August: My Epic Month of Epicness...
Aug. 9th, 2009 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkan...kicked off with a full week of me working at Kinji until 10 or 10:30 each night. Which was not exactly fun, but necessary nonetheless, because pretty much every yen I earned I dumped right back into Japan's tanking economy this weekend at USJ and Summer Sonic.
USJ was... incredibly fun, but only because of the company. Fun Fact About Me #1: I had no idea there was a difference between theme parks and amusement parks, so I went into USJ a little worried about how I'd handle a day full of roller coasters after less than two hours' sleep (see: Kinji). I'd gotten a text at about 10pm the previous night asking me to arrive an hour earlier than planned, which meant leaving the Rectangle at 6am to get to Osaka on time; predictably (and really, I should have known) my friends were two hours late, so I spent that time drowsing in MosBurger.
Anyway, it turns out that there's only one roller coaster at USJ, and it is pretty lame...as in "the biggest drop didn't even give me butterflies" lame. The other attractions were amusing, but we had to wait over an hour to get onto each, even after shelling out the extra 40-odd bucks for the (bogus, as it turns out) "express" tickets, plus, said rides only last for about three minutes, tops. And there are only about seven or eight attractions compared to acreage of stores. The place was clearly designed to keep visitors shopping and wasting money on vastly overpriced food and cheap plastic crap from China and not riding rides. Avoid unless you are a huge movie fan who gets excited at the thought of replica sound stage storefronts. (Fun Fact About Me #2: I am not by any means a huge movie fan.) I'll take Cedar Point or Kennywood over USJ any day of the week.
And to get back at USJ for the massive ripoffs that were the entry fee, "express" ticket fee, and overpriced foodlike substances (e.g. heatlamp-nuked McDonald's reject hamburger for eleven bucks), Fun Fact #4: there we were on the Amazing Adventures of Spiderman 3D ride when suddenly the screen goes blank, the car stops, the audio stops, the lights come up and the air conditioning goes off. And we sat in this stifling room for several minutes until the car started moving and the 3D effects came back (albeit minus the sound). As we're getting off the ride, an attendent came rushing up to ask us if we'd been hurt.
Turns out, if you slide around too much under the safety bar, it trips an alarm system that stops the ride. And it also turns out that, in the event that this happens, they bump you up to the head of the queue and you get to ride again. Which is awesome. So now you know how to have free repeat rides at USJ with no wait.
Summer Sonic was...amazingly badass. Amazingly badass. Probably the best non-club concert experience I've had to date. Yes, the food is overpriced. Yes, the drinks are overpriced. Yes, there's a multi-kilometer march between the parking lot and the venue, and pretty hefty treks between the various stages. But. You can bring in your food and drinks (wish we'd known beforehand). There are indoor bathrooms with flush toilets, running water, and soap. The sound quality is amazing.
And the lineup was badass. In just under ten hours I saw:
and caught part of sets by Mogwai and Boys Like Girls
I'd also wanted to see Kasabian, Puffy, Soulwax, Tricky and Datarock, but there wasn't enough time to get to the various stages they were playing; and Katy Perry and Phoenix cancelled at the last minute. Still, it was a-mazing...especially Girl Talk and NiN. Because I was in the front row. FOR BOTH.
More to come on this later (with pictures). But I'm gonna end here, because I'm heading to Korea again tomorrow and I need to pack.
That will be all.
USJ was... incredibly fun, but only because of the company. Fun Fact About Me #1: I had no idea there was a difference between theme parks and amusement parks, so I went into USJ a little worried about how I'd handle a day full of roller coasters after less than two hours' sleep (see: Kinji). I'd gotten a text at about 10pm the previous night asking me to arrive an hour earlier than planned, which meant leaving the Rectangle at 6am to get to Osaka on time; predictably (and really, I should have known) my friends were two hours late, so I spent that time drowsing in MosBurger.
Anyway, it turns out that there's only one roller coaster at USJ, and it is pretty lame...as in "the biggest drop didn't even give me butterflies" lame. The other attractions were amusing, but we had to wait over an hour to get onto each, even after shelling out the extra 40-odd bucks for the (bogus, as it turns out) "express" tickets, plus, said rides only last for about three minutes, tops. And there are only about seven or eight attractions compared to acreage of stores. The place was clearly designed to keep visitors shopping and wasting money on vastly overpriced food and cheap plastic crap from China and not riding rides. Avoid unless you are a huge movie fan who gets excited at the thought of replica sound stage storefronts. (Fun Fact About Me #2: I am not by any means a huge movie fan.) I'll take Cedar Point or Kennywood over USJ any day of the week.
And to get back at USJ for the massive ripoffs that were the entry fee, "express" ticket fee, and overpriced foodlike substances (e.g. heatlamp-nuked McDonald's reject hamburger for eleven bucks), Fun Fact #4: there we were on the Amazing Adventures of Spiderman 3D ride when suddenly the screen goes blank, the car stops, the audio stops, the lights come up and the air conditioning goes off. And we sat in this stifling room for several minutes until the car started moving and the 3D effects came back (albeit minus the sound). As we're getting off the ride, an attendent came rushing up to ask us if we'd been hurt.
Turns out, if you slide around too much under the safety bar, it trips an alarm system that stops the ride. And it also turns out that, in the event that this happens, they bump you up to the head of the queue and you get to ride again. Which is awesome. So now you know how to have free repeat rides at USJ with no wait.
Summer Sonic was...amazingly badass. Amazingly badass. Probably the best non-club concert experience I've had to date. Yes, the food is overpriced. Yes, the drinks are overpriced. Yes, there's a multi-kilometer march between the parking lot and the venue, and pretty hefty treks between the various stages. But. You can bring in your food and drinks (wish we'd known beforehand). There are indoor bathrooms with flush toilets, running water, and soap. The sound quality is amazing.
And the lineup was badass. In just under ten hours I saw:
- The Big Pink
- Saosin
- Girl Talk
- 65daysofstatic
- Boom Boom Satellites
- Nine Inch Nails
- Aphex Twin
and caught part of sets by Mogwai and Boys Like Girls
I'd also wanted to see Kasabian, Puffy, Soulwax, Tricky and Datarock, but there wasn't enough time to get to the various stages they were playing; and Katy Perry and Phoenix cancelled at the last minute. Still, it was a-mazing...especially Girl Talk and NiN. Because I was in the front row. FOR BOTH.
More to come on this later (with pictures). But I'm gonna end here, because I'm heading to Korea again tomorrow and I need to pack.
That will be all.