Universally Studious

Kicking off (and probably causing) our attempt at a "no spendy weekendy" this weekend was a cheeky trip out to Universal Studios Japan. Our last attempt ended in 2 hours of rain, queues and tears, but luckily this time we nailed it. It's not the most traditional Japanese experience you can have, but it's something you can do here easily that you can't do at home so it still counts. I have no excuse for the caramel popcorn, though.

USJ takes about an hour to get to from here, which officially makes getting there less onerous than Kalamunda Wet and Wild. Hopping off the last of 3 trains, we started the walk over toward the massive gate, which thankfully didn't have a 2km tail of people attached to it this time. In fact, we walked straight past the swelling orchestral music, laughed inwardly at the voice-over man advertising "the express pass booklet" to "skip the queues" and got straight in. I went to pull out the map to see where to go first, but Lis had seen Shrek and a photo was top priority. Seconds later, he was patting her on the head with a big floppy hand and her contented expression matched his perfectly. For someone who didn't seem all that enthused about going there a couple of months ago, she seemed to be having an awfully good time already.

The whole entrance to the park is done up like a Hollywood street, with painted "car bays", traffic lights and post boxes. Even though there's probably never been a car inside the gate, you find yourself instinctively staying off the road and looking at your watch to see if you're within the signs' "no parking" time. The buildings, like Disneyland, are a mixture of real and fake - there might be a Baskin Robbins tucked away where there should be a milk bar, a souvenir shop where there should be a library. You can still see Osaka in the background at times so the illusion isn't quite as complete as Disneyland, but it's getting there.

We followed the road to our first stop - the "Space Adventure" ride, where enthusiastic staff in makeshift space cadet uniforms ushered us through to have our picture taken and set off on our "mission". Between an exceptionally annoying robot thing telling us about how the power to save the universe lies within all of us and a Barbie doll-esque princess breathlessly telling us about how we're her only hope, I was prepared for the worst. It really had no business being as good as it was. We hopped in our little pods and shot off on a rollercoaster railing, hitting "space" with a gust of cold air and total blackness, save for some shooting stars and planets. Even though I knew we were still in a little room, spinning around in the darkness and not being able to see where we were going did make a pretty convincing case for the "floating around in space" argument. We orbited round a few planets at surprising speed, flew through a meteor shower and finally reached our goal - the centre of the sun, which needed to be reborn with her help of our magic red button of doom. I think I pressed it about 7 times. There was a moment's pause, then a deafening explosion that lit up the room in orange light (with the help of heaps of mirrors all over the walls). I wondered how the little kids enjoyed it as we tottered off the ride - I want no part of anything that doesn't terrify children.

Next, we went on the Terminator 2 ride arguing about whether the actor was the real Edward Furlong and enjoying some outrageously outdated computer graphics in the intro. The 3D bits, of course, were timeless - no matter how dumb the scorpion thing looks, you can't help but duck its pincers as it stabs at you. "Hasuta ra bisuta, beibi," Japanese Arnie said, setting off a huge explosion that predictably made everyone's seat drop a few inches, causing screams nonetheless. Back to the Future was the same - a timeless simulation of dinosaurs and crashy explodey things. I'm fairly sure landing a car in lava would cause more than turbulence, but it felt right at the time.

I think I liked the simulationy rides the best - Spiderman, particularly, had fun with blasts of hot air whenever there was fire and sprays of cold water for electricity and breaking glass. It's amazing how willing your brain is to accept things as true with the flimsiest provocation - a 10cm drop will leave your stomach 50m up in the air if there's any excuse for it at all. Having said that, it's hard to beat the real thing. We crossed into the Jurassic Park jungle, past all the squished jeeps and irritable plastic raptors, and suited up in our ponchos for the rollercoaster. "You will get wet!", indeed. It's all so predictable - you know the T-1000 is going to come out, that Jaws will kill everyone, that the T-Rex is going to try and take a bite out of you - and you still freak out when it happens.

We stopped for dinner after our 5th or 6th near death experience, wandering back into the 50s bit to "Mal's Drive-in" for some good old fashioned hamburgers. There was wood-fired pizza, Chinese and Japanese food as well, but we were appalled by the idea of going to a theme park and not eating a hamburger. I looked at Lisa's as she made an attempt to get her teeth into it. "Man, that looks hell like a Whopper. Is it like a Whopper?" She nodded, and she was right. I don't know why we were both so happy about it.

The best bit was that the park was really quiet, which left us with enviable problems. We didn't, for example, have enough time to enjoy the queue intros in each ride like walking through the offices of the Daily Bugle or hearing about how safe we were from the dinosaurs. We also managed to do all of the rides well before it was time to go, which meant we could go back and have 2nd and 3rd goes on things. "Don't do Back to the Future 3 times," a coworker had warned. "you'll throw up". We followed her advice, instead going on a rollercoaster called "Hollywood Dream" - a really fast thing that circled around the front entrance with a lot of gratuitous climbs and falls. You could choose one of 5 songs to play through your seat as you went - I had the hilarious experience of being serenaded by The Beatles as I hurtled around the park at the speed of sound. The second or third time around, we both chose one of the fast sugar rush J-Pop songs, much to the amusement of our neighbours. It seemed to fit the pacing better than "Get Back", at least.

As night fell, we grabbed ourselves some caramel popcorn and hunkered down to watch the parade, which was an impressive display of lights and very very loud singing. The costumes were pretty impressive, ranging from people in lit-up ladybug costumes, to bellydancers to people in white tuxedos. We continued through Alice in Wonderland, Arabian Nights and Cinderella, the song changing slightly to match each theme, before it came to a thundering crescendo. And then abruptly started again. They obviously had a long route to take.

All up, the trip was awesome - the kind of gratuitous pleasure you get from sitting in your jammies with a tub of ice cream after a week of black tie dinners. I'm sure you'd get sick of it if you did it too often, but I'm happy to test that theory if necessary.

Please tell me it's necessary.