Easter Egg Hunt

Easter is one of those things in Japan that's been slightly commercialized, but otherwise not really celebrated or recognized beyond candy sales at the import stores, a mention or two in intercultural exchange classes and English clubs, and possibly decorations in some restaurants featuring specials or sales.

I suppose the churches do something special here too.

However, there is one place I completely didn't expect, that celebrated Easter (the bunny part of it) in full force.

Tokyo Disney and Disney Sea.

But wait - you might be wondering - Easter was in April? Why on earth am I talking about it now? 

Because, when I went with my friends last weekend to the parks for one last hurrah kind of trip, Easter practically shoved itself down our throats the minute we walked up to the park.

It's supposed to be like that until the end of June. Holy. Cow. In addition to making a lot of things kind of.... uglier (in my opinion anyways, with EASTER 2012 all over everything), they also had parades and shows themed around this Easter celebration. Entire areas were transformed so that shows about Easter could happen in Disney Sea.

It was even worse in Disneyland.

There were these huge statues/models of bunny rabbits (really cute ones actually) in the center of the park and scattered all around. A lot of the souvenirs had some kind of "easter 2012" thing on it, including these oddly shaped Mickey and Minnie egg things. They actually had popcorn buckets as well that were shaped like that (those were actually kinda cute). All around the park, as well, we kept noticing Disney characters that were shaped like eggs, and other small little Disney eggs

Most of them were actually really cute...

We thought it was cute, but that it was just the decoration kinda for the park. So we went through most of the day not thinking too much more of it other than stopping to take pictures of them.

Oh man, were we so wrong about them being simple decorations.

There had been people around checking maps and stuff, but I thought they were just park maps. Oh no. They were special maps.

Disney actually was doing this brilliant Easter event. Massive egg hunt. All around the Disney park.

Oh. My. God.

I didn't find this out until later, when I was talking to one of the cast members, asking what these two little shack things were since I was too lazy to go over to them. I think I asked him something else too, but clearly egg hunt information trumps all memory space of the other question. He told me that they were egg hunts, and that there were two courses: Standard, featuring 15 of the character eggs "hidden" around the park, and then Expert... with... more. I forget how many. But they were smaller eggs that were in places that were a lot harder to notice.

For the Standard course, you were given five stickers of characters that you had to place on the map. The maps had blank spaces for general locations of where the eggs were, so you could use the maps and blank spaces to make pretty good educated guesses as to where certain eggs were located. The expert course, I'm not sure how many you were given, but they gave you small little thumbnail picture of the general location, and you had to put the egg sticker on the appropriate thumbnail. I don't think you had a map to tell you where in the park the thumbnail was though.

That sounds so amazing.

Sadly, I did not discover this amazingness until about 3:50. Our group had finished up most of the things we wanted to do (and had time for); people were going to shop around for souvenirs, since we had plans to leave the park around 4:20ish, which my friends reminded me.

The egg hunt was not in the plan. At all. And I only had about half an hour to run around the park to collect them. Plus the maps themselves were either 500 yen for the Standard course, or 1000 yen for the expert. BUT, we had been taking pictures of the eggs we had found (and we had found a lot), so when the cast member mentioned that we only had to find five eggs, I was like PFT, STANDARD COURSE NO PROBLEM. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I mean come on. It's the chance to run around the Disney park hunting for stuff. A giant Disney treasure hunt. That's been pretty high on my list of "Things that would be so freaking awesome to do" list, right up there with things like tag in Disneyland and a race through Disneyland. So like, this kinda checked off the race thing too, since I was racing... against time.

 When I got the map, I was like "Oh, no problem, this is totally doable."

Best. Egg Hunt. Ever.

Then I looked at which stickers I had been given, and realized that this probably was not going to be as easy as I originally thought. I mean, I thought we had seen most of the eggs, and that getting the prize for this would be as simple as looking through my pictures, then putting the stickers on the map and making my way to tomorrow land.

At first, it seemed like that would be the case. That Lightning McQueen egg? Yeah, was pretty sure the moment I got it that it was going to be next to Autotopia. Brier Rabbit? Yeah, he was next to Splash mountain. We had just come from Toon Town, so I was able to check off Pluto pretty easy, which left Donald Duck and Lady.

Donald was wearing Western getup, so clearly that meant somewhere near Big Thunder. I hadn't actually seen this egg though, and there were three spots in the Western Area, so I figured I'd go over just to doublecheck (though, apparently if I had used my head and camera a little more I would have been able to remember that one of them was Woody and Jessie, and the other spot had the bears from Country Bear Jamboree, so obviously the one left over was Donald. But I kinda wanted to see it with my own eyes, so I ran over there and started hunting around. One of the cast members around there saw me running around and looking at the map and asked me what I was looking for, and I told him I thought it was around here.

The man went, "Hmmmm...." and looked around, then smiled and told me 「ここから、見える。」 or "From here I can see it." I was like "EHHHHHH" and thanked him before looking around again until I finally found it tucked away amongst the cacti and brambles.

This left Lady, whom I hadn't seen at all. Looking at the map, I figured Fantasyland would be one of the places she might be in. Italian...? Hm. But I was also pretty sure that the three eggs there were Alice in Wonderland, the dolls from Small World, and (I remembered this when I got there) Pinocchio and Jimney Cricket. So that was out. Definitely wasn't in Tomorrowland. So I went back to Adventureland and ran around to the spots there trying to find this Lady easter egg.

I actually finally found it a little bit closer to New Orleans Square. It was, among all of them, the most well-hidden I think, since it was sitting in a small planter with a Tramp easter egg, eating spaghetti.

So freaking cute. I'm so glad I found that one.

It was in an area in between the lands that we had never actually used, close to a stage with Disney New Orleans shows. On the map, there were actually two of them really close to each other, and I had forgotten that there was a pirate Goofy near Pirates of the Caribbean, also in New Orleans. It was like Oh noooooo and I kind of worked with another couple to place my last sticker, before sprinting over to the prize area with about ten minutes to spare.

I hadn't accounted for standing in line, but I made it. :D

The prize for finding everything in the correct spot was that you got to choose one of five packaged eggs. Inside the identical packages was an Easter egg, containing one of four known eggs (or maybe the mystery egg!). Makes it worth the 500 yen, definitely.

But honestly, I'd totally pay for the 1000 yen one, or the 500 yen map if it gives me an excuse to run all over the Disney park going on a treasure hunt. Sign me up any day. :D

City Kind Of Sort Of Nearish The Bay

I keep having these alternating moments of "oh my god I work and live in Japan" and "oh my god I'm in California" while I'm over here. Been pretty busy the past week or so since arriving, especially since I've been eating making my way down through California, and have had little to no internet access (or time) since last saturday.

Did you know California has at least two safaris in it? I didn't know that either. I knew about one - Wild Animal Park in San Diego, since it's affiliated with the San Diego Zoo. But the other one is up in the hills/boonies of Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa, who knew! I went up there with my family (it was the one weekend all five of us were in the same spot) and like, it's a legit animal park safari thing. There are no Lions, but there are a bunch of cheetahs, though not out in the safari area. There were pretty much two areas: the animals in the cages/habitat areas (they were pretty roomy) and the open area that the ranger people drove you through. That was really cool. That area had a bunch of giraffes and ohmireeeses antelope. Antelope? Gazelles? I think they were gazelles not antelope. ...things with four legs and horns and generally fast. Tons of different types. It was really cool to see. I'll eventually get pictures up.

There were also wildebeests. MUFASAAAAAAAAAAAAA. And zebra. Those were cool. And cows. They reminded me of oregon trail.

After that though, we drove down to the petaluma outlets (omg shopping for clothes that can actually FIT me), and had lunch with my grandma at this awesome dumpling place in Oakland chinatown. I think I could eat dumplings and rice for the rest of my life. Om nom. I missed Chinese food. Like hole in the wall kind of chinese food.

Lunch ended with us buying char siu bao (bbq pork buns) (baked) and then my brother and I headed off towards San Diego. From there it's been a crazy short five days of friends, mexican food, friends, beach, couch surfing, more food, more beach, and "jessica is not in a planning mood right now." And oh yeah. DISNEYLAAAAAAAAAAND. San Diego though, was perfect. Like, weather, beach, food, friends... perfection. Why did I leave? Oh yeah. To go to Japan. Which is epic in its own sense. But seriously. I love the beaches in San Diego. Also crashed at a friend's place in Irvine and got to see another old friend at the farmer's market in the morning before I drove back up to the bay. That was super nice.

One of my biggest fears, I suppose, is that I'm going to get back to where ever, or go visit where ever and nobody will be there because everyone has moved away. It's kind of happening now. My friends are scattering. But it's okay, I think. Despite scattering. We'll always be able to see each other and stuff, I suppose. It'll be fine.

I can't believe I'm vacationing in California and working in Japan. Duuude.

Eventually I will have pictures up! Hahaha.

Color my world

I'm back in the bay again, after a detour to California Adventure to see the World of Color and a tiring car ride back home. Highly highly highly recommend going to see World of Color. It's completely amazing. The water show in itself is crazy - blows the Bellagio right out of the water. But then, you add in the lights and the color. Wow the color. Wow. It was like a thirty minute piece of sheer mind blowing awesomeness; I was the happiest child ever. There was color and fire, and the spectrum they displayed combined with the pictures and the movie clips was pretty amazing.

But wait, there's more. Then you add on the fact that it's Disney, with some of the best clips in Disney and Pixar cinema (including Wall-e :D ) AND the fact that Disney does soundtracks quite beautifully and you have a freaking amazing piece of work right there. The marriage of soundtrack and water and color worked perfectly; Disney movies that didn't necessarily grab a piece of the visual show played a part in the audio track, such as Hunchback of Notre Dame and (my favorite part) So Close from Enchanted. It's a sad song already, but somehow they found a way to make it EVEN SADDER - so sad that I stood there, tears streaming down my face, as we were sprayed with water from the show.

I would also recommend that, if you go, you definitely see this show. Hands down my favorite thing in both parks. To see the show though, you have to get fastpasses to get into the viewing areas. Or, what I'd recommend doing, is eating dinner at either Ariel's Grotto or the wine place (if you're willing to spend a little money) and then you actually get into the preferred seating area (though you still want to arrive a little early for that so you can get prime spots without heads in the way of your show). Also, if you decide to go up there, you will most definitely get wet from all the water that's being sprayed high up in the air. The preferred seating is really nice though - front and center, and you don't really have to rush to get a spot (as much).

But yeah. World of Color. Go see it. I'll probably have pictures up sometime soonish, but still pictures don't do it justice. I also gave up taking pictures part way through because I was like, hm, I'm going to enjoy watching the show instead of taking pictures. The ferris wheel is also pretty awesome - a show almost unto itself since it's there constantly changing color like a really cool loading screen haha.

Conclusion: World of Color = Jessica's Dream Show

In other news, I leave in less than a week! AH! CRAZINESS. I don't feel like I'm ready at all. There's so much I want to do before I leave, but I can't. It's like I'm at the edge of a plane, looking out, getting ready to jump off. I know eventually, I will just have to take that jump, whether or not I feel prepared and just hope for the best.

That day is Saturday. Six days remain.