Tokyo Disney Sea

There are two Disney parks in Tokyo, Tokyo Disney Land and Tokyo Disney Sea. Megumi and I went to Disney Sea a few weeks before I left Tokyo, and I am unashamed to say I am a full-on fan. It was a perfect day from start to finish. The park is stunningly beautiful and such a stark contrast to Tokyo that after a day there, you really feel like you've just returned from a trip somewhere, or in this case, everywhere.

We had a few beers outside at a very realistic looking Mexican restaurant while listening to an authentic Mariachi band.

Megumi checks the map to find we are on the "Central American Peninsula"

Then, we stopped by Cape Cod for a quick dose of normal.

The only good idea after beers and Mexican food is to find the nearest free-fall ride, so we got in line for the tower of terror. It was the longest line of the day, but after some initial pouting at the posted wait time, we got into a great conversation and in the hour, managed to plan each other's careers, work out our next vacation, a few short film ideas, and conclusively agreed that boys, are in fact, stupid.

Pouting at the back of the line

The Tower of Terror is even Terrorier in Japanese.

A few months before I moved to Japan I started googling my new surroundings, namely Chiba, to see what I was in for. Chiba is home to both Tokyo Disney Land and Disney Sea and when I started to read about them, I was surprised to see a fragment of my past had made the trip before me.

Hello, fragment of my past.

When I was born, my parents were both working at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. My Dad drove the 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarine, and my Mom worked at a candy store on Main Street. When Mom and Dad got married, they thought wedding rings were too mainstream, so they both had matching silver bands about a half-inch thick welded onto their wrists. Disney was very anti-hippie in the late 70s, and strictly enforced the dress code which stated that only a watch and wedding ring were acceptable jewelry. When they told my Dad to take off the bracelet and weren't interested in his creative interpretation of wedding band, he scotch taped a watch face to the band in order to comply. The powers that be at Disney were not amused and fired him, forcing his hand to start his own company and do quite a bit better than minimum wage fictional submarine captain. So thank you Disney for being such squares, if not for you, my entire family might still be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the back of a Volkswagon van somewhere in Central Florida.

Back to my point, my Father's submarine ride was dismantled in Orlando a few years back, and Tokyo Disney Sea decided to buy one of the old subs to float for decoration in Jules Verne land, or as it's called here, Mysterious Island. Now, I doubt my Dad has any serious sentimentality for his old job at Disney, but I find it serendipitous that this strange submarine has been my neighbor twice now, on different ends of the globe. And while my Dad may not have dreams of sailing again as Captain Nemo, he has been sinking sailboats ever since...just saying.
These are for you, Papa John:

Sunset on the "European Coast"

Aladdin's Arabia has a decent curry restaurant, go figure.

Next, Mermaid Lagoon.

Meg and I are both huge Little Mermaid fans, and have been known to belt out a duet of "part of that world" anytime we go to karaoke together. As it turns out, we both have had a lifetime thing for Prince Eric too, and it almost came to blows when we saw his statue in Ariel's cave, but we sorted it out and took turns kissing him.

We were pretty stoked after spending an hour in Mer-land, as best evidenced by the following video. Forgive me Megumi, it's too good not to share.