Disney Sea

FOR December 24th we went to Disney sea, it's a common thing for couples to do in Japan. It was my first time at a Disney place, I liked it. On this day there are few kids and it is mostly adult couples.

We did rides on the famous one like the Haunted Hotel and the Indiana Jones rides.
We saw a couple of special Disney sea shows for the holiday season and their Xmas fireworks.

Overall if was an awesome day!

Kabuki

WE saw a play Japanese style, Kabuki. Kabuki is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. All performers are men, women are portrayed by men wearing white masks.

Kabuki plays can last entire days but we went to see only a small hour show. The particular show we went to see had as a star a famous kabuki performer of women roles.

It was very interesting and very different from other theater. Unfortunatley there were no pictures allowed once inside so the only shot is from the outside.

Sumo fight

THE latest adventure is something I really wanted to see while I was in Japan, a real sumo fight!

We went to a special building for the Grand Basho, one of the big tournaments in the sumo series. It was next to the Tokyo Edo Museum where we had gone before. The seats were decent but we brought binoculars which ended up being a good idea.

The place was enormous! The fights were real interesting. This video shows one the super stars of sumo, Baruto. Interestingly enough many of the top sumo fighters are north Europeans or Mongolians. Some fights were very violent, with fighters flying out of the ring and into the spectators.

The white stuff they throw is salt being thrown to bring good luck in battle. The fight can't start until both make a specific move indicating they are ready. Intimidation plays a big part in sumo fights. And like in any professional sport, there is advertising, in this case people walk around the ring and show the sponsor's flags. The actual fighting is rarely more than a few seconds.

Namja town

ON the 11th of January, we went to a place called Namja town. It's across between an interior fun house and a food theme park. On our menu were Gyoza and Ice cream.

Inside it's a great place for parents and kids, there are many games like a treasure hunt game that uses special viewing machines to find clues all around the park. We went only for the food since all the games are in Japanese and are a bit hard for us to follow.

There is a gyoza museum which we went to. There were many different kinds of gyoza. We all bought some different types and shared a piece with each other. It was a tasty experience.

Then we went for dessert. The ice cream museum is the one in Japan with the most flavours of ice cream! We tied some pretty tame ones but there were some incredible flavours available, like jellyfish, lamb & raisin, sweet potato, charcoal, wasabi, eel, tulip, deep seawater, fish sauce, cherry blossom, barley, bottle gourd, fried noodle, caviar, squid, octopus, shark fin, soy sauce, potato & butter, cheese rizotto, garlic & mint and of course... viper!

octopus ice cream with real pieces!

Our exploration group

Back!

Whoo! After a few months I'm back online. I was out of internet and have a huge backlog of posts to make.