universal studios japan

apparently, 2 certain people hate me "because of all the awesome things" i get to do, so here are the last batch of photos i've yet to post - those from our trip to universal studios japan last friday. hope this makes them more jealous! haha  :)

most of them are on facebook anyway, but here are some of the highlights! basically, a whole bunch of us went there to sort of celebrate one of our birthdays, and we kinda split into 2 groups after a while, but it was fun! i'm not a themepark person, but it was really rather enjoyable because we were all there as a group :)

the entrance:

the entire themepark is divided into several districts, like hollywood, central park, etc, and hollywood is the first thing you see when you enter:

 

of course you need people in outfits to provide the element of liminality

as well as staff wearing silly headgear to complete the theme-park experience:

the first place we went to was shrek's 4-D adventure:

i'm surprised that no one in my group knew what 4-D means in themepark terms! some were talking about how the 4th dimension is time, when 4-D when used in relation to rides in amusement parks and the like simply means that your chair moves and you're gonna get air and water sprayed at you at appropriate moments as you're watching the film in 3-D.

the show was nice enough, but not that exciting. i think the Aladin's adventure 4-D flick i saw in Genting was nicer actually! it was more exciting and far far far scarier!

you have to queue for every ride at USJ too. thankfully, the 'estimated waiting time' is always longer than the actual waiting time, but even then we usually spent around 15 to 20 minutes for every ride and show. and you know, there's A LOT of space for queues and our queue only used an itsy bitsy portion of that space, which gives a very good idea as to how super damn crowded USJ can be at its peak!

along the way, there were cute snoopy custard buns (they apparently tasted rather good):

and colourful cookies:

there was also this parade which comprised lots of colourful floats:

kitty chan! i havent bought a single hello kitty thing yet though.

 

as well as lots of smiling happy extras who look rather ridiculous:

i like this picture though, due to the 'movement' of his 'hair'!

the people in the parade sprayed lots of water at the audience too, but thankfully i'm a short asian girl and was protected by the people who were standing in front of me :)

we also went on the back to the future ride (awesome!), ET ride (waste of time and very very old-school and lame), jurassic park ride (the drop was scary!) and spiderman ride, which was the best!:

there was this section that was very old-manhattan (i think?) and looked really nice. it was my favourite:

yellow cab!

i love the stairs against the building's face

love this door

and there was this san francisco part that was super ching chong!

the place looked even better at night, and the roller coaster was scary! i mean, it was thrilling and all, but i dont think i can handle roller coasters that are any worse than that. i'm sure it's the scariest roller coaster i've ever set, but in roller coaster terms, this wasnt even a scary one. and i think the only reason why i got through it was because they allow you to choose from several rock/pop tracks to listen to when you're on the roller coaster, and it REALLY helps in taking your mind off how freaking scary the ride actually is. it sounds like a really bizarre idea, but it makes so much sense when you've experienced it for yourself.

and this, in parting, is my favourite snapshot of the day, and many thanks to tyler who did a great job of capturing 'universal' :)