Entries this day: AM Fujikyu_Highland Hotel

AM

7:40am jst wednesday 22 september 2004

hitomi woke up early and woke me up at 5:40am to get ready to go to fujikyu highland! woot.

i'm tired, or it would be a bigger woot. but, in a way, i've become weary of fkh's lines. or, maybe it's just because it's been the same story: dodonpa is far too short, fujiyama is awesome, we always miss the money haunted house.

and we're always late.

at two stations we *just* missed the train (by a few seconds). at another station we missed a train while hitomi was negotiating our day-pass train tickets which give us a discount at fkh or something. I hope the lines at fkh will be short; the park switched to winter operation hours yesterday.

8:55am

Yay! I forgot to bring contacts today, but then I remembered I had put my contacts in my backpack a long time ago so that I wouldn't have to remember. So, I *have* my contacts and will therefore be able to see on Dodonpa, if we ride it. But fuck that; I'm going to wear my contacts even if just for Fujiyama. This time when I ride Fujiyama and take a video, I will be more careful to keep my fingers out of the video.

Fujikyu Highland

7:45pm JST Wednesday 22 September 2004

Fun day at Fujikyu Highland. We didn't get to ride a million rides; the lines were just long enough to make them uncomfortable, except for the weakest rides. The new ride, called Tondemina is pretty good, but not awesome. It should do full 360 vertical rotation. And it should last longer in any case. It seems I didn't take a photo of it; just video. It's basically a disk hanging from a spindle. Like an upside down version of a plate spinning on a stick. 50 people sit facing outward and it turns and then the pendulum swings about 270 degrees total. I was more intrigued by the physics than by the action. It seems that the disk spins more quickly at the top of the pendulum swing. I wondered if the disk was slowed by the rotation, or if the motor slows it down due to the difficulty of revolving a disk perpendicular to its direction of rotation, or if it was an optical illusion.

While wating in line for Fujiyama, we saw some people filming an ad for Dodonpa. The woman in pink, second to right, was frantically wailing about when Dodonpa whizzed by on the track overhead, trying to pull her friend to it. I don't know why they're making ads for Dodonpa. It's over a year old. Maybe people are noticing that it's too short, and not worth the wait.

We did the haunted house.

While waiting in line for the haunted house, we got to see people come out of the exit. 80% of them were screaming / running out. The rest were noticeably disturbed, if not flat scared.

I noticed something strange. About 10 percent of the women coming out of the haunted house were wearing high heels. I know I've lived in Tokyo for a while, but it still just freaked me out. Dude; in a haunted house, dark, possibly scary: wear some footwear that will let you run! Then I was like, dude! You're in Fujikyu Highland! It's an amusement park! not Fujikyu High-heel land!

We went through the house and it was only vaguely scary 1 time. Most times it was just boring with scary guys jumping out after we walked by. Hitomi hung on my arm, trailing behind, which is perfect for the guys cause they know who is the most scarifyable. Hint for people who are scared: go first. The cool thing is that a couple of guys commented that I was funny, cause I was making animal noises by Hitomi's request. We walked through the different paths in the building, and possibly went through all of them. There were no places that were pitch black, and no really scary visuals.

A few of the actors played people who were distrautfully unable to wolk, but tried in a crippled-looking falling manner. One guy was sitting in a wheel chair, not moving until Hitomi got close. He reached his hand slowly out toward her. I reached my hand out toward his hand and we barely touched fingertips, like a too-cool-for-school giving of five. Funny.

At the entire end of the whole thing, I saw the exit. We had just walked through a room that had a bunch of "bodies" hanging in burlap sacks, and then through a room with dead/dying bodies on an array of beds. The bad guys crept up on us, and I was like, "寝ていい？"　[is it okay if we sleep here?] but he just said, "see you, punk rock!" which seems to be the only English he knew.

Then I saw the exit and I was like, "that's it?" and wanted to go back through to see if there was anything scary we had missed. The guys were all crowding us out, though; no going back.

Emerged outside where everyone in line was watching the exit for screaming escapees. I gave the tilting-hand "so so" sign.

One guy goes, "wowwww" and a few people gasp / clapped!! Wow is right! I didn't expect that (or any) response! Well, that's not true, I hoped for a response, but that was more than I expected.

We rode HamuHamu Kingdom after that. It was cute, and I tried to imagine riding it when it was Birdmen. After that, we rode the log ride, and I got a bit gooshed by water, but not terribly so.

The 3D scary sound thing was weak. Fun were the gocarts and the little 100 yen kiddy thing. I wondered how much trouble I would get if I picked it up and rode it outside its little barrier. That would be hilarious!

Here's us on the gocarts, photos taken while driving:

On the way to our hotel, I found a flower and tried to call janette, but the connection was bad.

Hotel

8:48pm JST Wednesday 22 September 2004

In the past, I have stated that I like hot humid weather.

But,

I didn't last very long in the humid 111 degree sauna.

Wow, what a wuss, right?

Well, the degrees were celcius degrees. It was hot.

- - - -

We're in our hotel room. Japanese TV continues its inspid programming.