Sunday, September 7, 2008

TOKYO-YO-YO

Ah, well where do I begin?
Jason Bryton and I just got back from Tokyo, Japan! We went to Disney Land and Disney Sea, and had two days to get lost in Tokyo.
So here we go, a day by day blog of our trip.
Day one:
The Alarm goes off at 4:50 am! (yuk) We hop out of bed, get dressed, wake Bryton up-get her dressed, get to the bus, take the bus to the Airport, get on our flight, and then land in Tokyo about 11am. Hooray -boring part is over.
After we checked into our hotel we loaded up our camel backs and headed to the subway station to learn how to use it. I must say I was pretty excited to use it. I probably looked silly, smiling the whole time but whatever, I was having fun!
We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe with our friend Jessica and her daughter Abigail (Bryton's Friend). Lunch was uh, REALLY EXPENISIVE! But for some reason we got a military discount, which was super! and the food was super delicious also.
After lunch we headed (best we could) to the Tokyo Tower. Which is a replica of the Eiffel Tower only bigger and painted orange and white. We only went to the lower observation level but it was high enough believe me. The craziest part of it was the glass elevators! and the glass floor you could stand on and take pictures of the ground below.
After the Tower we went to look for a 4story toy store that Jessica had read about. After asking for directions from a lady at the tower we found our way pretty easily. The toy store was great! lots of fun stuff. Bryton's favorite, I think, were the scoops of legos. Just a large bin of mixed legos, we bought two scoops for 900 yen and after we played with the toys and the really really big race car game (you'll have to see it in the pictures), we set of again.
This time we headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest. In fact Bryton found a seat in the subway car so she could rest her feet and fell asleep against a Japanese woman's shoulder. Very cute! Jason carried her all the way back after that. It's not the easiest thing to do after 3 or 4 blocks. And once we got inside the hotel she woke up and instead of staying asleep, and started playing with her legos. We had dinner and then headed out one last time to find the Tokyo LDS Temple, which was conveniently right down the street about 4 blocks. We saw it at night, all lit up and magnificent. very cool. and of course on our walk back it POURED!!! By the time we got back to the hotel we were soaked. So Bryton and I headed to the pool/hot tub. oh ya, that was nice! As exctied as we were for DisneyLand the next day, we all fell fast asleep.
DisneyLand WOO HOO!
We got up and headed down stairs to the restaurant to get some breakfast. a quick breakfast at that. YA RIGHT. they took forever. We ended up asking them to bag it up because we had to leave or we would miss the bus! It was a muffin and some fruit for goodness sake! So we ate our food on the bus. I loved seeing Tokyo on the way to the theme park it was really cool. The ride wasn't too long, and soon we arrived at the park.
We headed out to explore the park. Jason ,though, ran super fast to get a Fast Pass for one of the rides we wanted to go on so we could come back to it at a later time and not wait in line. It was just amazing to be there, to see the castle and all the characters and colors. WOW. It was magical. Bryton could ride all the rides in Disneyland and nearly did. Including Space Moutain and Thunder Mountain. I loved the Pirates of the Caribbean! one of my favorites but all of them were good. Now, we were dropped off at the park at about 9am and would not be picked up until 9pm, so after 7 hours or so we started to slow up. We ate tons of snacks and candy and it was a lot of fun to just buy whatever and I am really glad that we saved up spending money. We felt sorry for Bryton, (who had been a perfect angel and had not complained about anything, not even her aching feet!) and about 5 o'clock we rented a stroller. And then decided to hit up the gift shops. I saw something and asked Bryton if she wanted it. -no answer- I looked at her, her eyes were open but were in a blank stare. I told her if she was tired and she could go to sleep if she wanted to. No sooner had the words left my lips than she was out!
We had dinner at the Blue Bayou, which was in the Pirates ride. It was really good!
Then it was time for the Lights parade! it was amazing!!! I loved it! Every character was covered in lights! The walking once, the dancing ones and of course the floats were decked out in lights. Quite the spectacle to see.
Then of course the fireworks......ya, they got canceled because of all the cloud cover and lightning. oh well we had a good time regardless!
Day Three Disney Sea
After two days of walking my hips and feet hurt so bad!!! But we had another day of fun to go!
Jason ran to the Tower of Terror and got another fast pass, and then we headed to the Indiana Jones ride! Which, turns out, Bryton was a little to short to get on, oh well. We walked to the Arabian coast and rode on an extremely long ride of a movie I've never seen, Sinbad....something. It was nice and slow. After that we went on a Flounder roller coaster. So much fun! and then off to the kingdom of Atlantica. With King Triton's permission we magically entered the underwater world of Ariel. My favorite part. It was amazing to see all the detail that was put into creating the 'under-da-sea' effect! we rode all the rides there and Bryton played in the ground fountain. She also enjoyed Ariel's Grotto and play ground. Before we left Atlantica we got some Minnie and Mickey ice cream, as well as some sea salt ice cream. Which was really good and salty!
As we headed to the Tower of Terror the rain started to drop. A lot. a lot a lot! We managed to find some ponchos but by the time we made it there we were soaked. oh well, we were determined to have fun and ride the Tower of Terror. Bryton did really good on the ride and the whole falling part she liked, but the Tiki character scared her a little bit. Later Bryton got to meet Ariel in person and talked with her and got her picture taken with her. Very cute.
Another awesome ride was 20,000 leagues under the sea. My favorites of Disney Sea.
We had a lot of fun, even though it rained A lot! and we were happy to watch a really awesome Choreographed waverunner/waterfloat parade. Some breathed fire some shot out water. it was awesome! they were all topped with Disney Characters. it was really cool.
We had a great time there and if it hadn't rained the Fire and Ice show wouldn't have been canceled. Oh well.
Bryton, between the two Disney Parks, met Cinderella, Peter Pan, high-fived with Cpt. Hook, met The Fairy Godmother, Minnie Mouse, and Pinnochio-I think that's all of them.
Our 2nd to last day in Tokyo we took it slow.
Slept in, ordered breakfast through room service, and finally made it out of our room about noon. We decided to see the Tokyo Zoo. Right before we went into the zoo we got a banana from the banana man. It was really good, it was dipped in a chocolate, a blue and a strawberry dip of some sort, and doused in sprinkles! Really delicious! as for the zoo it was really nice, it had animals I had never seen before, including a deer mouse. crazy! Bryton's favorite part was the squirrels. So she picked out a Squirrel stuffed animal to remember it by. We were there for several hours. took our time and rested a lot. It was nice!
We found Jessica there and we all left together back to the hotel and then to TGI-Fridays. I really really wanted to find a candy store but never did, we did however, find a store with candy and we bought watermelon kitkat bars! so delicious! It rained again and all the way to the subway, but at least we had ponchos this time.
The next morning we ordered breakfast again -ROOM SERVICE ROCKS!!! we packed up all of our stuff and since we had an hour or so before our bus took us to the airport we walked around the block. We bought some Baskin Robbins ice cream and strolled around the park.
I think we were all sad to leave. It was the only bad part of our wonderful vacation....the leaving.
We all had a wonderful time there and we will always remember the good times. We hope that in a few years we can manage to go back.