Last weekend I embarked on a 3 day adventure featuring an odd, but in some ways typically Japanese combination of agenda items. I started the Saturday by joining Carrie, Tag and several other Kudan Institute students on a day tript to Tokyo Disneyland. Tokyo Disneyland is actually a double feature: Disneyland & Disneysea, so we opted for the Disneysea experience in order to get to try something that is unique to Japan (-- I believe this is the only "Disneysea" out there).
It's hard to describe what makes Disneysea, Disney*sea*, all of the attractions are laid out around an artificial lake/waterway, but are not necessarily water-related. we gave up on trying to understand what ties them together in the "Sea" experience but settled for the fact, that most of them are extremely well done and contain great rides. As such we visited, "The American Waterfronｔ” (-- a mix of retro Boston and 'Cape Codde' -original spelling), the Lost River Delta (-- whit a great Indiana Jones ride), Arabian Coast (-- think Aladdin), The Mermaid Lagoon (-- Ariel galore for kids), and Mysterious Island (-- my personal favorite, with very cool "20.000 leagues under the sea" inspired rides). Overall it was a really fun day and for some reason the whole Disney experience just seems made for Japan - here it seems entirely normal and expected to have hundreds of teenagers sporting Mickey-ears surrounding you and wealth of cheerful attraction attendants in crazy costumes greeting and directing you. Disneysea also featured a couple of other unique attractions, such as the "Cheese & Chicken Danish" which i found very entertaining, given that a Danish in Denmark would never contain anything salty... (and yes, of course I have a picture of it ;)
From Disneysea, we went straight to Tokyo station (riding the Disney train, that has Mickey-shaped windows part of the way of course...) where we hopped on the Shinkansen (the Bullet train) headed for Nagano. Tag, who is an avid runner, had signed up to run in The Olympic Commemorative Marathon there [Nagano was the site of the 1998 winter Olympics, which I remember mostly for being the first to feature snowboarding] and Carrie, Reiko (a Japanese friend) and I tagged along to cheer him on + plus to take advantage of the chance to stay at a traditional Ryokan/Onsen (Japanese Inn/Hot Spring Bath). The Shinkansen was fun, but I must admit not all that different from the German ICE trains, on which I spent plenty of time while i lived there. They are however extremely fast, so taking us to Nagano in a flash, which left time for a first visit to the Onsen after we have checked in. There is a quite elaborate ritual associated with bathing in an Onsen, which I think has been described in great detail by many a travel author already, so I'll stick to the fact that after having changed into a Yukata (japanese robe), going to the bath area and completing the required washing and scrubbing (only causing a few "Tanoshi Maiken" exclamations here and there - meaning "entertaining Maiken", or rather, "Maiken is doing the funniest and probably completely wrong thing again..." :) it felt great to sit outside under a starlit sky in extremely hot and supposedly very healthy water...
Sunday was race day and while Tag was running we 3 girls did the best we could to travel from "Cheer-Stop" to cheer-stop along the route, which was a bit of a challenge given that most roads were closed down due to the race. We had a few 'great' moments during this "process" which Carrie and I will probably never forget, such as for example the Taxi driver, who we could have sworn was taking us almost to Hokkaido, while going on and on and about every type of fruit tree growing in the Nagano valley, blooming seasons etc... We managed to see Tag once a long the way and did get some video footage of him both at that time (KM 20) and later at the finish line, so overall i guess i went fairly well and in any event it was a beautiful day to be spending outside - clear blue skies and snow clad mountains all around us (- which admittedly did make me sad that ski season is over - those slopes sure looked good to me from the distance).
The rest of Sunday was spent at the Onsen, enjoying the bath and an amazing Japanese dinner with a good 10-15 different little delicacies, include some I hadn't tried before, such as the hot-fish-and-vegetable-jello (interesting albeit not a favorite quite yet :), an egg custard with vegetables, chicken and shrimp & sakura mochi among many others...
We stayed in Nagano another night and used Monday for general Nagano sightseeing and to visit the Zenkoji temple, which is known for having one of the oldest Buddha statues in Japan (so valuable that only a copy is on the display and that only once every 7 years!) and also for being of the first to allow female priests.
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