ダニエルの冒険

The next day we went to Disney Sea. Just to nip this in the bud before any more confusion occurs: Disney Sea is not an aquarium or a Sea World-like place. The only fish there are in the restaurants, and have an bones, skin and organs removed. Think Disneyland with less cartoon characters and a more grown-up atmosphere with great food (the best food in Disneyland is Buzz Lightyear’s pizza). On Sunday morning I had breakfast with Yukine at Vie de France, the same company as you see doing the baking in supermarkets at home, except the whole shop was just a bakery. There weren’t any baguettes or anything, but mainly pastries and various small scone-size breads. I got some with strawberries and another with custard and sesame seeds.

When we got off the train at Disney Resort we had to get onto the local monorail loop line to get to Disney Sea. While waiting for the train to arrive an instrumental of “A Whole New World” was playing and Yukine started singing along to the Jasmine verse. When she got to Jasmine’s line, “a whole new world,” I joined in with Aladdin’s line, “don’t you dare close your eyes,” and she was about to give out to me but then just decided to continue with “a hundred thousand things to see,” and then I did it again with “hold your breath it gets better” and then she really gave out to me and said not to sing in public… she started it.

How do I know all these songs so well?

The train’s windows were shaped like Mickey Mouse’s head, and the inside was also Mickey Mouse themed in every way the designers could imagine. Even those plastic loops for standing passengers were shaped like his head and were secured with a plastic fastener in the colour and shape of his pants.

When we left the monorail we walked into Disney Sea Plaza, which had a huge rotating globe in the centre, with water flowing down from the north pole, at the same time as water was being shot up onto the south pole to hide the motor. We went into the Mediterranean Harbour area, which is based on Venice (gondolas and all) and passed through to the American Waterfront area to ride the Tower of Terror. The Tower of Terror puts everyone into a lift and throws you up and down the shaft, allowing you look out over the whole park from the top, before having your stomach wrenched out through your throat. When leaving, I waited at the aisle to allow the girl in the opposite aisle out ahead of me, boyfriend in tow. After I did that, Yukine told me 「彼は頭が下がった」. The idiom means “his head lowered” but to use one of our own idioms, you could say “he took his hat off to me”. People here are polite but don’t usually hold doors for each other or let people walk ahead of them. I held a door for a guy at the shop next door and got a strange look from him. He was wondering why I was standing there at the door waiting for him to go through and just couldn’t figure out that I was just being nice.

Anyways, out of the waterfront and next we went on to Port Discovery and the Aquatopia ride, in which you sit in a small “boat” which drives around a shallow pool of water. It’s more fun than it sounds. Port Discovery looks incredible; a Jules Verne inspired steampunk wonderland. The Horizon Bay Restaurant was next to this ride so we ate lunch there and were just in time to meet Mickey, Minnie and Pluto while we ate. Minnie was nice but Pluto kept going for my steak.

Next was Lost River Delta’s Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull, which was possibly the best ride. We got the very front seat on the ride too, which helped. The cars we sat into were shaped like an old Jeep and we drove through some great special effects and almost-roller-coaster manoeuvres. It ended with a huge boulder about to fall onto the Jeep, which was done really effectively. I’ll admit that the animatronic Harrison Ford was pretty creepy though. We also went onto the Raging Spirits roller coaster which boasted a 360 degree flip so you go upside-down. The most impressive part was the effects outside the ride, though. There was a feature outside where water was flowing down over lots of rocks, with fire burning on the surface of the water.

We also went to Mermaid Lagoon and went on a tiny roller coaster which I had to struggle to fit into and then we went to meet Ariel. Yukine was so excited that she fixed up her makeup to look good for the photo with her, but we were both pretty disappointed when we saw her. Yukine described her as being ok for a normal American girl but as Ariel she’s just not pretty enough. She spoke like an American doing an impersonation of a Irish person doing an impersonation of an American, so her accent was pretty dire. If you see the photo, you’ll notice how little Yukine’s smiling. She explained that this was because of her disappointment. Compare with photos with Minnie Mouse.

To go and see the real Ariel we went to Scuttle’s Theatre and saw a really great Little Mermaid themed show. Most of the cast were suspended from the ceiling by the waist and enormous motors swivelled around in the darkness to swing them into position. Ariel was a girl with a wig, a fake tail and some sea shells, Ursula was made up of an enormous animatronic face, four guys each controlling two tentacles with their legs from the ceiling and two guys hanging from the ceiling puppeteering a hand each. The rest of the characters were either swinging from the ceiling being controlled by puppeteers sitting inside of them, or were held by puppeteers on the ground, controlling the head/mouth with one hand and a claw or a fin with the other. It worked out really well and I was particularly impressed with Ursula, and how the Japanese voice actors were able to make their own voices sound just like the American singers. (The songs were sung in English but dialogue was in Japanese.)

We got some ok dinner at the Yucatan Basecamp Grill and went to the Arabian Coast — the Aladdin themed area. Here we went into an Aladdin-themed show. The Genie was the only character from the original film in it. I had no trouble with the Japanese, and lots of the Japanese they were using I can remember studying in the last few weeks. I couldn’t figure out a single word spoken by the Genie though, but if his Japanese is as full of metaphors, parodies and puns as Robin Williams’ performance is then I’m not too down. The Genie was on a big screen, which was 3D when viewed with the provided glasses. The other characters were played live by actors on stage under the screen. Sometimes the characters went partially or fully offstage, partially or fully reappearing on screen.

The last ride we went on was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Yukine remembered this as being some sort of lame animatronic zoo but we went on anyway just because it was inside and outside was really getting cold and windy. Fortunately, Yukine had forgotten about the latter half of the ride. After seeing some creepy animatronic creatures, there were some great lightning effects and then an enormous monstrous worm thing started harassing the people on the ride. We sped up to get away from it, corkscrewing upwards until we reached the top of the volcano, then shot back down. I seriously wanted to go on it again. Possibly a bit better than Indiana Jones. Then again I’m partial to the sci-fi theme.

Finally we got some drinks and went back down to the Mediterranean Harbour to watch the finale show. Mickey Mouse came out on a boat and gave the usual “thanks for coming” schtick, then there was a water/light show timed to the soundtrack of a single female voice. Then, the water started turning on fire, with jets of flames shooting out from the surface and fire spreading over the whole lake. A big mechanical structure started coming out of the water, with the soundtrack changing to a male choir. This structure turned out to be a big red dragon, and flame started shooting out from all over it. The female character was represented by the water show and single female voice and the male character by the dragon, flames and male choir. Lots of special effects later, it was announced that the show was presented in an alternate form due to unforgiving wind conditions.

We wandered around the souvenir shops and when passing from one shop to another, we passed a love-tester machine. There was a queue of six ahead of us, and as each person put a hand on the machine, it either made a soothing harp sound or clanging wedding bells. A kid put both his hands on and it made the wedding bells sound. We stepped up and Yukine said 「せい、の！」 “ready, go!” and we put a hand each down and… シーーン… silence… I burst out laughing and she tried explaining that it’s only because she had a glove on. No one else had any trouble with it though.

We got the train back to Tokyo station and I went to the Shinkansen ticket counter but was told that I had missed the last train. The only option was the Moonlight Nagara train, which takes 6 hours. I went with it in the end and didn’t sleep a wink, though not for lack of trying. When I finally arrived at Okazaki at 5.23am there were no taxis and it was painfully cold but I got home in the end at 5.45am. I set my alarm for 8.15am, got as much asleep as I could and when I dragged myself out of bed I had a quick shower and got some chips from the convenience store next door for breakfast, finishing it off with some orange juice from a vending machine next to the school.

I managed to get through the day without sleeping in class though, so I’m pretty happy with myself. A great weekend. Disney Sea turned out to be better than Disneyland.