Adventures in Japan

Day the Six: Fukuoka (reprise) and Spaceworld: Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down: The Actual Post

I'm blogging this after a few days have passed. This shows me just how far gone my memory is. I should really start taking notes.

Oh! Carla took notes! Yay!

The day began with us checking out of our hotel and ditching most of our stuff in a locker so we could spend the day unencumbered at:

SPACEWORLD!!!!

Don't understand all that crazy moon language on their web page? Space World is an amusement park. With roller coasters. It has been forever and a half since we've ridden a decent coaster, so we jumped at the chance. Plus we were going on a Monday. Less crowds = more awesome. The weather said cloudy with rain later in the day. Awesome! That would cut down on the crowds even more!

We got there just after the park opened. In our rush to get there, we had skipped the most important meal of the day. So we grabbed a quick bite to eat. After that, we strolled up to our first ride of the day. As we strolled, the clouds began to spit. Nothing major. Vancouverites would scoff at such weather. As we waited in line (some school groups arrived whilst we were eating) the weather worsened slightly.

Our first ride, Zaturn, was nifty. The ride starts at around 65 kph, then it goes vertical, with a spin thrown in for spice, then it goes down and then it is over. A fairly fast ride. Rain to the face, when taken at 65kph, is unpleasant. Like a 'roided up psychopath is chucking used kitty litter at your face.

Or, as Carla jotted down: "rain felt like pebbles thrown at my face!"

The rain was stronger still by the time the ride finished. On our way to another coaster we stopped in Alien Panic Revolution, a haunted house of sorts. In space. It was a little creepy. It felt like we were being followed the whole time. We probably were.

Sez Carla: "I think the alien was scared of us"

It was raining even harder after we emerged from that so we ducked into a large building that housed a few different rides. One of which was the Black Hole Scramble. We sat at the very front of the ride, all the seats behind us were filled by Japanese school girls. Japanese school girls who had never, in their short lives, been on a roller coaster before or even knew what one was. I don't know how else to explain their contsant shrieking throughout the duration of the ride. Every slight twist, turn, or change in elevation caused them to scream loudly.

Carla sez: "shrill"

We next stepped onto a 4-D ride: Mission to Mars. First we had to watch a bunch of bad actors explain why we were about to get jostled around. Their English speaking mouths did not match at all the Japanese coming out of them. Having not set the stage at all, we were then ushered into our spacecraft. It looked like a bunch of seats on a platform on top of a bunch of hydraulics. When the ride started, we wondered if the hydraulics were just for show. You know how they sometimes warn pregnant women not to ride certain rides? A pregnant woman could give birth on this thing, so non bumpy a ride is it.

Carla wrote: "tame, and not at all immersive"

It was still raining out. We contemplated buying some cheap rain ponchos. We also noticed that none of the cool coasters were running. Dang.

Instead of any cool, exciting rides, we took a ride on the giant ferris wheel and stared longingly at all the cool rides not running.

Next was Boogie-Woogie Space Caoster. Carla said "Ow, my knees!"

We also rode a water based ride. It was wet.

Carla: "You will get wet. Because it's raining."

There was also some sort of weird merry go round/video game. You went round and round, but there was a joystick and a video screen in the... pod? You had to try and shoot all the enemies on the screen, but the joystick also spun your pod around. It was fun.

Carla: "Ty scored 297, 500 pts! We were backwards a lot..."

Somewhere in there, we ate some overpriced noodles. And a churro, cuz I can't go to an amusement park without getting a churro.


The last thing we did in the park was to fall asleep in the IMAX theatre. Astro Boy was playing, I think. "I'm sure the Astro Boy movie was very good, but it was quite the struggle to stay awake. We failed."

All in all, the park experience was kinda sad. If we had known how much it was going to rain and for how long we probably would have given it a pass. Or at least ran to ride the roller coasters as soon as we got into the park. Oh well.


It was still more enjoyable then the night bus to Matsue.