Arashiyama is also the home of the Monkey Park. It is, as its name implies, a park that houses monkeys. Not in cages or anything like that; they're free to roam around and such. They just tend to collect around there, possibly also because the caretakers feed them every day ;)
The monkeys hanging out at the Monkey Park are all one type, the Nihonzaru. (The name literally means "Japanese monkey"; the English name is "Japanese Macaque.") Don't look them straight in the eye, or they could attack! And while walking past one, make sure to look to the other side.
We did have to walk past several to get to the top of the mountain, where there was a shed with barred windows you could feed the monkeys through. They were pretty cheeky about it too -- even before they'd finished chewing the treats you gave them, they'd have their hand through the bars to ask for more. (Treats were available for 100 yen -- chestnuts, apples, or bananas.)
After that was feeding time. The park ranger (or caretaker, whatever) gave a short presentation about the monkeys. There are apparently around 150 living on the mountain, and all of them are named based on when they were born and who their parents are -- that means, no cutesy names like Momo or Koko, it's names like Ayu609234. The dominant male is the one that gets first dibs of all food, no objections. This was demonstrated by the park ranger holding up a bag of peanuts. One monkey came by, jumped for it, and scampered off, while all the other monkeys sat still.
And how can you tell a lower ranked monkey apart from the others? Well, the park ranger tried handing an apple to one monkey -- and immediately all the others scampered up and chased that monkey away. :X
Anyway. The park ranger threw food around, lots of monkeys started scrambling for it. They fought each other for the food too, but I guess that's how it is. Not all of them were violent though! (Video)
Because we came in spring, it meant that the young had just been born! And yep, we saw two mommy monkeys with lil baby monkeys. :) Although only one of them was nice enough to offer photo opportunities. (She also rolled over onto her baby's hand at one point, so maybe she just wasn't as concerned as the other one.)
Of course we also saw all the traditional monkey activities: cleaning, fighting, and sitting around doing nothing. (See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?)
All in all, a good day.
[ view entry ] ( 354 views ) | permalink
One of the reasons I was so slow in updating recently, besides being lazy, is that I still hadn't written about Fukuoka, and I'd been there mid-march. I guess that's around three weeks ago.
The problem with the Fukuoka trip is that it was raining, a lot. I thought I'd make it more interesting by turning it into a survival-horror tale, and that requires a whole lot more photo-shopping than I realized I wanted to do (I did make three creepy pictures though.) Why a survival-horror story? Well, because Fukuoka is scary!
My friend and I arrived in Fukuoka on a Tuesday morning, by Shinkansen. We checked into the youth hostel (it was green), dropped off our bags in the very tiny room (with an alcove about as wide as I am, with a window looking out to the building a mere two feet away from ours), and headed to a park. The purpose wasn't the park, actually, but the historical site of Fukuoka castle, which supposedly is a national treasure and there are ruins and everything.
For some reason, we couldn't find them. We did get attacked by birds though. We were going to make our quick escape, but an elderly woman handed us bird food and we were FORCED to feed them, with them massing all around us and being generally scary.
So we walked around the park, and despite the bad weather it was kind of nice. Some older Japanese men helped us find the historical site we were looking for (very nice, although they didn't seem to understand that I could speak Japanese!). Like all historical anythings in Japan, it was haunted. The charred remains of an old house that was used for the torture of little children. I'm sure that's exactly what the sign says. We saw blood stained stairs (or maybe that was moss) and gravestones (or it could have just been random rocks lying around). We did eventually get to the wall that was still preserved, and then we grew bored of the place.
So we continued walking towards another shrine, where some kids kept saying "hello! How are you!" to us. It was eerily silent otherwise. The building next door was just as creepy. It wouldn't have been creepy if there had been more people around. Although I also wish we'd come at a time when they were filming something. Oh well.
After that we went to a large shopping mall, where I got to dine with a Moomin. (Moomins are strangely popular here. I can hardly remember them anymore, but I know I read the books as a kid.)
On the second day, it was raining hard-core, and our plans were kind of ruined. We went out to Fukuoka tower. You can see Argentina from up there. (Well, there was a sign that said Argentina was in that direction.) We also stopped by the robo-center and saw an Aibo show. Aibo's are Sony's robot dogs, and they are kind of cute, although I don't know why you would want one.
After that we just did some more shopping, and the day was kind of uneventful. (We had planned to check out the library, probably "the largest in all of Kyushu," but it was randomly closed.)
The third day we were going to be leaving, but we used the morning to head out to Nokoshima, which supposedly had a beautiful flower park. It did, but -- aside from that field, there weren't that many flowers. And it was cold, and the weather was shitty. :( After that we headed back home via Shinkansen.
OKAY. And that's basically what Fukuoka was. My friend and I are convinced Fukuoka isn't really a part of Japan though, because there was no Karaoke (okay, just one creepy looking one that offered "second wedding parties,") and every other vending machine offered Mountain Dew. Don't tell me you've seen Mountain Dew in Kansai, I KNOW it exists, but it's nowhere near as prominent as it was in Fukuoka. :X Yeah.
In other news, I got new camera batteries! Hurray!
[ view entry ] ( 227 views ) | permalink
Blargh I know, I promised pictures. I swear they are coming when I am not bogged down by schoolwork.
I went to Osaka today, intent on buying some more manga. My friend needed to pick up her laptop anyway (it seems her mac decided to just not start up anymore, and needed to be doctored by the Apple store), so we went together. We found a fairly large Mandarake in Ame-Mura ("American Town," which is pretty much as far as you can get from "American" as possible) and I was all happy and going to take my time -- and then about ten minutes later, my friends tell me we're all going to a Maid Cafe.
Well, I'd never been to one, so I figured I might as well.
Half an hour walk later (IN THE RAIN; my shoes are soaked now) and we finally made it. We were a pretty large group (we met up some others) so it took a while to get us seated, but once in we got the full "Maid Cafe" experience.
I guess some (a lot?) of you are probably wondering exactly what a Maid cafe is. Well, instead of having a waitress bring you your drinks, the girls at this joint are dressed up as maids. (Thankfully, not FRENCH maids, lol). Not surprisingly, a lot of men visited the place alone, but we also saw a group of girls dining there. And it wasn't even as expensive as I had expected, although maybe if I had gone with the special course that included a massage, I woulda had to have paid more. Anyway.
Since the girls waiting the tables are maids, there are some things that are different from normal cafes/restaurants. Instead of saying irasshaimase (roughly the equivalent of "welcome"), the girls say okaerinasai: "welcome home." There's a little bell on each table, so that you can ring it when you need help from somebody.
You could also buy pictures of the waitresses if you liked one in particular. And for one of the tables, the maid kneeled next to the customer to tell him about the menu or whatever. I'm glad they didn't do that at our table, because that was just a little bit creepy. :O
Anyway, now I can cross that off my list of dorky things to do in Japan. I wonder where the Butler cafes are....
[ view entry ] ( 256 views ) | permalink
Last Friday, I hopped on the night bus from Kyoto to Tokyo for a trip to the Tokyo Disney Resort. I say "resort" because it includes DisneySea and the hotels along with Disneyland.
The night bus itself wasn't... unpleasant. It wasn't pleasant either, but what can you do with a tiny cramped space like that. I wouldn't have minded so much if they hadn't kept waking us every two hours for a "break" -- I think most adults can sleep through the night without needing to use the bathroom, thank you. (On the other hand, it might have been for the benefit of the bus driver too. I can kind of see that.)
Anyway, we arrived at around 6am at Disneyland. And wouldn't you know it, our first day was going to be spent at DisneySea, not Disneyland, so we had to hop on the monorail to get to the other park. (It's within walking distance, but we were carrying luggage so it was easier to take the monorail.) Like everything Disney touches, it had a definite Disney flair to it. (That's Yuri, my speaking partner. She's super nice, and she organized the trip for us.)
DisneySea only exists in Japan. It's apparently targeted at couples. Although a lot of the commercials I see for Disney are aimed at couples or adults, not families, but I guess Disneyland is still the more popular spot for people to take their kids. In any case, DisneySea. (Obligatory Mascot Photo.) It's got rides from the other Disney parks in Florida, like the Tower of Terror from MGM studios. We waited 130 minutes to get into that ride. Yet surprisingly, we ended up getting to do everything we wanted. Storm Riders had a pretty short line, that's what we did first. I don't know if they have that at any of the Disney parks elsewhere, but it's one of those moving-seat rides. This one takes you to the "center of a storm" for story reasons I couldn't quite follow but were probably pretty dumb, because who offers a commercial cruise trip into a hurricane on equipment that hasn't been fully tested yet?
Oh, I don't know if this has also been put in place in the States, but some of the rides had Fast Passes. You used your entrance pass to get a fast-pass for a ride -- it would give you a time period in which you could come back and skip to the front of the line. Pretty useful, and they have a good system in place to prevent abuse. Only a certain amount of passes are available for each ride, AND you can only get a new pass every two hours or so.
So anyway. DisneySea also offered an Indiana Jones ride. Strangely enough, the katakana for the ride listed it as Indy Jones. Does anybody call him that? The ride made me want to watch some of the movies (I haven't seen even one, and it seems like it'd be a lot of cheesy fun). More exiting than that though, was the inclusion of a Little Mermaid and Aladdin area! The Mermaid Lagoon was REALLY cool, and now I wish I had taken pictures. We saw a Little Mermaid show there that was amazingly well done, with people hanging from the rafters and such. It kind of reminded me of Bunraku, the way the puppets were being controlled. The songs were all in English though -- good for me, but probably less thrilling for the mostly Japanese audience. And the story was cut completely, so that Eric wasn't even mentioned. (They had a very scary Ursula though-- she was just a floating head, with hands and tentacles going all around the stage).
Anyway. The Arabian Coast wasn't as much fun, and the show there (listed as a "magic show") was actually one of those ones where you wear the special glasses to give a 3D effect. I didn't like it so much because it completely contradicted the canon established by the Aladdin movies, and in a much less interesting way than the mermaid show. (The story was basically that the Genie was helping some sleezy guy be a better magician. Hrrm.)
Towards the end of the day, we also got to ride to the Center of the Earth. The ride goes through the volcano pictured there, and it's super amazing amounts of fun. Yuri thought she was going to die, but Nacchan and I agreed that it was the best ride. And because we went at night, when we kind of zoomed out of the volcano we got to see the park all lit up. Nice!
The last thing we saw was the light show on the lagoon (also picture above). My camera sucks at pictures in general, and is even worse for night pictures, but I got one nice shot.
Okay. And that was DisneySea. We stayed overnight at the Sun Route Plaza hotel, which was very nice and apparently because they overbooked we got bumped up a level on room quality. Nice. It was very comfortable, and hard for us to check out in the morning. But it had to be done. Because we were going to Disneyland!
Disneyland was a LOT more crowded. The weather was nice on both days, but nice weather + Sunday + more popular park = a LOT of people. We got lucky and the first ride we went to, Pirates of the Caribbean, only had half an hour's worth of wait.
And it was like a completely different ride. That is to say: I've ridden Pirates three times before. The first time we went to DisneyWorld, when I was 10, then again I don't remember when it was but my sis and I were older, and then the NEXT time I went it was TokyoDisney 6 years ago. (Holy crap, it's been that long?) In any case, in honor of the Pirates movies, they redid the ride to add Barbossa, Davy Jones, and Jack Sparrow. The new animatronics are really gorgeous, and a lot more life-like than the old ones. I was a bit disappointed that they had removed a lot of the parts that I liked, but I think this new ride made a lot more sense. The only part I really think they should have left was the old waiting area -- it used to lead you through a cave, and jail cells, and you could see maps and treasure and stuff. Now it's just a Victorian house, a la Elizabeth's house in the first movie. Oh well.
Haunted Mansion (not to be confused with the Tower of Terror) had a lot longer line-- 130 minutes. Yowch. But not as bad as Splash Mountain at 170 minutes. Almost three hours. We grabbed a fast pass for Splash Mountain, but didn't end up getting to go because it was for 9:05 pm -- and that was around when we had to get going. Anyway.
We saw parts of the first parade ("Disney's Dreams on Parade - Moving on!" parade. ... What?), rode Space Mountain, saw the MicroAdventure (aka the "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" ride), rode the Star Tours (=the Star Wars ride), rode the Small World ride... oh, Big Thunder Mountain as well. XD Standard Disney fare though, and if you've been to one Disneyland, you've basically been to all.
I do want to point out the Alice in Wonderland restaurant though. A friend of mine told me to go, just because the interior looks a lot like the Kingdom Hearts level (KH is a video game, mixing Final Fantasy and Disney characters). Plus, I got to break a heart. As we left, the Cheshire cat tried to confuse us. XD
The same friend who recommended the Alice restaurant also wanted me to see the Country Bears show, because she didn't get to go. Well, I wasn't planning on it, but there was no line and we had nothing better to do (having ridden everything else that was worth it already), so we sat down to watch the cheesy animatronics. It wasn't particularly good or bad, but I was a little bit shocked. Not really politically correct, Disney. I would have expected them to either remove or re-do this bear, but. Yeah. O_o
Like DisneySea, we ended our Disneyland experience with a light show, the Dream Lights parade. That's the only good photo, sorry. :X And sadly, the only one of the movies I liked that got a float was Beauty and the Beast.
Actually, question in general: I realize that the parks were made well before Little Mermaid came into existence, but they've updated so much else, why haven't they added more of the newer movies to their show/ride line-up? I'm sure Hercules, at least, could be a pretty cool ride somehow. Maybe at Epcot Center they turned the Greece part of the park into a Hercules part, that would be cool. I guess? ;_; Anyway, I like newer Disney movies!
By the way: Although I'm sure Disneyland and DisneyWorld are very profitable, it would not surprise me at all if Tokyo Disney outshone both of them. Aside from Disney still being insanely popular here (DESPITE a lot of people not having seen the movies), but Japanese culture involves buying souvenirs when you go on trips. Towards the end of the day, the stores were all PACKED. My speaking partner and I didn't buy that much, but the third girl we went with? O_O She must have spent a fortune on gifts for her family and friends (and possibly coworkers).
In any case, this all makes me want to go to DisneyWorld in Florida. Who's coming with me? :D
[ view entry ] ( 239 views ) | permalink
Calendar
