Universal Studios Japan/Osaka Report - Sept. 7th-8th
- Thread starter SweeneysGalMegz
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I guess One Piece is the Japanese equivilent to Harry Potter here. And they are getting Potter as well. I remember getting One Piece mangas and reading them when I was a kid. Such great memories!
And great report by the way! :thumbs:
And great report by the way! :thumbs:
So sorry about the disappearance. I did missionary work for 5 months in Thailand, and there was lots of prep before and after it. In addition, when I went there any type of forum was blocked in the country. I'm back in Japan now, and I actually made another trip to USJ last week. I was thinking about whether to just begin that trip report without finishing this one, but because the experience was so different I decided to finish this one first. I hope to have an update within the next few days. 
Religious! I did a Discipleship Training School (non-denom. protestant) with a focus on outreach aimed towards either graduated seniors, college students, or recently transitioned out of the military folks.
Lots of merch, Hello Kitty, and new friends!
Something definitely Japanese is the ridiculous amount of snacks, food, treats, etc. in cute packaging that people get a kick out of especially for gifts, and most of it is branded. This is hugely popular just in general, but in the parks it's no different. The next store I walked in was an entire store of this packaged snack food (but even if you missed it here, don't worry! It's in the rest of the stores too! :thumbs. I personally am not into it, since I appreciate things that last more, but on the occasion that my parents get it at a convenience store for me, it is pretty tasty, though worlds different from American snack food.
These are Spiderman (and Snoopy to the right) noodles with the characters as pieces of tofu in them. The displays are cute, but they're very small noodle packages and they're Y900 for three I believe(which back then was around $9.50, and now would be probably around $8.75).
The store was almost like a huge array of pink. A good percentage of the stuff sold in there was Hello Kitty snackage.
This was in another place, but these and other designs of plush Hello Kitty lined the walls of nearly every store!
Lots of completely irrelevant Hello Kitty t-shirts!
The Halloween merchandise was mostly Hello Kitty themed. HK in costume was everywhere - on towels, on keychains, etc.
Jurassic Park and Spiderman flip flops outside at a street vendor!
One of the Sun Fairies from Space Fantasy was out for a photo op. They're so cute! I just love them!
I didn't go in, but they had a Mummy "museum" at the time.
A fun bus rolled out and performed a small street show. It was cute. Hello Kitty was in a band, and they sang a couple of American songs. The one I can think of off the top of my head that they played was Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavigne.
Pit stop! Milkshake and a soda at Mel's! :drool: While I sat down, enjoyed the summer sun, and rearranged my backpack and loot, this adorable little girl came up while her parents were eating because she saw the stuffed animal I had one, and had a different version of the same one. She just kept talking to me in Japanese and pointing out that we had the same character. I didn't understand a word of what she said, but she was so cute! The parents were just smiling at her and waving apologies at me.
Getting a little bit more crowded in this section of the park, but everybody's very friendly. No pushing, shoving, inconsiderate people ramming you down with strollers and such. Very pleasant.
From this point on in the day, I was a bit distracted from taking pictures both by riding rides and by an unexpected surprise, so I figure I'll dump this story here. I went on Jurassic Park once, and then again because there wasn't a line for it, and these two Japanese girls noticed that I'm western. So, as I was becoming used to, they asked me the standard questions excitedly: "Where are you from?" "How old are you?" etc. and just kept on talking to me throughout the entire ride even though they knew very limited English, and eventually we came to the end of the ride and they both looked at me and were like "Again?" So we kept on riding Jurassic Park a couple more times until it was dark and the park was about to close, but they walked with me and were both communicating in broken English, and the failure of Google Translate on their smart phones. They told me where they were from (both lived in Kyoto, about an hour from the park) and were staying with one of their grandmothers. I kept on expecting us to go our separate ways and it just never happened! They were so friendly and open, and super fun to be around. Eventually they both created facebook accounts so we could keep in touch and so we could find each other the next day! They were super adorable and I was happy to get to hang out with them, it was just funny to me how they had no qualms about essentially interviewing and befriending a complete stranger. I was shocked by how friendly everybody was, because my overly-saturated-with-Americans island is vastly different. Anyways, I'll post pictures with them eventually.
I didn't get to say my goodbyes with it, and there was no closure so when I got to ride it again (albeit in Japanese) I was stoked. Super fun, as usual. The only notable difference I saw was that when he attacked my side of the boat once, of which I was the sole rider on the bench, a wave went right at me and I got more wet than I ever did on Jurassic Park! All of the little old Japanese ladies were laughing at me too, but it's all in good fun!
I know this one was sort of short, but if I ended it smoothly with the night pictures I got it would have been massive!
Next time... Some night time shots, and the beginning of Day 2!
Something definitely Japanese is the ridiculous amount of snacks, food, treats, etc. in cute packaging that people get a kick out of especially for gifts, and most of it is branded. This is hugely popular just in general, but in the parks it's no different. The next store I walked in was an entire store of this packaged snack food (but even if you missed it here, don't worry! It's in the rest of the stores too! :thumbs
. I personally am not into it, since I appreciate things that last more, but on the occasion that my parents get it at a convenience store for me, it is pretty tasty, though worlds different from American snack food.These are Spiderman (and Snoopy to the right) noodles with the characters as pieces of tofu in them. The displays are cute, but they're very small noodle packages and they're Y900 for three I believe(which back then was around $9.50, and now would be probably around $8.75).
The store was almost like a huge array of pink. A good percentage of the stuff sold in there was Hello Kitty snackage.
This was in another place, but these and other designs of plush Hello Kitty lined the walls of nearly every store!
Lots of completely irrelevant Hello Kitty t-shirts!
The Halloween merchandise was mostly Hello Kitty themed. HK in costume was everywhere - on towels, on keychains, etc.
Jurassic Park and Spiderman flip flops outside at a street vendor!
One of the Sun Fairies from Space Fantasy was out for a photo op. They're so cute! I just love them!
I didn't go in, but they had a Mummy "museum" at the time.
A fun bus rolled out and performed a small street show. It was cute. Hello Kitty was in a band, and they sang a couple of American songs. The one I can think of off the top of my head that they played was Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavigne.
Pit stop! Milkshake and a soda at Mel's! :drool: While I sat down, enjoyed the summer sun, and rearranged my backpack and loot, this adorable little girl came up while her parents were eating because she saw the stuffed animal I had one, and had a different version of the same one. She just kept talking to me in Japanese and pointing out that we had the same character. I didn't understand a word of what she said, but she was so cute! The parents were just smiling at her and waving apologies at me.
Getting a little bit more crowded in this section of the park, but everybody's very friendly. No pushing, shoving, inconsiderate people ramming you down with strollers and such. Very pleasant.
From this point on in the day, I was a bit distracted from taking pictures both by riding rides and by an unexpected surprise, so I figure I'll dump this story here. I went on Jurassic Park once, and then again because there wasn't a line for it, and these two Japanese girls noticed that I'm western. So, as I was becoming used to, they asked me the standard questions excitedly: "Where are you from?" "How old are you?" etc. and just kept on talking to me throughout the entire ride even though they knew very limited English, and eventually we came to the end of the ride and they both looked at me and were like "Again?" So we kept on riding Jurassic Park a couple more times until it was dark and the park was about to close, but they walked with me and were both communicating in broken English, and the failure of Google Translate on their smart phones. They told me where they were from (both lived in Kyoto, about an hour from the park) and were staying with one of their grandmothers. I kept on expecting us to go our separate ways and it just never happened! They were so friendly and open, and super fun to be around. Eventually they both created facebook accounts so we could keep in touch and so we could find each other the next day! They were super adorable and I was happy to get to hang out with them, it was just funny to me how they had no qualms about essentially interviewing and befriending a complete stranger. I was shocked by how friendly everybody was, because my overly-saturated-with-Americans island is vastly different. Anyways, I'll post pictures with them eventually.
I didn't get to say my goodbyes with it, and there was no closure so when I got to ride it again (albeit in Japanese) I was stoked. Super fun, as usual. The only notable difference I saw was that when he attacked my side of the boat once, of which I was the sole rider on the bench, a wave went right at me and I got more wet than I ever did on Jurassic Park! All of the little old Japanese ladies were laughing at me too, but it's all in good fun!
I know this one was sort of short, but if I ended it smoothly with the night pictures I got it would have been massive!
Next time... Some night time shots, and the beginning of Day 2!
Another great installment! Love to learn more about the park and the culture there!
Keep 'em coming! :thumbs:
Keep 'em coming! :thumbs:
One of the Sun Fairies from Space Fantasy was out for a photo op. They're so cute! I just love them!
OMG. You don't know how jealous I am that you got to meet a Sun Fairy in costume form! There are so kawaii (cute in Japanese).
Loving your trip report and style, I went in September (literally about to post my report) and it was very busy and we had to rush through the park so it's nice to be able to re-live the park in a calm and extremely detailed way.
I also met the Princess later on in my report (pictures to come). It's a very fun place to be (even though my September trip was in 2012)!
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