Japan Trip 2018 - Part 4: DisneySea, Kamakura and Yokohama

 DisneySea

On October 23rd we went to DisneySea just with the two of us. DisneySea is a unique Disney theme park that you can only find in Tokyo. Did you know that in 2018 this was the fourth-most-visited theme park in the whole world? I actually never went to Disneyland or another Disney park so I was quite excited. We also read about going there before we went because it seems it takes quite some planning because there is so much to see and do.

Obviously the undersea area: the outer side of the Mermaid Lagoon

You could go on the ship and yes the volcano actually has small fake eruptions with fire sometimes

Arabian coast with hints to Aladdin and Sinbad

As you can guess the overall theme of the park is aquatic/nautical. Which really suits Tokyo if you ask me, and also its location since it is near the ocean itself in Tokyo bay.
Many people already once went to a Disney park so I won't really go into a lot of details, but it was a unique experience that you can get nowhere else I think. The architecture and decoration was done well everywhere and really gets you into this different world. 

Some of the work for the Indiana Jones ride

Inside of the Mermaid Lagoon

What did surprise me were the huge waiting lines. Even though we went with the time-ticket system for some rides, for others you just had to wait and it took at least an hour (?) for a ride that is just a minute long or so. Some rides weren't even available anymore when we came into the park. Even though we were there on the day of the week where it would supposed to be the least crowded, and half a rainy day at that. I do understand now why people go multiple days sometimes. The rest of the time we just walked around and sometimes we were lucky to go somewhere on the right time to not have to wait very long. At least we had fun looking at all the surroundings (and at the Japanese finally having some fun..). The show at the end of the day in the 'lake' in the middle was also pretty cool.

Tower of Terror. Pretty cool shot with the moonlight behind it right?

The park looked so nice at night as well!

The next day, if I remember correctly, was the last day in Tokyo with our friends Sanne and Tim (they traveled elsewhere for a while, we would see eachother a week later or so) and we wanted to go to the Odaiba Odoe Onsen Monogatari again (which I wrote about in 2017), this time I could go together with Sanne instead of just by myself and it helped that we already knew how it worked. It was a nice relaxing time again!

During the evening we were looking for a restaurant around Tokyo Dome City LaQua, since that is about 10 minutes from our hotel and went to an Italian place that also served pizza with fries on it, one of our friends had to try it! We also saw that they had a nice fountain show with music in LaQua where the shopping center is located, a nice surprise.

Kamakura and Yokohama

We planned to go the next day away from Tokyo ourselves as well, just for a day and a night though. This time we went south and traveled to Kamakura. This city is known as the "Kyoto of Eastern Japan" because it also features a large amount of temples. Kamakura is located near the ocean as well so after arriving there we went for a walk to the ocean, which was on a road that looked like it was imported from the USA (wide, with shops, featuring palm trees in the middle). After 15 minutes or so we arrived at the beach and although it was a happy sunny day it wasn't crowded there at all (yeah well everyone works during the day of course).

From there on we walked to the Daibutsu: the great Buddha statue of Kamakura in Kotoku-In. Once there I have to say we weren't really impressed, haha. During our first trip to Japan we went to Nara and they have an even bigger statue there. Even though it is only 1.60 metres shorter, the one in Nara might look bigger because of the temple itself it stands in. 

We read there are lots of walking and hiking trailes around Kamakura so chose one on the map close to the Daibutsu. It was a very high climb, but when we were over the top there were signs on the road that said a cafe was nearby, so we took our chance to take a look there and were not disappointed. It was a cafe with several terraces build on the mountain. We enjoyed a drink and some ice cream there. The rest of the walk wasn't easy either but gave us some nice views and one cool temple we came across. That temple, called Zeniarai Benzaiten Ugafuku Shrine, was sort-of build in a cave. You had to walk through a small cave to get there. And in the temple itself there was some sort of sacred pond in another part of the cave.

Our place to stay for the night this time was in Yokohama. I think we first went into the city there since there also was a Closet Child (2nd hand shop for lolita clothing) where I bought a cheap cute brown Axes Femme cardigan. I remember now that in Harajuku some days before I had bought a skirt that I was wearing that day in Kamakura. It was a sailor-moon themed skirt from Secret Honey! I haven't worn it a lot since though ^^;.

Our hotel room view O_O ♥ (photo was made the next morning)

Anyway, we went searching for the hotel and came across a fancy building that we weren't sure was the place. It looked like a building where people went for their wedding. When we walked inside we asked and it was the right place, haha! Then a person walked us to the room and showed us around we again thought that maybe this really was the wrong place after all, since... OMG...what a big room and what a sight from our windows we had! So I checked quickly but it really was the right place. I do remember I went for a bit more expensive hotel room for this one night, but didn't know it came with this cool view, it was like from a movie!

View from one of the windows at night ♥ Imagine going to bed while seeing this.

After putting our stuff away and refreshing a bit, we decided to go to chinatown, as Yokohama is famous for their chinatown. It indeed looked pretty impressive and we had some tasty nikuman for dinner (steamed buns filled with pork). 'Man' was the favourite breakfast of Nick anyway, as you can get them from about any convenience store and they come in some great flavours like pizza. This is why I called Nick the 'nickuman' at some point, haha.

The park next to our hotel

View of Yokohama during our morning walk. I have to say it indeed does look a bit more international, which is not so strange because it is a well-known international harbour.

The next morning we walked towards Cosmo World (where the Cosmo Clock, the name of the ferris wheel you see in the night photo is located), it is a small amusement park near a shopping center. After we were done seeing some things and playing in the arcades we went to the station again to go back to Tokyo.

Read part 5 here: http://dreamsweetie.blogspot.com/2020/08/japan-trip-2018-part-5-shopping-and-fun.html