For those of you who haven’t been to Universal Studios Japan, go. It’s a worth a visit although it’s much smaller than the American one. The lines were massive when I went-waited two hours for the Spiderman ride (which was pretty good except everything was in Japanese and I couldn’t translate as fast as we were moving to my parents). Summer was probably not the wisest time to go since it was about 38°C and everybody was on holiday. Took the subway from Nakatsu station (hee hee Hana Kimi moment-was so excited when I found out the hotel was next to it) to Osaka Station and from there switched on various lines until we reached the Universal Studios line (complete with pictures of Elmo). It took about 11 minutes to reach there and by the time we arrived the train was packed.
There are a few shops leading up to the entrance including a Studio Ghibli shop (Spirited Away is slowly edging past Disney films as my favourite animated film of all time), Hard Rock café and a Hello Kitty store. USJ also has the gigantic rotating globe at the front (which got me extremely excited since I haven’t been to the US for a couple years).
There are lots of restaurants available (the Pink Café truly lived up to its name but sadly it was jam packed) and we ended up in a Chinese restaurant called the “Dragon’s Pearl” which was ok, not authentic Chinese but then I wasn’t expecting it to be since it was a Chinese fast food place in a Japanese American theme park. Lol. Ended up having jjajangmyeon which filled me up enough and since it was cold, helped cool me down after nearly melting outside.
There was a really cool show called “Hip hop school” which was basically some students getting a really boring lecture from this geeky teacher who ended up being a rapping, dancing, hip hop master once he’d loosened up. In between him talking the ‘students’ (professional dancers who looked very tan and in their 20’s) would dance and do skits for the audience before he noticed that they’d moved from their seats. It’s worth watching even if you don’t understand. The podium the teacher speaks from gets turned into a turntable.
There’s not much to do in the Land of Oz unless you’re a kid and I didn’t really want to watch “Wicked” in Japanese (the musical version of Oz from the Wicked Witch of the West’s P.O.V) so we wandered over to E.T (my favourite ride). The line said we’d have to wait 3 hours minimum so we gave up and ended walking to Hollywood Dream-The Ride! on which DBSK’s “Box in a Ship” could clearly be heard from. There are speakers in the seats so as you’re going on the ride you hear the song. I now regret not going on since the line wasn’t that long (damn my fear of rollercoasters!) but I did find something that definitely made up for it.
A Tohoshinki museum! Yes, DBSK had their own mini-museum near the Spiderman 3D ride which was a small collection of pictures of them in USJ and their handprints. I went mental XD. Maybe it was the heat. Or not. I didn’t even know there was one until I noticed the “T” insignia on a small metal board and pelted towards it before yelling “OHMYGODOHMYGOD EEEEEEEEEE!” and running inside. Well, I managed to control myself enough so I didn't look like a total spaz at least XD.
I managed to get loads of pictures before people started coming in which made this fan very very happy. My parents even took pictures for me as I was too busy putting my hands in their prints. The last time I was in Osaka (March 2008) my friends and I left for Kyoto the day Tohoshinki/DBSK performed at USJ. Which made us (by us I mean L and I, B was smirking over our misfortune as he’d wanted to go that day but we had a tight schedule) really quite sad.
We watched one more show which had USJ’s two tiger mascots (one pink, one blue) on a journey to find true friendship. It was as you can imagine, very cheesy. The acrobatics were good though as were the costumes of the many birds, animals, green gremlin things, magician/Merlin/Dumbledore man. It was a musical show which the children all loved but I will say the lyrics were a mozzarella overload. I think ‘yume’ (dreams) was mentioned about a thousand times (I should be used to this after watching Rookies and Gokusen-which I enjoyed) as was ‘ai’ (love) and the importance of friends. I ended up buying tiger ears from the shop on the way out…Just like in Tokyo Disney where I ended up with Tigger ears but in my defense, these were white.
Universal Studios Japan:
Directions: Take the train until you reach a either Osaka, Nishikujo or Namba (Namba sempai~…Hana Kimi) station. From Osaka go to Nishikujo and take the Universal Studios train. From Namba you have one stop (Imamiya) before you reach Nishikujo and swap trains.
Price: Adults :¥5800 for a one day Studio pass
Children:¥3900
For more info, go to http://www.usj.co.jp/e_top.html
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Next post will probably be Spring in Fukuoka/Hiroshima
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