Another Tokyo Adventure

So it`s been three weeks.  Again, I kinda forgot that this was something I do.  I think partly it`s because I`ve been reading, and partly because I`ve hit a wall of ennui due to the utter lack of work I`ve had for a month now.  Everyone who knows me knows I don`t do well with boredom. 

Almost literally nothing has happened to me since my last update (again, see my lack of work).  But I guess I can tell you about my trip to Tokyo?  I mean, most of it was focused on Disney again, because I`m me and I really don`t go to Tokyo for anything else, but I can still tell stories.

So I got into Tokyo at 6AM on March 16th, thanks to the glory (torture) that is the overnight bus, and made my way to Disneyland without incident, despite having to change trains at Tokyo Station (AKA Hell on Earth).  I met up with Ros, and we stood in line for a little less than an hour, waiting to get into the park.  We`ve never done actual restaurants at Disneyland before, so we`d decided that was something we wanted to do this trip.  We headed over to the Crystal Palace and had a lovely breakfast wherein Ros was startled by five different Winnie the Pooh characters as they came around to our table from behind her.  Did I laugh every time?  Yes, yes I did.  I`m such a caring friend.

When we finished breakfast, people were lining the streets for the first run of the event parade for Frozen Fantasy (the reason we were there - I still don`t love the movie as a whole, but it`s pretty, and Let it Go is a fun song to sing at the top of your lungs while flinging your arms about dramatically, which is something I already did so it justifies it).  The park wasn`t terribly busy, though, being a Wednesday of a non-holiday week, so at half an hour before parade time we got bench seats right outside the restaurant.  It was a big deal, and so luxurious-feeling!  I held our spots while Ros went to get Fastpasses for Space Mountain.

We managed to get done everything we wanted to, but a lot of our day was just spent wandering around.  We got a lot of Fastpasses, and other things didn`t have particularly long lines, so we just sort of strolled, ducking into shops and people-watching.  There were some really interesting pseudo-costumes (often known as "bounding", but that`s a lecture for another day)!  Ros also managed to get us some priority seats for the stage show One Man`s Dream II: The Magic Lives On. 

It`s your typical "characters on stage, with lots of dancer extras (most of whom are white, and that`s actually kind of really jarring)" thing, but it was really well done.  Plus the fact that we managed to get tickets was kind of awesome, because priority seats are given out via a lottery system that I can`t really explain.

Thursday was my lazy day.  I got to sleep in (thank god, because I didn`t really sleep on the overnight bus, and then going all day at Disneyland... I was exhausted!), and then just spend some time wandering around wherever I wanted.  I`ll be honest: Tokyo doesn`t thrill me, as a whole.  It was huge and exciting the first time I was there, six years ago, but since then it`s lost a lot of its awesome factor for me (I don`t think it helped that I went to Hong Kong).  So I went and got my train ticket for Sunday, and then wandered (AKA got lost in) Tokyo Station City, had some lunch, and then headed over to Ueno Park with my book to sit in the sunshine for a couple hours.  Turned out a couple of the park`s cherry blossom trees were blooming early, so I got to see those before I found a nice bench to park myself on. 

In the evening, I headed into Yokohama for the first time ever to meet with Ros for supper.  Yokohama has a really large Chinatown, and I`ve been craving Chinese food for months.  That craving hasn`t entirely gone away, because I want the sugar, MSG-infested, highly Americanized Chinese food, and what they have there is, like, legit Chinese food, but they still had sweet and sour pork, so that was alright.  Then we wandered around the harbour area so that I could see some of it, got brownie sundaes courtesy of the local Hard Rock Cafe, and called it a night.

Friday I got the chance to meet up with my friend Hitomi, who was one of my housemates for a while when I lived in Florida.  We met up in Asakusa, where the Kinryu no Mai (Golden Dragon Dance) was happening at Senso-ji.  This was actually a new experience for both of us, since being somewhat local means Hitomi doesn`t often do the big tourist things.  This was also her first temple visit of the year, so we made sure she did the obligatory fortune telling and such as we watched the giant dragon-on-a-stick parade around and dance.  It was really neat! 

We stopped for lunch at a really famous ramen restaurant, and I was surprised at how much I liked it!  I`m usually rather indifferent to ramen, but this stuff was really good!  Then we took a stroll around Hibiya Park before heading to our reservation for afternoon tea at The Peninsula Tokyo.  Hitomi had never done afternoon tea before; I`ve had it a few places, but The Peninsula Hong Kong was my favourite, so I knew the one in Tokyo would be high quality.  I was right!  The service was sakura (cherry blossom) themed (like everything else in Japan at the moment), but not overly so. 

The savory plate had a poppy seed waffle cone filled with green pea butter (this was actually my favourite savory item), egg and shrimp salad on a sakura bun, smoked salmon and cream cheese in a wrap, and I honestly have no idea what the tiny triple-decker sandwich was, but it was pretty good.  The scone plate featured both plain and strawberry scones, with dishes of Devonshire cream and raspberry-mint jam for spreading.  I didn`t think I would like the jam much, but it was actually delicious!  The dessert plate featured two kinds of cake (raspberry mousse and strawberry sakura, both of which were typical Japanese cakes), a strawberry tart, and a strawberry sakura madeleine that I probably could have eaten an entire pan of on my own.  We ate at a leisurely pace, so we each ended up having a different kind of tea with each plate.  I started out with the chocolate mint tea, moved to a rose hibiscus (which was much stronger and more hibiscus-y than I`d anticipated, unfortunately), and finished with some kind of vanilla tea that was really smooth. 

Saturday involved getting up at the crack of stupid to head out to DisneySea (worth it, always).  As soon as we were through the gates when the park opened, we waited in the half hour line for Fastpasses for Toy Story Midway Mania (which were for, like, 5:20-6:20 that night, and it was only 8:45AM!).  It started spitting while we were waiting to get into the park, and it just kept going, often a bit harder, for most of the day.  By the time we were out of the Fastpass line, we discovered that you can actually fit, like, four fully-grown humans under a standard umbrella when you`re not worried about silly things like personal space (welcome to Japan).  We went back and forth across the park I don`t even know how many times that day, checking the times on various rides.  Despite the fact that, at one point, the standby line for Toy Story was 4 hours long, all the popular rides were still at least an hour and a half wait, with most of them sitting around the two hour mark.  After hitting up the Arabian Coast for our beloved Nap Ride (it`s not actually called that; that`s what we call it.  It`s like `small world` but telling the story of Sinbad, and it`s very relaxing) and the carousel (which Aladdin was riding while we were waiting in line, and it was forty different kinds of exciting), we were able to get a Fastpass for something else, so we grabbed one for Tower of Terror and then went and stood in line for Journey to the Center of the Earth for two hours.  It was relatively warm, and definitely dry, so we were happy to wait.  Plus it`s not like we had much of a choice at that point.  We had a nice lunch of barbecue pork sandwiches at the Cape Cod Cook-Off, by which point my jeans were soaked from ankle to knee and my shoes were sloshing with every step.  It was gross and cold, but there was good food so I only complained a little.  We grabbed a Fastpass for StormRider, which was the only thing I was adamant that we needed to do that day, because they`re closing it permanently and I`ll never get to ride it again, and then... I dunno, did some shopping?  Whatever.  Not important.  We circled back to do all of our Fastpasses (once we returned to Toy Story, we still had to wait at least a half hour in line before we got on the ride), and then we had dinner reservations at Magellan's, which is one of the two fancy restaurants in the park.  It was so good!  It was a four course meal, with hors d'oeuvres, a soup or salad, a main course, and a dessert. 

I would definitely go there again, but there are so many other places to try!

Sunday was my last day in Tokyo, with my train departing in the late afternoon, so I coerced Ros and Hitomi to come with me for lunch to the Kawaii Monster Cafe.  I'd been wanting to go to this place for quite a while, because bright colours and cute things, so it was awesome to have willing company!  The food was pretty good (though Ros's sandwich took forever to come to the table), the atmosphere is awesome, and there's entertainment, too!  ...Ros and I ended up being part of the entertainment, which was unexpected, but a lot of fun.  We're just standing there, watching the Merry-Go-Round stage like everyone else, and then one of the hosts comes over to us and reaches out her hands to us, and we're like, "O...kay?"  So then we get pulled up onto the stage, and they're like, "We're going to dance together!" So we're taught this basic dance that's vaguely reminiscent of the Thriller hand motions, and we go round and round on the stage, doing this.  I felt a bit ridiculous, especially since my outfit was a clear statement of "Yes, I'm out for lunch, but then I'm going to sit on a train for three hours," so I wasn't exactly at my best to be stared at by everyone in the restaurant like that. 

And then we hung out around Harajuku and Shibuya until it was time for me to head off.  End of vacation!