I went to Tokyo Disneysea for the first time on Saturday.

My day started extremely early, and only seemed earlier by the fact that I was late the night before at a yukata party (which I'll talk about later). I got picked up from my apartment at 5:30am. You might think that no one else in their right mind would be up at 5:30am on a Saturday, but you'd be wrong because this is Japan where people get up freakishly early for no real reason.

Anyway, I got picked up at 5:30 and we picked up one more girl after me, so we left my town around 6:00. Our party was made of two boys, three girls, me, and the dad of one of the guys, who served as our driver, and all were from church. The drive to Tokyo is only about 2 hours, and we stopped at a rest stop along the way for some breakfast, and also got very lost once *in* Tokyo, and arrived at the park around 8:30. Along the way, we also got a glimpse of Mt. Fuji because it was a nice, clear day, and wow that is a big mountain.

So we waited in line to get into the park, which opened at 9am. We bought our tickets beforehand at a convenience store (well, someone bought mine for me), so we just had to wait. There were a lot of people, but not quite as bad as I expected.

The gates opened and in we went. Out first stop was Tower of Terror so that we could get fast passes for later, but the line was short enough that we went ahead and rode that first thing. That is an intense ride. The girl behind me was crying "I wanna get off, I wanna get off" from the moment we step into the elevator. It's definitely one of those rides where the anticipation is half the ride. Also, it's really high.

After that, we went in search of more fast passes and rode some other rides, as one does at Disney Theme Parks. I think we got all the major rides, like Indiana Jones, a small-ish one called Raging Spirits, a Sinbad one that I think was a Japan only thing (kind of Pirates of the Caribbean-ish), and a Little Mermaid one that I forget the name of. We also saw two shows, both of which were very cool. The first was the Genie's Lamp which was a combination magic show and 3D show. There were live actors on stage that did some magic, and then when it was the genie's turn, he came out of the lamp onto a screen above the stage and interacted with the actors. And we had glasses. It was really fun.

We also saw the Little Mermaid show, which was *awesome* and one of the must-sees for those of you who make it to Disney sea. Almost all the actors were on wires and "swam" in the air, and the songs were in English with the dialogue in Japanese. It was so cool to watch. An interesting thing though, was how they changed the story a little. They started with Part of Your World, then went to Poor Unfortunate Souls, to introduce Ursula, but Ariel turned her offer down. It was very Japanese to be "I'm happy with my life here and I don't need to go changing things" and the moral of the story is to be content with what you have, which is kind of the opposite of the movie? But yeah, very Japanese. And then they finished with Under the Sea, which was also fun. The Dry Ocean thing they had going was gorgeous.


I also got to see the Legend of Mythica, which is like the boat parade/show thing. It was incredible to watch. There were several boats that were all character themed that paraded around in the harbor while dancers put on a show on the shore.

It was a very exciting show and the costumes were incredible. There was just so much energy and it was awesome.

I only got my picture taken with one character, Scrooge. The dad that drove us kept telling me to jump ahead of the kids in line because I was a foreigner and I could get away with it, but I didn't want to cut in front of some kids. But really, the only other characters I saw were Stitch, Pinocchio and the wolf guy from Pinocchio. And we found Stitch just as his time ran out, which was sad because I would have liked to get that picture.

We stayed at the park until just before closing, which was 10pm. Completely exhausted, we headed back home, and I slept half the drive. I got home around midnight, and to bed around 1 because I had to ice my foot. I'd pulled a muscle or strained it or something about a week ago, and it swelled up a bit from all the walking I did.

And then I slept. For eleven hours. And even then, I only woke for a couple hours to eat and such before falling back asleep in a five hour nap. That's how tired I was.


But it was definitely worth it.