Yomiuri Land, Japanese theme park!

Saturday was spent having a yukkuri time at home, doing homework and translation for the KO-site. I feel a bit bad not going out at all for a whole day (except to bother neighbours at night to ask them about stuff...) because, well, I'm in Japan after all! But then again, I'm someone who loves just slacking and taking it easy at home so it was a good day for recharging my batteries.

Because today, you see, we went to Yomiuri Land! Yomiuri Land is a theme park located just 20 minutes away from home, so going there is really convenient. We expected it to be packed with people today, being Sunday and all, but when we got there it was really quite empty. It might've made the atmosphere a bit less "moriagaru" (hmm... kind of like "exciting", "lively" and "pumped") but in turn you don't need to stand in line very long to be able to get on the rides! Sometimes you didn't even need to stand in lines, it was that empty.
You had to take a gondola to reach the theme park. My first time riding one!

We rode this one... Twice! Apparently it's the most popular ride in Yomiuri, which you could notice just by looking at the queue for it.

So most of you probably know this already, but for those who don't: I AM SCARED SHITLESS OF ROLLER COASTERS. So this would prove to be a real challenge. ^^; I had taken a look at the Yomiuri website the day before to get used to the thought of actually riding these monsters, and gosh, when I saw that they had a looping coaster, I swore to myself that if anything, that is one I'm not going to ride!

Here we are! I didn't exaggerate when I said that the place was empty. But alas, short lines = happy happy!

We went for the biggest one first thing we did (it's called "Bandit", why do roller coasters always have these weird random names by the way?) and it proved to be the most oh-my-god-I'm-going-to-die-please-let-me-out-of-here ride of all.

Just look at this freakin' nose dive. I really thought that I was done for when the carts slowly creeped up the rails. What the hell had I gotten myself into?! I thought my heart was going to jump out of my mouth when we finally dove down. Major DÖDSÅNGEST!

Before you knew it the ride was over. The worst parts are the diving ones. But after coming down, you strangely feel that it wasn't so bad after all. Perhaps it was even... fun? Yeah! I conquered one of my fears! :D So I told myself that this was alright, but I'm never going to ride the looping one and that's that!

So what happens next? You guessed it, everyone went for the loop coaster! Nooo way! Me and N-san (who's really nice and sweet) were dead set on not riding it, at least not the standing loop one. I can't for my life understand people who deliberately subject themselves to these torture devices! It's the same with horror movies, I just don't get it. @_@ But then I got dragged into riding the sitting looping coaster, and it was pure torture sitting there waiting just before they start the engines. Heuh... Surprisingly enough though, it turned out to be not so scary at all! Sure you feel that you're looping, but it's actually not that bad, you barely notice any difference. Wow. I feel quite proud of myself now, I actually rode this thing!

A note about Japanese theme park workers: because Halloween is coming up, all of them wore these silly pumpkin hats and they all looked so funny! Also, after finishing a ride, they always say "Thank you for graciously riding this attraction"! That would never happen in Sweden, at best you get a stressed-looking person shooing you out and that's that. The Japanese are so polite, even when it comes to things like these... You always feel very well taken care of.

I won't go into details about the rest of the rides, but as far as these roller coasters go, they don't have a lot of them. Well, more than you could ask for in Gröna Lund, but somehow you just expect theme parks in Tokyo to be even grander, you know. But I had fun so it doesn't matter! We rode another coaster which was made from wood, so while riding you keep thinking that everything might just break down and fall on you. I think that was the whole point actually. @_@ Also rode the equivalent to Karusellen where you sit on swings and... swing around! Extremely relaxing but makes your head go round when you get down. They also had this ride called Sky Diver where you had to climb like 20 flights of stairs, get into this lifeboat-looking thing and sliiiiiide down on this huge water slide! Great fun and not scary at all, suits me. *_*

Everyone loves food pictures so here's one of my lunch!Hot chicken taco roll. Relatively expensive for this little thing, but it was good. I had waffle ice cream afterwards. Yum!

Ferris Wheel up next!

When you go to theme parks of course you need to ride its ferris wheel! To be honest, they aren't that fun but you get a great view of the grounds and beyond so it's worth going just for that. Though when you get to the top everything just seems so fragile so you end up wanting to get down as fast as possible instead... A couple of pictures from the ride:And my favorite because of the almost-symmetry:

Eyecandy!

Went to two ghost houses (sounds awkward in English @_@ but spökhus/obakeyashiki anyway!) and N-san, Sa and A were all so scared, poor ones! Hoho, I'm usually the one being scared of everything but this time I got to be the brave one for a change! N-san and Sa barely looked at where they were walking so they kept a firm hold on me and S all the time, heehee, that was kinda cute. Perhaps I'll adapt this technique when I get a bf.

The theme park closes really early, by 1700, so when that time had come we headed back down with the gondola again. When it gets dark in Tokyo, it gets dark real fast, you don't really notice any gradual change. Before you realize it the sun's already down. I don't think my body and my mind have gotten used to this yet, because it always feels so late when it gets dark suddenly like that when it's in fact still pretty early.

Going down.