With the continuation of Kikifest 2010 we took an unplanned Saturday trip to Universal Studios Japan in Osaka.  Again as Jess wrote in the previous blog post, Osaka's subway system was not Gaijin friendly so we took a cab.  Usually cab rides here are uneventful, but our older driver took us along the river through the industrial parts of Osaka.  It was interesting to see a different side of Japan than the busy city that we are used to (we also were hoping he wasn't sizing up our feet for concrete shoes with how long it took us to get there).

We arrived at Universal Studios shortly after it opened and luckily we had purchased tickets the evening before at a hotel as the lines to purchase tickets were really long.  The majority of the rides are meant for older kids/adults, but that didn't stop Ella from riding most of them.

We started the day at the Spider-man ride as the wait time was only posted at 30 minutes (a very short time at Japan parks we have found) and to our surprise we were on the ride in 15 minutes!  So this ride is old-school comic book spidey and in 3D.  Ella would not wear the glasses to make the ride 3D and it was probably a good thing with all the bad guys coming at you and other visual effects.  Jess spent a lot of the ride covering Ella's eyes, but Ella was a trooper and liked the movement of the ride. 

So next we went to the Back to the Future ride thinking that it would not be as scary.  Well after another shorter than posted wait we were in a DeLorean and chasing after Biff through time.  Part of our time travel was through a volcano with a T-rex, and Ella can tell you all about that...

While Jess, Ella and I were riding rides Kiki and Abby were exploring some other parts of the park.  They watched a Hello Kitty concert, did some shopping and saw some other characters.

 

When we first talked to Ella about the Jurassic Park water ride she was all for it...then we started walking past it and she got hesitant so it was a no go.  She did want to get her picture taken by the T-rex head so we did that on our way through.  More on Jurassic Park later.

Universal Studios did have some areas for little kids like the Peanut's area and The Wizard of Oz.  We next headed to Peppermint Patty's water rafting slide, which Ella and I went down, with no bathing suits on.  We rode on a raft and both got our shorts a little wet.  Then on to the Wizard of Oz carousel with Abby and Jess.  Abby loved the carousel and probably wanted to go again.  With a brief stop for a lunch of chicken nuggets, burgers and fries we hurried through so we could catch the Toto show.  This was a cute Wizard of Oz show similar to the pet shows at Sea World with lots of trained animals (dogs, cats, birds, pigs, ducks etc.).  The girls loved seeing the animals, but of course all the speaking parts were in Japanese  so we were slightly lost on the whole plot.

By this time Ella was sad that she didn't get to go on the dinosaur ride, and after a lot of explaining that there were scary parts of the ride she still wanted to go.  So, since it was a water ride I volunteered to go with her.  This was the longest wait we had for a ride, but it was well worth it.  Even though I covered her eyes for the scary parts she was very proud that she went on the ride, and barely got wet.  We also had to take another picture with the T-rex since she went on the ride.

Ella thought that since she went on such a big girl ride that she deserved a churro.  One of the fun things about Japan is that they sometimes have different and sometimes very interesting flavors of what we would call normal food at home.  The two churro flavors we tried were a caramel chocolate and a purple one with green frosting.  The green frosting turned out to be green tea and overall was quite tasty.  Jess described the caramel chocolate churro as tasting like dry frosting out of a can, I thought it tasted pretty good.

After the churro Ella had to get her picture taken with Jaws and Kiki even though we didn't do the ride. 

Then onto the Peanut's play area with roller-coaster.  While Jess and Ella waited in line for the ride, the rest of us played in the indoor play area that mirrored the world of the Peanut's gang.  Abby had a blast climbing and running around since she had spent most of the day in the stroller.  Ella and Jess had lots of fun on the coaster.

We then set off to do some shopping and take some pictures.  Luckily right outside of the park is the Universal City Walk (a small outdoor shopping area) and a Hard Rock Cafe.  We were all ready for some greasy burgers and fries (and a beer for me).  We also found some cool gear in the shop.  The Osaka Hard Rock logo had a sweet Samurai on it.

Very busy and fun day!  After that, it was back to the hotel for sleep - on Sunday Kikifest continued!

Kanpai!

Jay