Tokyo Disney Sea

Yesterday a couple of friends and I went to Disney Sea in Tokyo to celebrate Angela's birthday, but the adventure started on Friday.

Right after school I raced home to pack an overnight bag and catch the train into Takasaki. There I met up with Alice and Amy to check out an Alphonse Mucha exhibit that was in town. It was amazing! I had no idea that he was talented in so many different styles and mediums! If you ever get the chance to see an exhibit of his take it!

After that we headed over to a garlic restaurant for dinner. Liz would have loved it! We had garlic pizza, garlic french fries, garlic steak and a really yummy appetizer called Dracula which was roasted garlic, cheese, anchovy oil and something else made into a spread that came out all hot and bubbling that you could spread onto slices of baguette. Mmmmm!

Then it was time for me to say goodnight to my companions for the evening and meet up with Angela and Laura. The plan was to crash at Angela's place and get up at the crack of dawn so we could hit the road by 6am and hopefully make it to the park before the gates opened.

Things were looking good as we rolled out of bed at 5am and managed to bundle ourselves into the car by 6 - and then I was given the roll of navigator. I would like to take this time to give a shout out to my homey, the iPhone. I only missed one exit and was able to quickly calibrate another route and it was smooth sailing from then on. Our trip home wasn't quite so glorious but I will get to that later. Due to traffic our 2 hour drive became a 4 hour drive and we got to the park around 10am. Not too shabby.

Once we were there we got our first taste of lines to come when we endeavoured to buy tickets. After about an hour we were 5 people from the front of the line when the unthinkable happened. We all watched in horror as all of the ticket signs came down and SOLD OUT was slapped on top of the one-day pass. SOLD. OUT. After we were able to scrape our jaws off the pavement we shuffled over to the counter and gave our best puppy dog faces. The lady at the wicket cheerfully asked if we wanted 4 one-day passes and told us that the sign was for people who were half-way through the line. We were safe!

This was my first experience with a Disney Park and it really was like walking onto a movie set. I think most of the pictures I took that day were of the architecture but I did score a couple of shots of some of the characters!

Angela, Jiminy Cricket and me

After grabbing a bite to eat we went in search of our first ride. We found a line that was only 1.5 hours long and joined the queue. It was for a Steampunk ride called Storm Rider and was one of those rides where you sit in a moving chair as you watch a screen. What made this one particularly awesome was that a giant laser crash through the ceiling and it proceeded to rain on us :)

I'm glad I enjoyed it because as fate would have it that was the only ride I went on! I had been battling a headache all day and it got the best of me 2 hours into the line for Indiana Jones. I fought my way back through the line and went to the nurse's station.

There I was poked in the tummy because I was feeling nauseous and then given Chinese medicine (some kind of powder that tasted like cinnamon, in fact I think it was cinnamon) and put to bed. A few minutes later I was sick and had to apologise profusely in Japanese because I didn't know where the bathroom was. Thank god I had a bed pan! After being fixed up by a very nice nurse I was put back to bed where I passed out for 3 hours. When I woke up I was feeling well enough to try and find my friends again. As I was heading out of the station I was handed 2 cutely folded barf bags just in case. It made me laugh.

I had slept through the evening show and the fireworks had been cancelled but I was able to meet up with Katie and grab a bite to eat before going shopping for the remainder of our time there. I even managed to score some milk tea flavoured popcorn! Yummm!

By the time the park was closing I was starting to feel a little green around the gills again so I opted to give Katie navigating duties and the iPhone so I could pass out in the back seat. I woke up to Katie urgently insisting that I wake up because they missed a turn and no longer knew where they were in downtown Tokyo. I recalibrated the map for her but was now to scared to go back to sleep as the rest of the car was mildly panicking as we sped through a web of highways in the middle of a gigantic city. Just as I was about to doze off again we reversed because we had missed a turn O.O! I'm was awake now.

We eventually made our way out of the maze safe and sound and I was able to crawl into my bed around 1:30am. If I ever go back or want to check out Tokyo Disneyland I think I will take the train and book a hotel for the night.

School Sports Day

On Wednesday my school had it’s annual Sports Day. On this day all of the students are placed on teams according to their homeroom and are pitted against each other in epic battle.

It was a welcome break from teaching. But I did have the principal come up to me and ask if it was ok for me to be in the sun. I think he was worried that I would burn as soon as sunlight touched my skin because I was still sporting my burn from the weekend in Nagano. Or at least I think that’s what he was saying, it was all in Japanese with a little bit of charades thrown in there for fun :)

I got to participate in a few of the games. One of them involved me holding up a basket on a pole above my head as the students tried to throw bean bags into it. It was fun and scary at the same time to have 40 students surround me and throw bean bags over/at me.

The other game I got to do was a teacher relay where we had to keep a ball on a racket as we run around the track. I was rather disappointed with my performance and demand a rematch when I am not holding a camera!

But my favourite race of the day was the club replay because they had to do it in team uniform/something that represented the club. The sports clubs were pitted against each other while the arts clubs squared off. The track and field team had to run while carrying the pole vault pole because they had an unfair advantage. I felt really bad for the poor kid from the ping pong club who had to run around the track while bouncing the ping pong ball on the paddle, the wind blew it off every other bounce and he had to go chasing after it. Needless to say the ping pong club got lapped!

The arts race saw a guy in a dress (drama club) and a fat kid with a marching band tuba wrapped around him. The ikebana girls got off easy, all they had to do was run while holding a bunch of leaves :P

Nagano Soccer Tournament

This past weekend I found myself in Nagano Prefecture for a soccer tournament with ALTs from all over eastern Japan. We teamed up based on what prefecture we were from so I was playing for Gunma on the girl's team. The pitch was gorgeous because it was up in the mountains and had a spectacular view.

We did really well considering that half our team had never played before. On the Saturday we had 4 games where we lost two 0-1 and tied the others at 1-1. I played defence for the majority of the time and was sad to find that I am a lot slower than I used to be. I must be getting old :(

That night there was a dance party and too much alcohol was consumed. Let's just say that I am never going to drink that much again...or at least while I'm in Japan and am expected to play soccer the next morning! I woke to a massive hangover and could barely keep my coffee down. But I hauled my stubborn self onto the field and managed to play one half before I side-lined myself. The rest of the day saw me hiding under my jacket from the sun and trying to calm my stomach. But my team managed to win both games and get us into the semi-finals (I choose not to believe that it was because I wasn't playing!) By the time our final game rolled around everyone was ready to go home so we bypassed the actual game and went straight to the shootout. The Gunma girls won it 4-2 and landed us in 3rd place :) And what was our glorious prize? More alcohol. Needless to say I gave mine away.