A Disney Christmas

This past weekend was a long weekend, so I finally managed to get myself to the Tokyo Disney Resort.  It`s been almost four months since I arrived and I hadn`t stepped foot onto Disney-related soil.  I think that`s some kind of new record for me.

So Friday evening I ate my dinner, cleaned my apartment, and then showered and did my hair, basically like I would for a plane ride.  Then I packed my bag, ran around the house three or four times, trying to figure out if I`d remembered everything I would need, and headed out the door just before 9PM.  I got into Nagoya around 10:30, which was good because it gave me a long time to figure out where exactly I was supposed to pick up this night bus.  Things I Don`t Recommend: Trying to find a highway bus meeting place in the dark, in a city you haven`t been to in five years, where they don`t speak English, and not having a really great description of this meeting place.  But thanks to my broken Japanese, the Japanese printout of my bus ticket, and a nice station worker, I was able to find my spot with about fifteen minutes to spare.  The problem was that this was also the meeting area for about five other bus companies, so you had to be really careful and listen closely to everything they were saying in Japanese in order to know when they were actually calling for your bus.  But, I made it onto the bus, wired as hell, and proceeded to not really sleep for the seven hours we spent on the highway.

I got into Disneyland at about 7:15AM, and then waited for about half an hour to go through bag check because it bottlenecks like whoa.  Ros had apparently had a great spot in the entrance queues with our tickets, but I persuaded her to get out of line and check to see if we could exchange our passes for a 2-day pass and get into DisneySea the next day (they were sold out when she bought the tickets in advance a couple weeks ago).  I met up with her when she was at the ticket booth, the nice man in the booth said that was no problem, and there was excessive squealing, jumping, and grinning (from me; Ros just kind of smiled and rolled her eyes at me).  Then we had to get back in the entrance line, much further back than Ros was originally positioned (WORTH IT), and wait for the gates to open at 8AM.  We followed the throngs of people through the gates, got a locker for my overnight bag, and beelined it to get fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear.  Once we grabbed those, we went and stood in the standby line for Star Tours.  I got to do a version of the ride I don`t think I`ve done before, visiting Kashyyyk and an asteriod field before going to help destroy the Death Star.  Good times.  My favourite part is the wookie who is totally shaking his fist and telling us to get off his lawn as we leave the planet.  I`ve decided to name him Carl.  Carl the wookie.

We did a lot of back and forth across the park all day, due to the intense crowds and the times/availability of our fastpasses.  I choose to believe this means we were totally okay to eat whatever the hell we wanted all weekend because we were wearing it off around the park.   Anyway.  From Tomorrowland we headed across the park to Adventureland, where Pirates of the Caribbean was, sadly, closed (that line always moves fast, and it was the first ride we ever did at Tokyo Disneyland, so it`s kind of a "must do").  The line for Jungle Cruise extended across most of Adventureland (not an exaggeration), so with an emphatic "Oh hell no," we instead elected to go over to the Enchanted Tiki Room.  The Tiki Room at Tokyo is unique, because it`s been taken over by Stitch.  They offer translation boxes into English, kind of like portable subtitles for the attraction, so Ros got one to test it out.  It was entertaining to see which Hawai`ian phrases they would translate into English, and which ones they would leave in Hawai`ian.  I think this is the first time in a long time that I haven`t wanted to bury my head in the sand following a Tiki Room experience.

Then it was time for the Christmas parade!  Yaaaaay!  This was significantly shorter than the ones I'm used to in the States, comprised of only five or six floats.  But they were still very pretty, and full of characters.  Ros was disappointed by the lack of Santa at the end of the parade (they made up for it the next day, trust me).

 For anyone who cares, these are the same deer used in the Christmas parade at Disneyland in California (the ones at WDW in Florida look like moose and are vaguely terrifying).

After the parade we wandered a bit, did some shopping, and took so many pictures of lamp posts.  ...Okay, I took pictures of lamp posts.  Ros rolled her eyes like the long-suffering friend that she is.  Lamp posts are awesome.  We then trekked back to Tomorrowland (for possibly the third or fourth time at this point; I wasn't kidding about the back and forth) to use our fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear.  I got my ass handed to me for the first time in a very long time.

That's Ros on the left with 43,100 and me on the right with only 14,200.  I'm slightly ashamed.

In World Bazaar (Tokyo's Main Street area, which has a glass roof over it) we came across a man from Vancouver who can play the piano while riding a bicycle.

We went over to Splash Mountain and jumped on as single riders, so that we wouldn't have to wait in the ridiculous line (frankly, I'm surprised Ros even goes on this ride after we got relatively stuck in the line for three hours the first time we were there.  I have yet to live that down).  Then Ros decided that she wanted popcorn.  You cannot possibly comprehend the lines for food this weekend.  People waited in line for an hour for popcorn.  I think Ros only waited maybe 30 or 40 minutes, though.  Only.  In the meantime, I ducked in and out of the shops in Adventureland.  While I was waiting for Ros after I finished shopping, a boatload of pirates rolled up and started playing instruments.  Literally.  They came in on a boat on wheels with instruments.  It was awesome.

We had fastpasses for Haunted Mansion (Nightmare Before Christmas holiday edition; I swear someday I'll ride that ride when it's normal), so we did that.  Ros also thought that "it's a small world" had a special Christmas version, and it didn't really have a line, so we rode that.  It did not have a Christmas version.  It was the same torture it always is.  We did some more shopping, and I got an early Christmas present in the form of an Elsa tiara that I kind of fell in love with (and a girl needs to own three tiaras, you know).  Towards the end of the day, we headed over to Toontown to check out the holiday decorations on the characters' houses before parking ourselves by the Partners statue to wait for Once Upon a Time, a nighttime projection show on Cinderella castle.

Heffalumps and Woozles taking over Cinderella Castle.

We had a late dinner at Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall before I headed out early to check into my hostel.  I was exhausted by this point, so I pretty much just signed in and went to bed, since I had to be up by 5:15AM the next morning anyway. 

With my hair braided over my shoulder and my Elsa tiara firmly in place on my head, I was back out the hostel doors by 6AM, ready and raring to go for our day at DisneySea!  Again, this mostly consisted of me running around like a madwoman, taking pictures of all of the Christmas decorations, especially those on lamp posts.  I was convinced to let go of my desire to ride Toy Story Mania, because the line for getting fastpasses takes about an hour.  Instead we headed next to it, to Tower of Terror, to get fastpasses for that instead.  This day was a lot of back and forth across the park again, earning our meals while avoiding all of the craziest lines.

I got to do a few attractions I'd never done before, which was really cool.  We accomplished a lot in that first hour of the day, when most of the park's population was waiting for Toy Story fastpasses.  We did Magic Lamp Theater on the Arabian Coast (Agrabah), which is a combination live show-3D movie.  Very cool.  And easy to understand, even if you don't really speak Japanese!  There was one point where one of the actors made a joke that I swear no one was laughing at except Ros and I.  But we're used to that.

More line avoidance came in after that, this time in the form of watching a Christmas show we stumbled across taking place on the path around the giant lagoon-thing at the centre of the park (like EPCOT).  The Disney characters were discussing the meaning of Christmas amidst song and dance (Donald insisted the meaning was "presents").  Towards the end of the show, we found out why Santa isn't in the parade at Disneyland.  It's because he's in this show next door at DisneySea, riding a giant Christmas boat-float around the lagoon.

By doing copious amounts of walking and having Ros ask every cast member at every restaurant we came across, we managed not to wait for more than an hour for anything all day, including food.  I was sort of set on the croquette sandwich they have at Mermaid Lagoon, because we have them every time we go there and they're delicious.  But we got in line and then it just stopped moving.  My blood sugar was getting low, and I was getting cranky, plus we had won tickets to an afternoon show in  one of the theatres (hurray!), so time was kind of a concern.  Ros convinced me that we could let the croquettes go, too, and we went to this sandwich place in the American Harbourfront.  I now have a new favourite eatery at DisneySea.  The sandwich I had was amazing.  Smoked salmon and shrimp on a bagel with avocado sauce and cream cheese - yum! 

The show we saw, Big Band Beat, was phenomenal.  I'm a fan of old-style jazz (go away, Michael Buble), and that's all this show was, along with a Christmas segment that was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see, being at Disney for a holiday celebration.  Also, Mickey plays the drums.  Not even kidding.

We rode some more rides after that, including my personal favourite, StormRider.  Then it was time to stake out decent places for almost an hour and a half for Fantasmic, which I've never seen in Tokyo.  I stayed to guard our spots while Ros made a trip back to the American Harbourfront for hot chocolate and Olaf sugar cookies.

From a technical standpoint, Tokyo's Fantasmic is the best.  But I think I still like the American ones better overall (with California winning out very slightly over Florida because they have a Peter Pan segment, and their dragon is better).

We grabbed some dinner at Horizon Bay (the character dining half of the restaurant was already closed, so we had normal dinner) and generally enjoyed being indoors and out of the chill coming off the ocean through the park.  After that was a bit more shopping on our way out.  Ros came with me to find my bus stop, and I boarded to head back to Nagoya overnight.  I slept a lot more on this trip than the one there.  I'm not sure if it was because I didn't have the excitement of Disney waiting for me, or if I was just so exhausted that I didn't care about my comfort and surroundings anymore.  Likely the second one.  We pulled into Nagoya just after 6AM, and I hopped on my train back home.

I'm definitely looking forward to my next Disney vacation already, but never on a long weekend again, and never without a couple dining reservations in place.

In Which Virtually Nothing Happens

Virtually nothing has happened in over a week.  I`m really not an interesting person.  On Thursday (12th), though, I surpassed my NaNoWriMo word count from 2011 (the last time I participated), thus making my current project the longest thing I`ve ever written.  2011 clocked in at 14,818 words before it got abandoned.

I suppose I could share with you an "Engrish" funny from this week?  "Engrish" is what we call really awful translations, the kind that either makes zero sense or has funny spelling errors... That kind of thing. 

Like that.  The kind of thing that, as an English speaker, just makes you sit back for a second and go "...What?"  So, my first year class this week is doing proficiency test type stuff in groups.  I give each group a card that has a picture of five people, and they have to tell me what each person is doing.  They discuss it as a group, and then write sentences on the board.  They`re doing fairly basic stuff.  One of the pictures is of a girl throwing away a can, a man taking off (or putting on) his jacket, a man mopping a floor, a man watering a flowerbed, and a woman cooking what appears to be sausages.  In Japan, sausages are generally called wieners.  This is a problematic word for the Japanese on multiple levels.  First, they have issues with many words beginning with "w" ("woman" becomes "ooman" when spoken).  Second, there are no words in Japanese that end with a consonant other than "n", so a word ending in "r" comes out as "ah" when pronounced.  Third, plurals don`t exist in Japanese, so these are often problematic for Japanese speakers learning English.  Taking all of these points into account, on Thursday I got this gem: A woman is cooking vienna.  ...   Uh, no, kids.  Vienna is a city in Austria.  Intriguing mental image, though.

The weekend was also full of nothing.  On Saturday it was rainy and gross and I felt exceedingly apathetic so that all of my writing attempts failed.  I studied Japanese for a while, and spent the rest of my time reading or knitting.  Sunday was much more productive for me.  I finished the second unit of my Japanese studies, passed the unit test (after four tries, because I still don`t understand particles), and surpassed 20,000 words in my novel!  Go me!  I probably could have actually been even more productive with my writing, except that I went to Starbucks and got a dark mocha frappuccino.  Anyone who knows me knows that it`s a bad idea for me to have that kind of caffeine, and an even worse idea for me to have it combined with sugar.  I had all of these ideas whirring around in my head after a while, but I couldn`t concentrate on any of them long enough to actually type them in my document.  And then the twitching started.  So I called it quits for the day, went home, and ran the first Week 5 plan of the Couch to 5K program.  This is a big deal, since I developed major foot pain due to needing new shoes and hadn`t been running in nearly three weeks.

I did some marking on Monday.  Last week I had the kids write about someone who inspires them, since their textbook was talking about a famous Japanese singer, Angela Aki, being inspired by Sarah McLachlan.  Most of them were idols, actresses, and pop groups, but one girl wrote about Demi Lovato and her messages against self-harm.  It was a very well-written paragraph, and I was really impressed!  I also met up with Nakamura-san on my way home from school, so we had a nice little chat while we walked with her dog for a bit.

Tuesday was a lesson about the weather with my lonely high school student at my special needs school.  Having just the one lesson meant that I had pretty much all day to work on my novel.  I finally passed 25,000 words!

Last Thursday, we were talking about the students` future jobs.  One girl said she wanted to work at the Jaws attraction at Universal Studios Japan, because it`s her favourite and she already knows the entire pre-ride spiel.  The class pretty much demanded that she perform it for them, which she did, on the condition that I do a Disney one next week.  I explained that I was a waitress, but I knew a lot of the rides by heart.  I was hoping they had forgotten about it by this week, but they didn`t.  So I did a skipper greeting from Jungle Cruise because I love that ride.  They understood most of it (I could tell because they were laughing rather than "wow"ing). 

And that`s it for me for now.  I`m excited for tomorrow night because I`m heading to Nagoya after school to catch an overnight bus.  I`M GOING TO (Tokyo) DISNEYLAND!!!!!!!  It`s been two years since I was there last, and I`m stupidly excited to see the Christmas decorations.  TTFN!

Dear Abby, The Force is Not With Me

So I did a lot of nothing on Tuesday (thank you, random Japanese holidays).  I got my target word count in for my novel for that day, almost finished my knitting project, did some reading, laundry, and got some groceries.  Basically it was like having an extra Saturday (I`d say Sunday, because I had to work the next day, but Saturday is the day I usually do all of those things).

Wednesday started with more of the direction marking that I`d been putting off because it was so painful, and then my one class of the day.  They were the same as they always are, nothing particularly exciting to report.  I also planned my conversation class lesson for the next day (Health and Advice), including a Dear Abby worksheet for them to complete. 

One of the students from my conversation class told my supervisor that she wouldn`t be in class on Thursday, but not to tell the other teachers because she was going to call in sick.  I told her that in English we call this "playing hooky," and told her about when I had to go into London to have my braces worked on as a teenager, and sometimes Mom and I would go shopping after before going back to school (Love you, Mom!).  This led to a discussion about dental or orthodontal work, wherein Morita-sensei learned a bunch of new vocabulary and can now probably go to the dentist in an English-speaking country without a problem.

(Side note: we went over the lesson plan and I told her about Dear Abby.  She`s now slightly addicted, and reading the website for English practice.  I find this hilarious.)

My life has become all sorts of boring.  I don`t really have much to share with you guys lately.  I think a lot of it has to do with me being used to my life here now.  There are probably many things that I just consider a normal, everyday occurrence, where if you were here, you would go, "Wait, what now?!"  And part of it is also that I haven`t really been doing much lately.

We had English club for the first time in a couple months on Thursday.  We had an open conversation meeting, so I took the chance to tell them about the novel I`m writing (with mixed success; I was telling them the bare bones version, so as not to confuse them with a lot of plot detail, but I think things still got lost in translation).  I asked them what kind of novel they would write if they were going to write one, and got three very different answers!  Mayu said she would write a crime/suspense novel in a contained environment like the Titanic (I told her about Murder of the Orient Express, and how it all takes place on a moving train).  Haruna said she would write a high school slice-of-life kind of story (and I taught them the phrase `slice of life`).  Tetsuro, the boy who I`m doing conversation lessons with and who has just decided to join the English club, said he would write a love story between two people in their 70s who have always been single and gave up on love.  I`m actually really intrigued by that last idea, and might try to do something with it for next year.

Friday I had my conversation lesson with Tetsuro.  Last week we chose to read an article about water on Mars (I will not think of Doctor Who, I will not think of Doctor Who), and how that increases the likelihood of life on Mars.  So when we got together, he read the article out loud and then discussed it.  That led to me telling him about Mars One, and then we speculated on aliens in other solar systems and galaxies.  It was a really awesome half hour, and I`m looking forward to next week!  We`ll pick a new article on Wednesday.  He`s got quite an imagination, so I think I might suggest a short story (like, a one-page sort of deal) that we can read.  I`ll have a look to see what I can find.

Saturday was spent grocery shopping, writing, and knitting.  For a little while, anyway.  I will admit that I spent most of the day reading on my iPad and watching YouTube videos (particularly the "mean tweets" segment from Jimmy Kimmel).  Nothing particularly productive.  I did manage to hit 10,000 words in my novel, though!  Sunday I was like, "I'm going to crack down and crank out a huge number of words for my novel!  Plus I need new running shoes, because the old ones are killing my feet.  The shoe store is in the same plaza as Starbucks, so I'll bring my writing, buy my shoes, and then grab a coffee (not-actually-coffee, because I no longer allow myself to have coffee, it's a bad idea) and do some serious writing!"  It rained all day.  Hard.  So instead, I decided I would knit and watch some Star Wars.  Apparently the universe didn't like this idea, either.  It took about 15 minutes of arguing with my laptop to get it to play A New Hope, and after almost a half hour of arguing with it about The Empire Strikes Back, I've given up.  Part of it, I think, is that this Lenovo sucks and I never want to own one again.  But I think most of it stems from the fact that I had to bring the bonus discs with me, which have enhanced CD-ROM contents, because I'm a horrible snob.  I have never watched the first disc of my trilogy.  This is because the first disc is the digitally remastered, "let's add things that make no sense" version.  The bonus disc has the original theatrical version.  I always watch the bonus disc.  But usually from my DVD player at home.  I didn't even know it was enhanced until I started fighting with it on here.  So now I am stuck Star Wars-less until I can figure out how to win this fight.

I had one of those nights last night were I just lay there, willing myself to go to sleep, but it doesn`t really happen, so I`m utterly exhausted today.  We were informed at our morning teacher`s meeting today that one of our teachers passed away suddenly on the weekend from SAH (aneurysm), so that didn`t really help my mood, either.  I didn`t really know him well, but he was the first math teacher to approach me when the exchange students were here, so I did work with him.  He was nice.

Mystery Machine and Halloween

Thursday morning:  Oh man, I am freaking out so bad.  I wasn`t nervous about the Principal visiting our class in Period 5, but my supervisor is trying to basically script the entire lesson, so now I`m stressed out about that because she`s driving me nuts.  Most of my mind is on the Mystery Game.  Are we going to be missing a student, and that`s going to screw everything up?  What if they don`t get it?  What if they just sit there in silence and don`t mingle and question people like they`re supposed to?  What if we start the game and I realize I forgot something?  I don`t think I show it on the outside (model of decorum and tranquility, right here), but right now my mind is like a rubber ball in an aluminum box.  Or Yoda during his fight with Count Dooku.

Thursday lunch:
Morita: Mel, three students are absent today.
Me: Oh god, oh god, oh god.
Morita: It`s these three.  *gives me a list*
Me: ....Okay.  We can do this.  Two of those are completely unimportant.  The third one gets asked three questions about people.  I`ll just make them ask that person directly.
Morita: And one student completely forgot about the mystery game.  Can you bring copies of everything to class for her?
Me: *aneurysm*

Thursday afternoon:  THAT WAS AWESOME.  I think it would have been easier if they were doing it in their native language, because there were a lot of questions for me, and they didn`t quite understand the "if you get asked about --------, act -----------".  But it was still great and the kids had a lot of fun.  I had a lot of guesses for my red herring suspects, which was good, and it means they understood what was going on, I just tricked them.  Go me!  The only person who guessed the thief correctly was Morita-sensei.  With the information she had, she had about a 50/50 shot at it (because the thief was seen around the crime scene with my major red herring).  She also told me that she saw one of the students last week getting help with her character sheet from a student outside of our class (they were told to keep them a secret).  When the student saw her coming, she shushed the boy who was helping her!  I thought that was hilarious, and I`m glad they really got into the spirit of the game.
Oh, and the first half with the principal went well, too.  But who cares, because my mystery game rocked!

We also had interviews for students who applied to go on exchange to Australia.  My supervisor asked me months ago to help with these, and of course I said yes.  I didn`t realize when she said "help," what she actually meant was "conduct, while JTEs observe."  Okay.  I can do that.  There were set questions and a grading scheme, so really all I had to do was sit there, read off the questions, and listen to how well they answered.  We had seven that day, because one student was absent, and will probably be interviewed on Friday.

Friday was a super-zen day.  I didn`t want to get out of bed, but I did anyway because I knew I had to.  What made it better is that I decided to wear my new Daredevil tshirt.  My first period class was one of the ones that had been switched, so it was nice to have a lower-pace morning.  Instead of back-to-back classes first thing in the morning, I had a period-long break between classes to get my stuff together.  While I was marking, Morita-sensei looked over at me and asked, "Mel, why do you write with the paper sideways?"  I had to laugh.  It`s been so long since someone actually noticed that I write on such a severe angle.  Most people are just used to it.  I`m not even sure why I do it.  Maybe it`s a habit from helping classmates with schoolwork throughout the years?

Saturday morning (Halloween) I woke up with the overwhelming urge to knit.  This is odd, since I haven`t tried to knit since that one time my grandmother tried to teach me when I was still a single-digit age.  But the urge didn`t go away, so after a couple hours and some tea, I resigned myself to actually having a shower and getting dressed and headed out to the store to buy needles and some yarn.  I came back, watched a YouTube video, and off I went!  And that`s pretty much what I did for the entire weekend.  On Saturday I marathoned a bunch of Halloween movies, and on Sunday it was whatever-I-felt-like movies.  Included in the latter, of course, was my go-to movie for whenever I craft, Horton Hears a Who.  I have no idea why this is my crafting movie, but it is.  Just like Repo: The Genetic Opera is my Valentine`s Day movie, Bedknobs and Broomsticks is my sick movie, and Captain America: The First Avenger is my sleep movie (because I fall asleep every time).  I got at least a foot and a half done, which I think is pretty good for someone who`s never done this before. 

Sunday was also the beginning of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  I haven`t actually participated in this since 2011, when I failed epically about two weeks in.  The story I`m writing this time, though, is one that`s been kicking around in my head for about two years, so I`m happy to finally be putting it down.  I started planning for this in August, when I had nothing better to do with my days (you may recall me blogging about getting paid for writing back then - that was my planning stage for this).  The problem is that I haven`t even looked at this stuff since the beginning of September, so I`ve lost my mojo as far as character voices go, and I don`t remember what a lot of my plans were.  So since Tuesday is a holiday, I plan to go over my notes in great detail (when my fingers need a break from knitting), and see if I can`t figure out where this was supposed to go.  Already my convenient-plot-device character has taken over as best-friend-of-the-main-character, so we`ll see.