“To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy’s First Law of Equivalent Exchange.” Alphonse Elric
Well, I had such an amazing weekend last week that I suppose it’s natural that this one wasn’t as good. That’s not fair, exactly, this weekend was actually pretty good, I’ve just been sick. I had a sore throat and trouble swallowing on Thursday and Friday, and started coughing too. I’ll get into this later.
On Friday there was a party at RIKEN which was kind of interesting though not as interesting as it could have been. There are a lot of Germans, Swiss, and French at RIKEN. I went straight home afterwards, to plan my Saturday with Dvir via interweb communique. We decided that rather than seeing the Bonsai gardens in Omiya-koen, we would go to Tokyo Disney Sea.
Trains to get anywhere. Tokyo Disney Sea is like Disney Land, except it’s Disney Sea instead. It is one half of Tokyo Disney Resorts (of which Disney Land is the other half). Disney Sea was supposed to be more adult oriented, but I didn’t really find that to be the case.
A fun day.
You can hardly tell it isn’t a mountain.
Regardless, I agree with many of the comments of one of my fellow program participants that there is much attention paid to detail and that you can barely see the veneer coat. It was interesting as an exercise in Japanese watching. Most of the girls wear their little Minnie Mouse or Lilo fake ears, even some of the guys wear wizard mickey ears. I think it is really funny.
The subway had special mickey mouse handles.
More realistic themed scenery.
The rides were a bit of a let down. Disney’s rollercoasters leave something to be desired (like extremeness), and the rest of the rides were just kind of boring. Regardless, we tried to hit all of them. Most of the lines were 45 minutes or more, but they didn’t seem to take that long and the speedpass helped on one ride.
Children playing, note the little girl in a ready to strike stance.
Dvir in front of a fake ship looking…seductive? The highlight for me was the Indiana Jones ride. It was an “adventure” ride, complete with animatronic Indie, a nice ride experience (in terms of being a fake jeep), excellent use of sound, and simply more realistic “scary” things than any adventure ride I’ve ever been on.
The little mermaid section was a highlight.
I thought it was funny.
Here is the bad part: when I woke up Saturday my eyes were really irritated and red looking, they continued this way most of the day. I’m pretty sure I have pink-eye, so in an effort to speed my recovery I cancelled the opera on Sunday and instead slept in until 2:30. I’ve spent the past five hours in a “dark world,” my shutters closed with only the glow of my monitor at minimum brightness. I feel like a naked mole rat or something, creeping from room to room in my tiny apartment, fetching small bits of food and chittering away at the keyboard.
That was kind of creepy. I went to the Death Cab website to look for concert information while I was looking for the lyrics of Brothers on a Hotel Bed. While I was waiting for the Death Cab site to load up and looking at the lyrics page, piano started playing. In the background the Death Cab site was playing the Brothers song. The grip these songs have on my emotions is almost scary. I don’t even know if its the intended effect of the songs, that song reminds me of my actual brother half of the time.
This reminds me. The Hulk sent me a new Dashboard cd and an album of Death Cab concert recordings. Listening to them brought back some memories and was really a pleasant experience. I haven’t heard “new” Death Cab content for a while.
