Family Visit: Days 8

By the eighth day in Japan, my family was getting pretty worn down! But we kept trekking and conquered a mountain, literally. Japan is a country that has many beautiful and scenic mountains. The family really wanted to give mountain climbing a try but Mt. Fuji was closed and covered in snow. So, I took them to the closest and easiest mountain in the Tokyo area: Mt. Takao. It was also a plus that I had hiked there before. We took the train and started our hike around 11:00. I thought it would take us about 4 hours all together about one and a half hours each way with a stop for a picnic lunch at the summit. We took a bit longer than expected to get to the summit but we made it!

We're off!

We made it! Checking out the view!

Triumphantly standing at the mountain top with Fuji in the background.

The hike back down is where things got a bit interesting...We started back down the main path. I knew that there was a temple on the way down but we didn't stop there the last time that I was at the mountain. It was a very large compound with many beautiful temples. It was dedicated to the god who fought the Tengu, a long nosed demon. It was very interesting to see all of these epic statues of the two of them in battle scattered around. The way down was also lined with sacred trees and a lucky octopus statue that we all stopped to touch for luck.

This is the god's shrine

Lucky statue!

A bit of perspective on the massiveness of these trees

After the temple side trip is where things got a bit interesting. We were going down the main path and came across a side path that led to a waterfall. After much debating, we decided to head down into the path. As we went farther and farther down, we started to get nervous. The sun was setting and we were on a path that wasn't even on the map guide. The path was also getting harder and harder. In a moment of slight panic, we split up. My siblings kept going towards the waterfall while my mom and I went on a path labeled as towards the station. In a random act of trail mapping, my mom and I ended up in the parking lot of a hospital. Luckily I was able to ask a bewildered nurse where the station was and I started to head that way while my mom stayed behind to watch for my siblings. As I headed down the road (I was literally walking in the street), I heard my siblings voices. They were on a different path that I could see from the road. I called out to them, grabbed my mom, and we found where their path ended into the street I was walking on. We just kept following the road and finally found the station! *phew* what an adventure!

Disney Sea!

When my parents were first planning on coming, they asked me what I wanted to see. I quickly explained that I had visited almost all of the big tourist venues around me except one place: Tokyo Disney Resort! I demanded that the only thing that HAD to happen during this visit, was a trip to Disney Sea.
A little bit if back story on me: I normally don't like amusement parks. I get really bad motion sickness so it's not the best place for me. BUT, I also knew that the Japanese are not as intense about their rides as we are in the States so I really wanted to check out Disney Sea.
On their third day in town, we all got on a train at 6:30 AM to head over to the other side of Tokyo. We arrived and took the Disney shuttle over to the park. It was super cute! Everything in the train right down to the windows and hand holds were shaped like Mickey.

Precious!

We bought our tickets and investigated the map. The only ride I was interested in was the Tower of Terror. It was my favorite ride at Disney World (In fact, I rode it about 5 times the last time we were there as my siblings were interested in other rides that I could not handle). I had heard it was different from the one in Florida, so I wanted to see what it was all about. After a quick family photo:

Cuties

we booked it to the Tower of Terror. Much to our dismay, it was about a two and a half hour wait to get into the ride. We snacked and huddled from the cold outside and finally got up the Tower. It did have a very different story line form the Disney World Tower of Terror. From what I could gather (as the ride was in Japanese), the owner of the hotel was the most interesting man on Earth and decided to just take and steal from ancient cultures because, well, he deserved it. One artifact he stole was in fact a cursed statue. He kept it on his mantle, scoffing that such a curse could exist. Low and behold, the statue disappears and explodes the elevator cable at the top of the tower. The very top view right before the last large drop was spectacular. It perfectly framed the Sky Tree and the Disney Land castle. I wish I could have taken a picture!

Tower of Terror! What, what!

After that, we had lunch at the American Seaside right next to the real sea.

What a nice view!

We rode a couple more rides after that and had dinner and a Mexican restaurant on site. Here's the thing to understand about Disney parks in Japan. In America, we focus our parks on the rides and attractions. Here, it was almost a purely commercial trip. Most people come to buy more Disney exclusive stuff or eat some of the odd flavored popcorn.

We gave into the consumerism. They are such cute hats though!!

There really are not that many rides let alone rides that we would consider thrilling. My siblings went on the most intense roller coaster in the park. All it did was one 360 degree loop. There were signs all over the ride stating to be careful since the ride was "intense". We all got a hardy laugh out of that especially my youngest brother who had been riding things like the Rockin' Roller coaster since he was like 6 years-old. We still had a great time! Rode some bumper boats, 2 small roller coasters, the Indian Jones ride, and a huge merry-go-round with an Aladdin theme.

Yeah that's right, he's riding the Genie. Take that Robin Williams.

Another interesting thing to note is the different popular characters between cultures. For example, people in Japan LOVE the Aristocats especially the cute white kitten named Marie. Now, I'm going to be honest, I haven't seen the Aristocats in about 20 years so I barely recognized the character when I first got here. I told one of my older students that and she looked at me like I was insane for not knowing her name. They also really like Chip and Dale, Stitch, and the Genie (not Aladdin or Jasmine. In fact, there was not a single statue or mention of them in the Arabian town area. It was ALL about the Genie.)
One thing that did stick out to me that I loved was that Disney Sea did not have a Cinderella's castle. If you wanted to see that you would have to go to Tokyo Disney Land. Instead, they had Ariel's castle. This was about a bazillion times more exciting to me. The Little Mermaid was one of my favorite Disney movies.

Look at that and tell me it is NOT amazingly cool. You would be lying to yourself if you did.

After I let my 7 year old inner fan girl frolic around Ariel's castle, we headed off to the lights and fireworks show. I'm just going to say it: I was totally let down by the fireworks. They were about 5 mins long and kind of lame. BUT the light show totally redeemed it all! It turned into this epic battle between Mickey and the forces of good and like every villain ever ending with a giant animatronic Maleficent (in dragon form) vs. sorcerer Mickey. It was an epic way to end the night!

Christmas in Japan

Merry Christmas everyone (well a day late at least)! Thought I would share with you a little bit about how the Japanese celebrate Christmas. First of all, yes, they do celebrate Christmas. It is the most secularized version of Christmas I have ever experienced. Mainly because most people here are Buddhist or Shintoist so the birth of a Christian figure is not really celebrated. It was all about Santa and the lights! I saw plenty of beautiful light displays during the month of December.

A giant tree and ornament in the Tokyo Dome area

A whole tunnel lined with snowflake lights

The decorations at my station :) I'll miss them when they are gone.

There were also decorations and sales all over the place at department stores. I was even able to get some great decorations from the one hundred yen store. I bought a small cute tree, some garland, a fake wearth of poinsettias and a window decoration.

My tree :D

One of the things that amused me greatly is that most of the cards are 3-D. They looked really cool!

A card from one of my students

On the actual day of Christmas, everything and everywhere was still open for business and most people seemed to just go about their days. Most people celebrate by giving their direct family (like mother, father, and siblings) a gift and then having a dinner from KFC finished off by some Christmas cake. That's right, Japanese people eat Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas. It's what they think that we do in the States. Apparently, KFC used to be one of the only places you could find fried chicken so all the foreigners would go there during the Christmas season just to get something familiar so other people soon started imitating them and a tradition was born. The KFC by my station has had a table outside of the store to pre-order your Christmas chicken for about a month now. No joke. Many other places have started to catch on and sell fried chicken for Christmas such as the convenience stores and other American chains like McDonalds. I personally had a chicken sandwich from McDonalds for lunch that had a special Christmas sauce since KFC was way to busy for my liking. A Christmas cake is pretty much a regular cake decorated for Christmas. It's a layer of cake then icing and strawberry filling and another layer of cake. I went on a mission to find one for myself. Lucky for me, my grocery store was selling it in small two piece containers so I grabbed one of those!

Hello Christmas cake! Oishii!

I had a pretty chill Christmas. On Christmas Eve, I made my way to Roppongi so I could go to midnight Mass at the Franciscan Mission. It wasn't actually at midnight since the trains stop running. So I made my way right after work and got there just in time to join the sing along 10 mins before 9 PM. Mass was over by 10:30 and I went home to sleep.

There's poinsettias in front of the altar: must be Christmas!!

Christmas morning, I woke up early to Skype with my family and watch as they opened my gifts. Then I got a nice surprise of being able to talk to my boyfriend for a good 2 and a half hours. From there, I grabbed my McDonalds and Christmas cake. Another nice surprise came my way a little bit later. One of my friends texted me and wanted to meet up. So we headed to Tokyo to eat, drink, and be merry on Christmas. We had a great time and my friend almost missed her last train home! Yikes! But everything worked out. I didn't get home until about 1 AM and knew I had to wake up again to Skype with my dad's side of the family so I quickly hit the sack. I got to Skype with them as well and watched them open their presents and they all sang to me <3

Singing!

It was a pretty good way to spend the holiday. I still missed my family and friends like crazy and even cried a little during Mass but I tried to make the best of it. At least, I got to have fried chicken and Christmas cake.

Mt. Takao hike

Sorry I haven't posted in a while! I've been busy, busy, busy! But, last week, I had the time to go on a hike up the closest mountain to Tokyo, Mt. Takao. I went with my Tokyo adventure club so it was a lot of fun. One of the things that initially drew me to this opportunity was that it was also a service opportunity. We weren't just hiking up the mountain, we were cleaning the mountain as well! Also, we collected donations to go towards the Tohoku earthquake relief. As soon as I saw that, I really wanted to go! What a great opportunity to be helpful to the community that I am living in!
I met the group at the train station by the mountain as it would have been out of my way to go to Shinjuku and then to the mountain. We found ourselves a partner and we were off! My partner and I ended up at the back of the group so we didn't get much trash to pick up :( But, we had a great time hiking up the mountain and admiring the trees. It is amazing to me how the trees still have leaves in December! Back home, there would be nothing left so I was really appreciating the view! The people who were hiking on the mountain were also very nice! People kept walking by and thanking us for our hard work.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day for a hike and we made it to the summit in no time. Since it was such a wonderful day, we were able to see clear across to Mt. Fuji. It was a stunning view!

The view

There's Mt. Fuji!

Me at the summit :D

We stopped here and had a picnic lunch. I just brought a sandwich, chips, and an orange. We then started to make our way down to measure which team collected the most trash. On the way down, we did some extreme trash collecting. I tried my hand at it going off the trail to retrieve a bottle. It was difficult and I got dirty but at least I tried! We also stopped at a temple on the way down where I rubbed the statue of an octopus for good luck. It was a very pleasant afternoon with nature!

I hope I get some good luck!

Going off trail a bit to get a bottle

The trash I collected

Cosplay in Japan

As many of you know from my other post, last weekend I went to a gaming convention in Tokyo called Tokyo Game Show. I must admit, one of the things I was most looking forward to was the cosplay. For those of you who don't know, cosplay is when people dress up as their favorite video game or anime character typically for something like a convention. I wanted to point out what I thought were some major differences between cosplay in the USA and here in Japan.
Disclaimer: Theses are all my observations from going to ONE convention. I in no way am claiming to be an expert on cosplay in Japan. Enjoy!
1.) If they are going to cosplay, they are going to do it RIGHT! All of the costumes I saw were beautiful and amazingly well done which is not the case in the USA.
2.) Stopping people on the convention floor is a big no-no. In America, I do this freely. Stopping and asking for people's pictures as I see them. Doesn't work that way here. All cosplay photos are taken in a separate location.
3.) Cosplayers are rock stars. No, literally. There were fanboys asking for autographs and professional photographers set up everywhere.
4.) Manners, manners, manners. You have to make sure you ask before taking pictures as some of the girls are actual models. Also, people stand in a line to take the best photos possible. No group huddling.
5.) Sexy! So, I was really surprised by how revealing and overtly sexual a lot of the female cosplayers were. They were wearing next to nothing and even when fully clothed were laying on the floor with their fingers in their mouths or imitating other very sexual poses. I don't know why this surprised me so much but it did. I thought cosplayers here were classier than that...oh well!
These are just some of the major differences that I noted. Enjoy some pictures!

What up giant robot?!

Just hanging out

To start people off, they would have their friends take a picture or they would take a picture of themselves.

Photo a Day Japan project

Okay, so this is a little shameless self promotion, BUT I'm really proud of this project! Ever since I started living here, I have been putting up a photo a day from Japan so people can kind of see life through my eyes. You can only see the pictures through my facebook fan page or by following me on Twitter. If you have not done both or either of these things, you should get on that! Here is the link for my facebook fan page: Land of the Reuszing Sun. Feel free to follow me on Twitter as well @heatherreusz. My goal is to really make this experience as visible to people as possible in all ways. Enjoy!