Japan: Tokyo Day 2/3 Shopping and Tokyo Disneyland

Well we met up with Japanese girl my friend met on her year abroad and headed to this shopping center. I don't know what your's is like back home, this shopping center was massive compared to Australian shopping centers. It was even bigger than our larger ones like Southland and Chermside. It was kind of split into 3 complexes with each being a few floors high at least. There was this shop called Village Vanguard (which I later learned, they have a number of stores throughout the country) which had a section of Studio Ghibli merchandise. Was very tempting to buy it all but we're planning to visit the Ghibli Museum so I might hold off until then and see what they offer in their gift shop. I think I ended up getting a couple of little souvenirs for family. Including these chopsticks for my sister which have Mei pictured on them.

We also looked at some other shops, there was a store dedicated to all things anime but there was a lot of new stuff there so I didn't recognise a lot of it. There was also a store which sold gundam models which was fun to look at. I was in a big shop with tons of CDs and DVDs etc. I couldn't quite work out the order in which the organise CDs in Japan which made it hard to find the artists I was looking for.

The Japanese girl we were with offered to drive us back to our hostel which was very kind of her as it was a pretty long drive. I'm not sure where she lives. I hope it was in our direction. The drive home was quite interesting and I took a lot of video throughout. It was dark by the time we arrived back at our hostel. We had a firetruck push through the traffic at one point with all it's lights flashing. I need to upload the video of that because I think my brother would enjoy it. Well we've got Tokyo Disneyland tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that as I've never been.

Tokyo Disneyland

We took the train to Tokyo Disneyland. First we took a normal train but then had to get off as Disneyland has it's very own train line dedicated towards transporting passengers to the various Disneyland resorts, Disneyland itself and Disney Sealand. We got a 2 day train pass as we were going back the next day to Disney Sealand. The resorts looked magnificent and the trains were really cute with windows in the shape of Mickey's head and the hand holders also bearing the same shape. Disneyland itself was quite fun with all the different themed places for all your favourite characters.

I had a burger for lunch which had a bun in the shape of mickey as well! Food was more expensive here but I guess that's normal for theme parks regardless of what country you're in. Strangely enough, we didn't go on any rides which is something I never thought I'd do. That is, go to a theme park and not go there for the rides. The lines were massive compared to what I'm used to back on the Gold Coast and would have taken ages to get on. I took tons of photos and it was just fun seeing everything. The Disney castle look incredible and I couldn't resist taking photos every time I saw it. There's tons of stores to buy merchandise from and stock does vary to some degree between stores but a lot of it is rehashed. I ended up buying a lot of things for my family back home. Overall, I really enjoyed my time there and look forward to Disney Sealand.