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Killed time in the Atlanta Airport for a while, then headed over to the terminal where my plane would be leaving from. Ran into Jason Epel who was just getting off the flight I was originally scheduled on. Find out he is on the same flight to Japan that I am (What are the odds?), although with two important differences. He is going on to Singapore, and he is in Business Class. We grab breakfast at Burger King, and get back on the airplane.
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Getting into Japan wasn't a problem, although the line at immigration was pretty bad until the rest of the staff showed up. Changed my money, bought the ticket for the shuttle bus to my hotel (the Crowne Plaza Metropolitan Tokyo), and it was about a 90 minute ride from Narita Airport. Weather was a little cold and overcast. Notable Observation #1: The new VW Beetle is a largish mid-size car in Japan.
Got checked in headed up to the room. Small, but at least the bed was longer than I am. Headed down to the Italian Restaurant (I was curious about what Japanese Italian would be like, it was pretentious haute-cuisine so I ended up with ravioli) and then crashed and crashed hard.
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And now for a bit more on the department stores. They are big. The two connected to Ikebukuro Station are Tobu and Seibu. Both have two basement floors dedicated to food. Both are composed of multiple buildings that have been joined together. Tobu is three buildings wide, and 9 floors up (although only one of the original buildings was 9 stories, the other two were only 7). Seibu was only 7 up, but their book department was in another 5 story building on the other side of the parking garage containing a community college on the upper floors.
Later, in order to get some familiarity with the Tokyo rail system, I went on the quest to find the Tokyo Hard Rock to get Susan her pin. Luckily right near the station I found a good map of the area and got to the Hard Rock without too much trouble. It was located right next to a Tony Roma's, which amused me. Didn't expect Tony Roma's to be an international chain.
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Got to the Disney stop, and headed for the park. They have much cooler
monorails!
Thanks to the weather, the park was almost empty. (Remember this, it is an
important point for a very bad decision I make later...)
Notable differences: Main Street area is covered by a roof. Their Space Mountain is still dark. Tiki Room, while it has been updated a bit (includes the Hot, Hot, Hot song), has not been ruined like ours has. They still have the Mickey Mouse Review!
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I really, really wish we had one of these here. It just opened in September, so it is still a little light in places, but it is a really nifty concept for a park. Each area has a different maritime theme. Going vaguely clockwise:
Mediterranean Harbor is the entry/shopping area. My first thing was to
find some nifty post cards and get them out. I then headed for Mysterious
Island, but the line for 20,000 leagues was over 2 hours, and Journey to the
Center Of the Earth was down. Got my Fastpass for Journey, and decided to
take the trolly to American Waterfront, so I headed through the nifty
tunnel to the trolly station in Port Discovery.
American Waterfront is pretty weak. The big ship (the Columbia) looks cool, but it is a waste to have all that space just for a restaurant and a lounge. I think it was begging for a Haunted Mansion type ride... So I walked through the Cape Cod village back to Port Discovery (D.B. Cooperage, heh heh!).
Port Discovery seems to be an outgrowth of the Nemo-Tech theme of
Mysterious Island. It has two nifty rides. The first is Aquatopia which
is where you get into a little raft (it actually runs on wheels) and get
traipsed around. Cool thing about this ride is that there isn't a physical
track, successive cars take different routes through the ride. My guess is
that there are underground cables for each route. The other ride is
StormRider, a motion simulator where you tag along with a mission to
disrupt a hurricane heading for Port Discovery. They have some fun with
this one, definitely one of the better motion simulator rides I have been
on.
Next is the Lost River Delta. Pretty much just someplace to put the Indiana Jones Ride. And, the ride was broken down, so I can't even compare it to the one in California. But, there was BBQ!
Continuing around I ended up at the Arabian Coast. They have fun little Sinbad ride (vaguely Small Worldish, but with sailors dying) and a two-story carousel.
Nested in the middle is the Mermail Lagoon, where Triton invites the surface dwellers into his kingdom. Mostly kiddie rides, although a bunch of them are in this really pretty artificial grotto.
And then I got back to Mysterious Island. I absolutely adore this area of
the park. Steam tech rules! Geysers in the bay. A small Nautilus sub
(wonder if it is one of the boats from our dead ride?) docked across the
way. The 20,000 Leagues ride was a little weak, but I might have gotten
more out of it if I could have understood the plot. Loved the gauges
though. Had some time to kill before my Fastpass time, so I checked out
the Fortress Explorations. This castle turned out to be much niftier than
I originally thought. Loved the mockup of the solar system (where you
could move the planets!). Journey to the Center of the Earth was a whole
lot of fun. You get into a bulldozer-type car and get a tour of some
crystal caverns, then there is some rumbling and the car picks up speed for
some rather nice speed runs and drops.
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I opted to head for Kiyomizu first. My legs had stopped screaming in pain,
but the slopes in Kyoto started them up again. It was quite a trek from
the bus stop in front of the (have to look up) Shrine through the graveyard
to Kiyomizu. Worth it though (after I had rested a bit ;-).
Coming out the other side of the Kiyomizu complex, there was this sign stating that there was to be no selling on temple grounds. Just past this sign started a street packed with little touristy shops that reminded me of International Drive. I spent quite a bit of time and money here. Headed for Nijo castle, but the traffic was really bad, and I had to change route and head back to the station to pick up a few things from the Tezuka shop and catch my train back to Tokyo.
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Ito Katsumi is a penpal of LauraK's who was kind enough to offer to show me around Nagoya. With his help I found the Hard Rock cafe and got Susan another pin. We then headed back toward the train station for dinner.
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So, I get to the gate for FujiKyu Highland and find out that there were
only about 6 things in the park open, and Dodonpa was NOT one of them
(Noooo!!!!!!!). But, Gundam was open. So, I sit back and ponder a bit. I
can head back, but that would mean having to make the whole trip over
again, and the local between Otsuki and Fujikyu was 1080 Yen each way not
to mention the 4 hour round trip. So I said "I'm here, let's do it" and
bought my ticket (I went ahead and got the pass, since basic entry plus
twice on Gundam and one other ride equaled the cost of the pass). Diggin'
the hole deeper with every decision I make at this point. The rail station
and the ticket booth are one building. So, it wasn't until after I bit the
bullet and went through the gate that I saw the lake of water with
miniature ice floes on it that was the entry courtyard. And the Gundam
Ride was on the other side of the park from the rail gate. The ice and
snow was a couple inches thick in most places, and many of the sloping
sidewalks were rivers due to the heavy rain. Freezing rivers.
The Gundam Ride is cool. The queue area is through the corridors of the
damaged ship Saruga. Apparently you are being evacuated aboard a cargo
container to someplace else. You sit in the theatre, then you are shot out
into space where you are grabbed by a couple suits who are to carry you to
someplace else. Naturally, chaos ensues and you end up crashing into the
Zeon base. Run around like mad for a bit, then end up in the power core.
Blow it up and get out of dodge. One thing you would never see in an
American ride is that one of the pilots gets blown up holding off the bad
guys so the younger pilot can get out with the evacuees. You then crash
into the Gundam Launch Bay of another ship and are let out.
Exited the ride into a rather striking store. Snapped a couple pics, and headed out the door to go around again. If anything it was colder and raining harder (or, my time indoors had softened me) and I decided against walking around for the second go and headed back inside to buy stuff. I then pretty much gave up and just headed to the station for the trip back.
In order to make up for the day, and riding something of a Gundam High, I stopped at Seibu and bought the Dendrobium (the huge-ass weapons platform from the end of Stardust Memories) I had been contemplating since I saw it the first day while shopping.
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Went back to the hotel and started packing. Tallied up the totals for customs as I packed all of the loot (ouch). I bought a lot of stuff. In fact, it all didn't fit in the hard-shell, had to put some of the hardier and larger things in the duffel with the clothes.
Got checked in at the airport and spent some time looking around. Picked up a couple final items (finally found a "normal" collectible spoon for my Grandmother, and finally succumbed to the lure of the DigiQ car...). Ran into Jason at the gate, he was on the same flight again (Now, this is getting scary). The flight back seemed much longer even though it was 2 hours shorter due to the combination of being awake much longer and the screaming child in the row ahead of me. Went through customs in Atlanta (and didn't even have to pay additional duty), rechecked the bags then headed home. Called Mike for my ride, and it was lucky I had sent a reminder from the hotel before I left, since he had the day wrong. He picked me up and I was home just after 8pm.