)

We found the Tower of Terror and after an hour and a half wait (all Fastpasses were gone), we got into the ride. At first, I was amazed that there weren't that many people at the park, but I realized it was because they were all in the America section (gee, I wonder why...). The Tower of Terror back in the States is one of my favorite rides as it was the first ride to ever ACTUALLY scare me (rides don't scare me one bit), so I was excited to see how they changed this one. It was no longer a Twilight Zone, but was now a cute little demon thing that attacked this ubber rich white dude and cursed him. That irked me a bit...but what REALLY got me was the ride dropped us 3 stories. THAT'S IT?! JUST 3 STORIES?! The one in California drops you 7 stories. It wasn't even close to being scary. My friends loved it, but I was NOT impressed.

We left and started heading for the other rides. There was a huge Titanic-like cruise ship where a play was taking place. These hot Japanese called out to us in English saying, "HELLO! HOW ARE YOU?!" and we shouted back, "WE'RE GOOD! THANKS!" and realized, "shit, we should've gone back. There were enough guys for all of us to practice our Japanese on..." But the play was so hysterical, I cried. They were trying so hard to make Japanese men and women into American flappers and such from the 20s. Then Mickey showed up and his voice alone in Japanese just sent me over the edge in hysterics. My friends didn't understand why I was laughing so hard, but I dunno. I just find it so funny when I see Japanese trying to be American or visa versa (actually, it's funnier when Americans try to be Japanese... and really humiliating in certain situations). It was just one of those things.

Once we left the little play, we didn't know where we had ended up until we saw an old colonial-style house and found ourselves back in colonial America! It was exciting, but really small. I honestly have no idea why it was there in the first place... But we ate lunch there and saw this great little play taking place where they re-enacted old black and white episodes of Disney episodes, mainly focusing on Donald. It was adorable, but you CAN NOT understand Donald in Japanese (Now I understand why they had subtitles for him in Kingdom Hearts...).

Once done we ventured into some area with mainly water attractions. There was this fun little hovercraft ride we went on and then we went on this other ride. I wasn't impressed by the theme park so far and didn't have high hopes for this hurricane ride. I didn't think anything was going to happen on it, despite it seeming like a Star Tours-esque ride. Once on, I laughed because they showed these American guys and I just KNEW we would get the goofy one who was going to cause the entire thing to go haywire. I was right, but I'm so glad I was wrong about nothing happening. This ride was AMAZING! I was so scared when the missile suddenly came through the roof and almost killed us all and we got sprayed by water (that was a surprise!).

Once done, we made our way into Mexico and tried to find churros, but couldn't. We found a rollercoaster and went on that. It was pretty fun, but so quiet. So we, being foreigners and totally getting away with it, were loud and screamed even though it wasn't scary. It made the other Japanese on the ride CRACK UP and even join us in screaming. It was great! We got off laughing out heads off and said in Japanese, "WE'RE HOME!" and the Japanese people were just in so much shock like, "THESE GUYS ARE GREAT!" We then found the churros, but they were....sesame flavored ones.... They were gross and I did not like them.

We walked through Arabia (Aladdin) and then ended up in China (Mysterious Island) and we passed Atlantica. It was cool. We found the back way into Italy and found Maple Syrup churros. Um...okay? Are we in Canada? We ate them....WOW THEY WERE GOOD! We had to get more. It was great. We headed back to China and went on the best ride of the night, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Granted...we had to wait FOREVER and our tempers were kind of getting to the high point.

Now...usually the Japanese are REALLY good with crowd control, but this was ridiculous. They let 50 people in the Fast Pass line go and about 10 in the regular line go. Even the Japanese were getting fed up. We were NOT happy and it was getting very cold and I didn't bring a jacket (we were right on the ocean too...). It was getting late... But then we went on the ride and it was GREAT! This ride made me gasp in surprise and a little shock. That's because I didn't know when we reached the top of this rise up into the air, we'd come outside and for the briefest second I thought there would be no track under us to catch us.

Then once done, I wanted to see the water performance called BravSEAmo (horrible pun), but half of my friends wanted to go back to Tower of Terror, so we split up. The performance was so GREAT! It was a love story between a water goddess and a fire god. It was sweet and it reminded me of when I went to Vegas and they had the water fountains (man, I loved those those) at the Bellagio. But by that point, the theme park had closed. Yeah, and we had gone on like four rides... >>

But then we headed home and rested up. Man, that was a crazy weekend. Now my trips are done until Kyoto and Osaka for which I leave for on Monday. I'll update when I can, but as soon as I leave Osaka, I'll be turning 22 and the following day I leave for the States. Here are pictures from my time! MT FUJI! 富士山 The hand holding things on the monorail! :D The globe thing. I wish I could show you how big Japan was. That's how close I got to Donald. The volcano where the fire god came out of. The building was the back part of Italy. That volcano area is the China part. Look how pretty Italy is! (and those balloons were like 20 bucks!) Broadway in the 20sLook at the Tower of Terror glistening in the sun :D
The inside of the Tower of Terror. And there's that rich guy.
Those outfits those girls wear can ONLY be found in Tokyo Disneyland. There were SOOOOO MANY CUTE THINGS found ONLY in Tokyo Disneyland. It made me so sad we don't have back in the States.
That water/hover craft ride that was kind of fun. IN THE BACK IS THAT HURRICANE RIDE!The rollercoaster that no one screamed on!
RANDOMLY in the Arabia section we found plaster on this wall of AMERICA! We freaked out and alerted Japanese about it and they didn't see why it was so amazing.
Arabia section
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH!

Thanks for reading! See you next time!

~星子☆

Comiket

So today's blog is going to be a little bit different. For one, it's about an Anime convention I attended here in Japan. So that means a lot of you don't want to (and don't have to) read this blog. For two, I'm not going to have pictures in this one. That's because the people who I took pictures of never said I could put their photos up online. I told them they could of me, but I forgot to ask. >>

That being the case, I'll start off this blog by saying, "HOLY SHIT COMIKET WAS AMAZING!"
You'd NEVER know there were hundreds of thousands of people at this convention by how quiet and well organized it was! Like seriously, it was just so amazing...

First things first. Comiket is not your regular Anime convention that some of you are familiar with. Comiket is mainly fan-made artwork in the form of doujinshis (fan-made comics) and are usually pairings or romance stories. Some are amazing side stories that people made with canon features and an actual story and some are just little posters and pictures to sell. But this place is so huge I honestly didn't get to see the entire thing. There are three halls, the East 123 hall, the East 456 hall, and the West hall. The West hall is near where you cosplay.
Speaking of cosplaying! You cannot cosplay outside; only in certain areas inside or ropped off areas outside. Also, you CANNOT take pictures of people without permission. If someone thinks you're taking their picture and you didn't ask permission, you can get kicked out. It's crazy.
Also, there's a map that shows where the artists sit. You need to know the artists beforehand and the majority of people do. It's NEVER a good idea to bring the entire book that you buy to get the map (that tells you what artists are going and where they are) and it's put into sections.

In the East hall 123, those in the A sections are the REALLY good artists, the hard sellin' ones that are most popular. They usually sell out by noon and this con starts at 10. Then there are those on the side that USED to be A's, but are now B's or are just under A-ranking. They're still good, but don't get the lines As do. (I'll explain later) Then there's the rest of the tables which in are lined up A-S. On the East hall 456 it's lined up in the hiragana of あ through ち I think, but I think it went a little further...
Then there's the West hall that's organized quite the same, but differently. I didn't see much of the West hall. Although, there's another part to the West hall where there are actual vendors from companies will sell their stuff. We wanted to go there, but we never found it on the day I went.

The first day we got there, we somehow skipped through the line that was about another 2 hours long, thank GOD. I don't know how we did this, but we did. We get into a line and think, "okay, we're in line". Nope, we're in line to get to the line. This is a trend we see keep happening. Thank God it went so smoothly you never really noticed. We were in the main line just to get in for about 45 minutes. During that time, we took out our map to make sure we knew where we were going (this place was so huge, you HAD to have a map) and the majority of this convention was Hetalia. Half of the main building was Hetalia. I was excited beyond all reason. As I looked around at our fellow con-goers, I noticed that not only were they mainly girls, but...they all had the same areas mapped out on their maps; almost the same locations and everything. They then noticed us and how we had little Hetalia keychains and what-not with us. I was blasting my Hetalia music on my headphones and dancing to it so they knew. My friend said, "this girl behind you, she looks ready to steal your England keychain!" It was great!

We got inside in a relatively quick amount of time and rushed to the East hall 123 where all our stuff was that we wanted. We split into two groups. I headed straight for the two I wanted the most (Hoshitamago and Hakkapink) and saw that there was a line. I started to get into the line when I was stopped and told to get into the line to get INTO the line. Everyone was SO nice and smiled at us and tried to talk in English, but when we showed we talked Japanese they were like, ":D :D :D" and talked Japanese. The lines weren't all that fast and I got to hit a lot of the tables in two hours. By that time, it was noon and the A tables were closing up shop. It was time to cosplay!

So you don't pay to actually get into Comiket. You pay to cosplay. But even then, it's only 8 bucks; so wonderful... So once we paid, I thought we went to our own little dressing rooms and all to change. No, it was a gym sized room of girls just stripping and changing and you had to plot down on the floor like a picnic and dress there. Wow....talk about awkward because the minute we walked in, almost all eyes were on us. Yeah...

So once we were done dressing, I was blind because I had colored contacts in and my outfit called for no glasses, so here I was clinging on to people on where to go, but we had NO IDEA where to go. We went outside and were almost in trouble for doing so, but these nice guys told us where to go and weren't mad at us. We talked Japanese to them and they were relieved to know we weren't dumb first-timers, but just lost first-timers. It happens. This place is frickin' huge.

So we finally got to the cosplay section out in the West hall area. At first we were starving and ate as fast as we could, but then people saw us and were, at first, afraid to approach us because they didn't know English and thought we didn't know Japanese, but our Japanese friend (who actually is from America, but hey) found us and once people saw him, they thought he was our spokesman and asked him if they could take our pictures. He repeatedly told people, "they speak Japanese" and eventually word got around that the foreigners in the area can speak Japanese. That's when we became the hit of Comiket. We had lines to see us, girls crying, people asking to be in pictures with us. We even started this entire thing where this large group of Hetalia cosplayers begged us to join them in pictures and then, once in, this HUGE crowd appeared. The cosplayers with us said they'd never seen it like this and they said it was because, "we have the REAL THINGS here! THEY'RE SO CUTE!"

That w as when I met the two that made my con. These two were so adorable and so amazing. They made me SO INCREDIBLY happy, you just can't believe... I had been with my friends when my Japanese friend told me there was a US and UK dressed up as Santa's near the exit. I rush over and see them and almost die. They're just sitting there together texting and look SO cute! I nervously go up and ask if I can take their picture. They JUMP up in surprise and scramble to get ready and, once done with the picture, come flying at me. They're amazed that, not only do I speak Japanese, but that I came all the way from the US to come to Comiket. I explained that I was studying in Japan and they got even MORE excited. I thought the America was going to have a kitten, she was so excited. She started jabbering on how she wants to go the States and learn English like no other while the England tried to hide herself. She was so shy, it was too cute!

We were soon pulled apart and were lead into another large group and people took our pictures after we took theirs and visa versa. It was chaos. I eventually made my way back to the two Santa's and went up to the England and asked for a picture with her. Since I was colonial America and she was England, she FREAKED and almost cried she was so happy. We posed together as big brother with little brother and people flocked to us. Some fangirls cried they were so happy to see "the real thing" there and such. I was in heaven. That England, she was so adorable. And the America kept apologizing saying she made my country "look horrible". Trust me, she was adorable as hell.

Once done with cosplay, we headed home since the con really was over by that point. Once home, we collapsed, but headed to a friend's later and ate at his apartment. It was great fun, but I could feel my throat getting sore and my insides starting to hurt. My skin, too, felt a little sick-ish. I got worried and told my friends I wanted to head home early. But it didn't matter because by morning, I was very sick.

I ended up not going to the second day of Comiket, sadly, but my friends did. They texted me during the day and got me soup before they left to help me feel better. It was nice and by night time, I was a little better. I was still relatively sick the rest of my time in Tokyo, but all in all, it was a GREAT con. Best anime convention EVER. I want to go back... *starts to save money*

Next update will be about Tokyo Disneyland. I'll have that up soon because come Monday, I'll be in Kyoto and by Wednesday, I'll be in Osaka and then I'll be back home for two weeks, so I need to get on that. Next update will have pictures. Sorry for none this time.

~星子☆