Universal Studios Japan, or rather the discovery of a DBSK museum

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

Please credit this blog if you plan on using/linking pictures or info.

Next post will probably be Spring in Fukuoka/Hiroshima

DBSK's 3rd Tour T, Osaka

Words cannot describe just how amazing this concert was. I'd been trying to get tickets (over the phone) for about three months before and spazzing to my friend (whom I shall call L) about how impossible it was seeing as their concerts had sold out before in 3 minutes. -_-. Also, in the trains there were all these advertisements for the DBSK Mastercard (which I was really really tempted to try and buy).

We arrived at Osaka-jo Hall (Osaka Castle Hall) early around lunchtime on the 26th of March and my male friend (whom I shall call B) was shocked and very, very scared at the large amount of screaming females that crowded the immediate area (meaning, from the train station exit until the concert hall itself). There were also loads of (illegal) stalls selling DBSK merchandise-pictures, fans, posters etc. A few punters weaved through the crowd trying to sell tickets. There was hardly a male in sight and the few that were there (mostly foreigners) were leaving.

"See those gaijin?" asks B, using a word he'd picked up from hearing everywhere we went, "They're walking away. That's what I should be doing." (Note-gaijin is the Japanese term for foreigner) .

Despite this we made our way up the steps, past the large line of fans queuing to buy the official merchandise (including spoons for about 500 yen if I can remember correctly) towards the ticket desk. Which was blocked a many, many (neat and orderly) lines of Japanese waiting to go in. And this was only about 1pm now. The concert started at 6:30. Wow. Nobody seemed like they were going to move so B got fed up and used his "superior" height and pushed through the crowd, L (also very tall) following with me at the back bowing to the many women glaring at us. Upon reaching the line for the tickets (thankfully not long), B soon found the intense staring too much and wandered off to sit away from the crowd and left us girls to buy.

"I think I should go join him," said L as the crowd stared (politely though, they never look directly at you or very obviously, but you can feel it) at her. She didn't though as we moved to the front of the line. The lady was very nice and spoke english so we bought two (B refused to come) tickets at 7000 yen each.

When we came back later that evening the place was just as crowded and more food stalls had set up (takoyaki, hot dogs, yakisoba). We lined up in the queue and I bought 2 posters and the concert shirt and towel (which looked a lot bigger in the picture).

Ok, there were many differences between the concert in Bangkok and the concert in Osaka. Bangkok was AMAZING, the 30minute building of fans singing along to songs, the infinite sea of red, really got you pumped for it. When the advertisements came on the screen people screamed (I thought the concert was starting). In Osaka we were ushered in about 20 minutes before and everyone sat (or stood in our case) where they were supposed to. The concert starting exactly at 6:30 (I do love Japan's punctuality although just this once a build up would've been nice) with the intro vid playing onscreen. Bangkok fel much more alive. The costumes were shiny, tight black suits and coats (oooOOOooo Matrix), concept all spy thriller mystery. It's funny having seen the outtakes and seeing poor Junsu falling onto his butt (he looked very cool and swishy swishy in the vid).

Darkness Eyes was probably my favourite performance because of the awesome stage. The cage, the lasers, them on the walkway......Rising Sun blew my mind. Or maybe it was Changmin's pitch perfect scream. I swear that boy has the biggest lungs, how does he do it? The interlude's were good-more videos before songs, the boys came out and talked, Junsu cracked lame jokes (poor L couldn't understand), Jaejoong cracked a lame joke -" Ramen ga tsukemen, boku wa ikemen!", literally, "Eating ramen, I am a hottie!"-which had the audience laughing. Though during the concert it was slightly disappointing to see a lack of audience participation. Hardly anyone was singing along or waving their hands in time. The girls with the seats right at the front were sitting very quietly. Heck, in Bangkok when I was at the front everyone was bouncing on an infinite high, singing their lungs out. In a way it's good they didn't sing, so you can clearly hear the boys, but seriously, after performing live plus dancing like maniacs I think they deserve a bit more love. L later likened the clapping to "A performance at the Philharmonic".

Summer Dream was unbelievably cute, with Junsu making up dance moves once again (so adorable. Just wanted to squish him) and the DongBang boys following. The audience joined in a bit more towards the end (thank goodness, the lack of participation for "Rainbow" was quite painful since the lyrics were up on screen and the boys were trying to get the crowd hyped up to sing along). L was really into it by now, humming along the tune and cheering after songs had ended (the girls next to us gave us strange looks) and we were both pretty hyper. Especially after Rising Sun. Loving You was beautiful though, really really good. They really are amazing singers (wish they'd go on Music Station though, just once).

After several encores the concert was over and we trailed out (nice and neatly) before L and I immediately ran for the food stalls. But not before taking a few pictures of ourselves infront of their large Mastercard advertisments (I got given a flyer for one too lol).

After buying ourselves two hot dogs (I later regretted the overload of mustard I put on mine) we burst into a post-concert induced song medley of...ABBA. And the Spice Girls. People must've thought we were drunk or high (quite possibly both) but since L can't speak or sing Japanese we started with "So tell me what you want, what you really really want!?" except kind of out of tune. Haha, good times good times. It was during this crazed song medley (and taking pictures of their tour vans, again) that we met two fans from Taiwan who were wondering where we (strange people) had come from. When I said we'd come from England their faces were really shocked that we'd come over just for a concert (I explained we hadn't, we just happened to be here on the day *cough* and managed to get tickets) since the distance from Taiwan-Japan is far less than England-Japan. They were really nice but we moved into speaking mandarin (poor L was left wondering what we were saying) and discussed favourite members (one liked Junsu, one liked Micky which L understood and lit up upon hearing his name), songs and travel itinerary (they were going back in 2 days or so).

Speaking of taking pictures infront of the vans, the day we arrived in Osaka we went to see the castle (which is worth the visit) and as we walked around the grounds I happened to spy a rather large van with Changmin plastered onto it. So my natural reaction was to yell out "Oh my God!" and sprint towards it and lo and behold, there were all the other vans with their faces and a nice group shot on them. My energy levels at a high, I proceeded to take pictures of myself and the vans (poor B, he really didn't understand why I got so hyped up but he took some pictures for me anyway). Sadly though, because of the way they were parked, the vans with Jaejoong and Junsu were blocked and I couldn't get pictures. As we started to walk away, the van driver called out for me to wait and moved the vans for us! It was so sweet of him and I bowed like mad as he laughed and watched me resume spazzing.