Universal Studios Japan (USJ)

Despite the fact that we didn't get in until 5am this morning (Sept. 27th) --- see below --- Jame and I didn't want to fully waste our day off, so we decided to head to Universal Studios.

After work on Wednesday I got a text from Jame saying that some people from his work were going for some drinks. I met up with them at AirBar as we had to wait there for a bit because their reservation for the 280 yen place wasn't until 10:30. While we were in AirBar, my friend Tamara walked by with her crew. She saw us and said they were on their way to Tins because it was her room-mate's last night in Japan. I told her we may catch up with her later. Finally we were able to get into the 280 restaurant where everything on the menu is 280 yen. We ordered some drinks and some food (I got chuhai---my new favourite drink--- it's sake and fruit soda. Jame got a beer, but the funny thing was we were told the beer was not made from hops…..it was made from potatoes---potato beer, weird!)

The food was pretty good……we even tried chicken hearts !! It is a delicacy in Japan -- or so they told us-- and I will admit that they are pretty tasty! After a bit of time at 280, we decided to meet up with Tamara at Tins. We ran into a few other people we know and met some new ones as well. Tins was super dead and we were all kind of tipsy, so we decided to go do some karaoke. It was our first time at a karaoke bar, but Tamara and Luke had been there many times. These guys are machines…I swear. They go out drinking and singing at least twice a week until the wee hours of the morning. Jame and I didn't have a problem going out because we didn't have to work the next day, but if we did have to work I doubt we would have gone. We are soooooo old!! Ha ha ha!!! We got to the karaoke place and 11 of us crammed into a booth. The singing was awesome…or at least I think it was J and the drinks were included in the price…..so all you can drink chuhai was a big hit.

We staggered out of the bar at 4:30 am and since the trains had stopped running and a taxi was outrageously expensive, we walked home and made it to bed at about 5am! We woke up about 8 hours later and that is when we decided to go to Universal Studios.

USJ is about a 30 minute train ride from our place. We heard that if you go at 4:00pm during the week that admission is about $20 cheaper. I didn't think it would be busy given that it wasn't a holiday or weekend, but I was wrong. We could've got a "beat the line" pass which would have allowed us to go straight to the front of all the lines, but I decided against it because it's an extra $20 per person and I am cheap…..still waiting for that first paycheque of ours!!



Universal Studios isn't as cool as Disneyland simply because there aren't that many rides and I LOVE RIDES, but it was still pretty fun. The first adventure we went on was ET. It was kind of funny because as you wait in line they have clips from the movie showing, but of course it is all dubbed in Japanese. After ET, we went to the Spiderman adventure which was a 3D ride. It was pretty fun, but we had no idea what the dialogue because again Spidey was talking in Japanese! After that we went to the Jurassic Park ride. It was the longest ride we had to wait for (about 45 minutes). There wasn't too much to the ride…the special effects were really neat…but the ride did get exciting at the very end as we dropped straight down in the middle of the dark into a large pool of water. We wanted to buy the picture of our car going down because Jame and I looked hilarious --- his eyes were so wide open and I looked like I was going to puke--- but again it was like $15. I really wanted to go on it again, but didn't want to wait in line. Ah well!


Next we headed off to Jaws. This part was totally nostalgic for me because I remembered going on this ride as a kid. I remember sitting on the edge of the boat and totally FREAKING out when Jaws popped up from under the water! The special effects were super neat on this ride too, and just like I did twenty something years ago….I once again freaked out when Jaws popped up! Jame was laughing his head off and at the same time clenching his arm….I think I squeezed it a little bit too hard! Oops!

We walked around the grounds a bit more and were a little disappointed that things were starting to close. We missed out on a few other adventures that we wanted to see like Back to the Future, Knight Rider, and Shrek. We should've got that beat the line pass---I knew I should've listened to Jame!


This was Jame's first time at an amusement park other than the PNE. I think sometime in the next few months we are going to try to go to Tokyo Disneyland. It is super expensive to get there by train ($300 return/person), but I have heard that you can take a bus that drives 7 hours through the night and drops you off for the day at the park. It's only about $120 for the ride there and back and it also includes one admission.

It's now about 9:30pm and we are just going to chill for the night. Nothing too interesting is planned for tomorrow. Next week we get the internet at home-----WOOO HOOOO + fingers crossed--- and on the 6th we are meeting an English speaking real estate agent who is going to help us find a new apartment. We are living in Nova accommodations right now, but we've been told that we could live somewhere else for a heck of a lot cheaper. So fingers crossed we'll find something decent. We will keep you posted.

September 30, 2006