Sarah again. Alan's complaining will be in red. Honestly, there will be today. Understandable given the day we've had.
Today was a BAD day. It started with us having a bad night. One neighbour, and we never did work out which one, didn't shut up until after 3am. They kept turning their TV up loud, banging their balcony door and overflushing the toilet. If it happens tonight we will get up and go and find out who it is and make them stop.
We had an early start this morning as Alan wanted to visit Yomiuriland (herein after called Lame-o Land). We got to the station at 8.45am for the over 1 hour trip to the park. It was sunny and reasonably warm and we were optimistic of a good day. That lasted about 2 minutes. It was the warmest day we'll have for our entire trip, so a good day for an amusement park. One train line from our station had had a train accident and they had shut it down. Alan said it was lucky that they have so many other lines in Tokyo that you'd never notice. In fact it had the opposite effect. All the other lines went into chaos. We went from one station to another trying to get to the one we needed to get the subway line out to Lame-o and after an hour, we had gone about four stops, including back past the one we started from. Finally, we manoevoured around and got our way out to the park. It was utter chaos and to happen during morning peak with squillions of people trying to get to work just made it beyond ridiculous. We went to Oimachi station to try to change to another subway line but couldn't even get down to the platform as there were just so many people there. And for a country in which it seems every second vehicle is a taxi, do you think there's one around when you really want one? When we did manage to get onto a train it was packed so tightly that you didn't need to hang on as there was no room to breath let alone fall over.
We arrived at Yomuiriland and finally found a place in Japan that wasn't busy, and there is a reason for that, and hence the name Lame-o Land. They have different pricing tickets; one just to get into the park (me) and one for park entry and all rides (Alan). We started by having a nice lunch since we had been travelling over 2.5 hours to get there. We choose the Indian food which was really good. Then on to the park (here Alan will step in).
When you get off the train at Yomiurilandmae Station you're forced to ride the gondola to the park entrance unless you want to walk up a massive, very steep hill. It's basically a kids amusement park with a few big rides thrown in for good measure. I went on a stand-up coaster which was ridiculously short. There was a haunted house and a house of terror, both of which were laughable at how unscarifying they were. The one redeeming ride in the park is the Bandit, a steel coaster with a very high first climb and drop. Without that ride the entire park should definitely be bulldozed. The park is in serious need of someone to teach the staff how to run an amusement park. They should go to America to get tips on how it should be done properly.
So we left the park at about 2.15pm and got on the train and sat there, for 45 minutes! Another train accident or some such nuisance, it was so NOT our day. Finally we crawled to the station where we needed to change trains and some nice lady stopped to let us know what had happened and where we should go from there. It was actually emergency work being carried out on a bridge this time.
We decided to try and do the stop we didn't do yesterday and where I have wanted to go, Nekobukuro. In Tokyo where apartments are tiny and lives are busy, adopting a pet is impossible for most people but at Nekobukuro visitors can play with kitties. It's basically a petting zoo for people / luxury apartment for 20 odd resident cats. It was nice to have some furry time as we've been missing our babies while we are here. It's on the 8th floor of a department store. There were some strange cats in there. One maine coon was the size of a small lion and there was a little tabby who had the shortest, stumpiest legs we've ever seen. They honestly must have been no more than 2 inches long. Unfortunately it was hard to get a decent photo of her since there was a big black boy cat constantly chasing her around trying to stick his willy in her.
After getting a milkshake for Alan from McDonalds we queued up for ages to get tickets for tomorrow's train to Hakone. We returned to the hotel and then walked around to Tokyo Tower to see the night view. We first walked through the busy park which was overflowing with picnickers tonight. After our trip to the top of the Tower we picked up dinner from the a couple of the vendors in the park and returned to our room to eat it. I had what passes as a doner kebab over here and it was really good. I would have gone back down for another one if I didn't have to fight my way through all the drunken revelers. After dinner we went to cash in our two free drink vouchers before returning to the room. We got our free drinks at one of the hotels bars on the ground floor. We had a couple of delicious non-alcoholic cocktails. Thank goodness we didn't have to pay for them. A simple glass of orange juice cost A$17 there. Unbelievable! Now it is time for the final spa before we leave here tomorrow.
We are unsure whether we will have internet access in Hakone. We will write the blog but it may not be posted until Tuesday afternoon. Keep checking each day as we'll try our best to post our blog each day.
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