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When I first arrived in Japan I taught lessons about traveling since it is my passion in life. I told my students about all the incredible places I had been and intended to go, including places like living on a boat for a week in the countryside of England, eating the best baguettes in the world in the south of France, hiking the Swiss Alps, scuba diving in Mexico, drinking Czech beer in Prague, riding a camel in Tunisia, and wandering the canals and red light district of Amsterdam (now I am just bragging!). As the year went on I boasted about hiking Fuji-san, riding a bicycle to Shikoku, and my desire to harvest rice. All these amazing things did nothing for my students. I soon realized that a) leaving Japan was not high on their priority lists and b) the temples of Kyoto were about as exciting to them as riding a cable car in San Francisco was to me.

The Happiest Place On Earth

Casey Lary
2007-04-27 21:49:04

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then quickly reminded that you are in Disneyland when a big genie pops up around the corner. Next, we went to my Disney Mecca: Mermaid Lagoon!! As a child I used to watch Ariel the Little Mermaid once or twice a day, no joke! I was elated to be there and went running into Triton's Kingdom. It lived up to all my expectations and more. There were turquoise walls lit with jellyfish lights. They constantly played songs from the movie. I could have lived there. I want to model a room in my house after that place. I sang all the Mermaid songs to Naomi. Naomi and I went on Flounder's Flying Fish Coaster and then got some lunch at Sebastian's Calypso Café. Surprisingly, prices were not through the roof like at most theme parks. Naomi claims the food prices in Disneyland were cheaper than in downtown Tokyo.

Another very entertaining part of Disneyland is the wide array of silly costumes that the workers are required to wear. We voted the workers at the Calypso Café in Triton's Kingdom to be the most hideous with their mixture of clashing colors and patterns. The rest of the afternoon we roamed from land to land looking for rides with short lines. If there were none, we found food to eat, photos to take, and kept our eyes peeled for a life-size Disney character for us to terrorize. All day Naomi and I would walk up to the stalls selling Mickey ears, debating whether to buy our own. It seems that everyone who comes to Disneyland wears ears, and without our own were quite the anomaly. We tried on EVERY single pair, but at the end of the day decided that we would not buy any (but that didn't exclude taking photos!). The Mickey earmuffs were tempting, but honestly those would not be cool outside of Disneyland unless I was a Kabe Senior High School student. Wandering through American Waterfront was great. I felt like I was home! In Port Discovery we went on Stormrider, the weather-based equivalent to Star Tours. We ran into a fellow Cal Bear who helped ...