Holiday in Japan - Disney Sea and Shizuoka

After getting back from Kyoto, and having a solid day's rest, we embarked on an adventure of a different kind - Tokyo Disney Sea. Everything is related to the sea somehow, from the Voyages of Sindbad, and the Little Mermaid to 20000 leagues under the sea. (Although I couldn't work out the nautical relation that the Indianna Jones attraction had.) We had booked a day trip to Disney Sea from Shizuoka, which meant getting up at 3am and riding into the city to catch a bus which would arrive at the park at 8.30am. I knew it was going to be a big day, so I tried to get some sleep, but everyone around us was excitedly chattering away. As we got near I started to get excited too, and we passed a lot of famous places in Tokyo as we drove through. The theme park itself was absolutely enormous. We decided to go on the biggest ride first - "Journey to the Centre of the Earth". It was definitely the most enjoyable ride, and lucky we went on it in the morning because later on the queue waiting time reached two and a half hours! I was glad we had brought some food, because there were queues of people waiting for about half an hour just to buy some snacks! We managed to see almost all the attractions, and the longest we had to wait was about 40 minutes. The attractions were very well made and the shows were quite entertaining too (the 3D genie show was my favourite, even though I had to guess what was being said). We took some time to relax too, but by 10pm when it closed we were entirely exhausted. We were the last people back on the bus, making it just in time! On the way back everyone on the bus slept - a big difference from the morning trip! It was 2am when we were dropped off at Shizuoka and started riding our bikes back to Chihiro's place, and 3am by the time we made it to bed.

After Disney Sea we had a few relaxing days in Shizuoka, visiting some nice cafes, going shopping, and seeing a festival. I also got to see Chihiro's sister's school sports day. It was very different to the ones I've been to in Australia. The family and friends of the students had to sit behind a fence away from the students because of a killing at another school in Japan several years ago. I thought it was a bit of an extreme reaction because it had been a once-off occurrence by some crazy guy. Anyway, the students played some interesting games like tug of war, and a skipping competition involving 40 people skipping the same rope at once! They whole school also performed a complex dance-kata together.

The suburbs around Chihiro's home were very different to Brisbane suburbs. The houses had no yards, and were very close to each other, but surprisingly there were many small plots of land that were still used for agriculture. I didn't think it would be economical enough to farm such a small area, but it was very common to see rice or tea growing between houses. One night I got to try Hanabi (Japanese fireworks)! We went to a place by a canal to set them off with Chihiro's sisters and brother. We also attracted some onlookers with the loud bangs and showers of sparks. There were so many different types including rockets, screamers, birdcages, volcano, and ufos.

On my second-last night in Shizuoka, Chihiro's aunt and uncle took us out for dinner at a really nice sushi restaurant. It was quite large, and there was a single sushi carousel that served the entire place. We had powdered green tea, and many different types of sushi including sakura ebi, eel, salmon, tofu, crab soup, and amai-ebi (sweet-prawn). At the end the waitress waved a scanner over the plates which totaled the price instantly! Chihiro's relatives were very generous and paid the bill (again)!

On my last day in Shizuoka, I was finally caught on film in my new yukatta from Kyoto. For lunch we went into the city to Chihiro's favourite cafe to meet her friend Mayumi. It was quite cheap, at only $13 for lunch, cake and coffee! The cake we had was an amazing mixture of sponge, cocoa, maccha (green tea), strawberry, cream, banana, peach, bean cream, cheese cream, marron, and custard sauce. It was a bit sad spending my last day in Shizuoka. For dinner, Chihiro's brother cooked a greet Chinese meal for eveyone, and afterwards we had chocolates and wine. I really appreciated the hospitality of Chihiro's family, so I gave them a present for letting me stay with them for such a long time - a book of Australian photography, and Doraemon sweets from kyoto.