Tokyo Disney

I wasn't terribly excited about this portion of the trip, but it was a compromise for Mariko's giving up a day for my marathon. I was much less excited when I tried to walk the kilometer from the train to the entrance gates and old ladies were passing me (I'm not kidding). My stiff leg was a serious impediment to our progress - enough for Mariko to take seriously a joke I had offered the day before: renting a wheelchair.

[en route to the wheelchair rental stand]

My pride threatened to reject the wheelchair, but my secret hope that it would get us to the front of the lines relented. It turned out to be the best idea ever! It would have been a miserable day with me limping around and waiting in regular lines. Instead, Mariko pushed me (until 3pm, when I figured out how much more efficient and fun (and safe) it was to roll myself) and we went anywhere she could walk. As for the lines, we got a card that allowed us to go up to the ride and get the card marked off for the 'line wait time' at that moment. We could then go off and do whatever we wanted (except sign up for another ride) and return when the wait time had elapsed. This allowed us to ride the 'short line' rides and never have to wait in line. Brilliant!


Tokyo Disney was remarkably similar to how I remember Disney Land. Same themed regions and rides, albeit on a smaller scale (Splash Mountain was 1/2, maybe 1/3 the size of the U.S. version).

[Who's the Tokyo Disney spellchecker?]

Something I noticed was how passionate many of the Japanese tourists were about Disney. An absurd number of people were wearing fancy mouse ears (see woman in castle picture above) and many little girls were dressed up as princesses.

[pathetic or awesome?]