Day 4: Osaka Universal Studios
I'll have to say...Day 4 was an unexpected day. Parts of it were the worst of the trip - parts of it were my best memories of the trip. This was the day where i wanted the tour to end, and then later enjoyed myself quite a bit that i wanted the tour to last longer.
By the way...there's so many gossips through the tour - abt the tour guide, abt the 3 ABCs (american born chinese) that were on the trip...i mite mention them if i can be bothered explaining.
So we got up to take the densha (electric train) to universal studios. THe tour guide kindly wanted to explain to me how the densha works, but it seemed that he was confused himself! I thought we shud be travelling in the other direction, but he was not able to explain to me why i was not correct. Well we ended up in the correct place, probably cos there's a special train to universal studios but still! i would have taken the train in the opposite direction!! oh well - nxt time i'm in jap i'll definitely be complelety lost...
So we got there. Got told to meet back up at 6pm outside starbucks to go together for xmas eve dinner. We walked ard with this other family visiting the shows. Cos the mum from the other family had some sort of lymphatic blockage on her leg, apparently it swells up if she stands for too long and she can't walk far. So we avoided all the major rides and took only the onces that had 5 min waiting time. We went on the jurassic park ride (which was the big splash one), the jaws ride (pretty boring boat ride with good acting skills from the girl-tour-guide-boat-driver), and then went to watch waterworld show at 1230. The show was pretty nice - good acting, and nice special effects! like they splashed ard in the water with their water-bikes and boats. They even manageed to throw this plane across the wall and make it land right on the water!! with flames buring and stuff. Its based on the movie waterworld if any of you know. Oh yea we also went to the backdraft thing which was a recreation of what a fire in a factory can be like - with lots of blazing fire everywhere. The exciting parts were when this huge eye-flashing fire boomed right infront of our faces and the staircase on top of us dropped down till right above our heads and the floor below us suddenly dropped. Many girls screamed.
Oh yea the waterworld show was funny cos they had seats warning that you'll be wet if you sit there. Which was fair cos those waterbikes and boats were making some substantial splash ard the theatre that it definitely got to the front seat pple. But i think most of the pple were wet because thhe 3 introductory guys in the beginning blatantly SPLASHED water on them!!! It was so stupid - the carried buckets of water and just splashed it all ard the audience...purposely getting them wet!!
So we went back out for lunch, had chashuu ramen (which was not very nice, i regret going to that restaurant) but was ok. Then the lady wif bad leg went home, so me and mum went back in again. The weather became really crappy at this point - cold and wet - so i had to put on my big jacket. Got back into the park and found the number of pple has increased since the morning. The 40min queue time on the rides and shows became 70min. THATS ONE FREAKING HOUR!! Eventually i decided to go onto the E.T. ride - which was disappointing cos it was the same as the one in LA that i went to 10yrs ago. Then we went to the terminator 2 show. The 3D effect thing with the mercury spider's pointy leg pointing directly into ur face. Pretty interesting but not worth that 1hr wait i had to endure. Really wanted to go on the spiderman ride but didn't hav time. Then me and mum just walked ard the place again aimlessly - wandered in to the snoopy area to take a look and buy some stuff, then jus walked ard exploring the place. Then we went out and did some window shoppin at the shops outside. nothing interseting there either. By then time was up. It sucked cos when we walked out there seemed to be this big big show abt to happen - cos everyone was gathered ard that big xmas tree in the park. But apparently it only lit up for pple to take photos...thats abt it...
Oh yea at lunchtime we also went to the rock and roll show - which was like the rocky horror show dance version kinda - with monsters doing dances...like this guy dressed as a vampire doing ricky martin and singing (dun like his voice)...and girls doing its raining men...=.= (hate that song...) anyhow it was interesting...would have been better if i could understand jap cos THE WHOLE FREAKING SHOW WAS IN JAP!! AND PPLE WERE LAUGHING!!
Actually the whole place speaks jap. Instructions were given in jap. The shows were done in jap. I couldn't understand a THING cos they spoke so fast. THen it hit me that maybe this was wat the pple who can't speak eng feel in nz. So isolated. Struggling to make connection with anyone. It was such a relief to me when i found someone who could speak english in yodobashi, the big electronic store. Cos i could explain what i want to her, instead of asking the other pple and getting told that they dun hav wat i'm lookin for but not really trusting that they did actually understand what i said and not jus sayin NO cos they dun understnad me!!
Anyhow btwn 6pm and dinner we had 1hr of free time so me and mum walked ard the underground shopping centre near osaka station. I found this nice jacket that i really wanted -except it was a bit, tiny bit too small for me and it was 27000 yen (which is 9000NT$ which is 450$nz)...crazy!!! and there was this other jacket which was 23000 yen...but made in china...and i liked it but it was onyl normal looking. mum didn' like the material. I really liked that 1st jacket tho...but shit...$450NZ....mum didn't think it was worth that much...so...i had to content myself with the hope that i can find something similar and cheaper in tw...
Walked ard somemore jus windowshopping. By 720 we went back to meet the tour guide to go to the restaurant. He told us to go find it ourselves cos he was still waiting for other pple. But then HE DIDNT REMEMBER THE NAME OF THE RESTAURANT...and told us this random name that he wans't sure of. So no problems, we found that restaurant, and looked in - no one we know! (cos he said 5 pple were already there). Then we saw that ABC lady arguing with the waitress to let her in cos she thought our tour leader booked that place. And i thot...well, since those 5 pple were not in the restaurantt, lets look elsewhere... and luckily, someone found them in this other restaurant. The waiter wouldn't let us in and didn't understand english until i remember how to say isshoni (together) and pointed to the other 5 pple - and then they welcomed us in. We had to call that ABC lady to tell her to come here...it was funny tho, how she argued with the waitress to let her in!! haha
Sake is nice wine. We probably had heaps that nice - well i had enuff to make me happy =) I started chatting to that ABC boy sitting on my table. I thot he was like 16 but he turned out to be 1 yr younger than me...!! =.=" He was always talking to his brother so i never talked to him b4. That was when i realised that hey...if i had been more friendly and opened my mouth earlier maybe i could have made a friend and enjoyed my trip more. But oh well. He seemed like an ok person - a boy scout apparently jus became an eagle scout, doing archi in this community college near LA. ABCs are generally pretty up-themselves eh? Anyhows...it was also funny watching mum drinking hardout with this other guy - gan-bei-ing with this other 32yr old dude all the time abt random stuff...haha...it was funny seeing them joke ard! Altho later mum told me that the jokes they were making were actually hidden knifes pointed at that ABC lady...(cos she annoyed everyone on the tour)...but i didnt' realise it....
Adult world is so complicated. I thought abt this many yrs ago. And now that i'm 20, i still think its complicated. How the hell am i gona handle it...???
But it was a fun nite. Alcohol definitely loosened my up and got me to chat more and laugh more. IT was nice. Shud try to be more like that normally...
I got told i'm too 保手...shud loosen up more...
Guess i'm too scared of the world to loosen up more? or i jus dun trust the pple ard me...
Anyways we got back to the hotel, and had 10min rest before this couple came to our room. It was initially to exchange emails and show me the photos they took (cos they had canon 300D which is awesome SLR camera) and took pretty nice photos. But it ended up being this major gossip and palm reading session!! I learnt alot from that nite. We chatted till like 3am...from like 10pm? It was amazing tho. It was my mum at her best too.
At first we just compared our photos we took, and spent ages discussing the pple on the tour and gossipping and complaining abt the tour guide (how he's crap, unorganised, try to cheat us our money all the time, missed out places that he was supposed to take us to, bullshits all the time etC) and that ABC lady (who thinks she is so awesome as a home-tuition teacher in USA, spends AGEs shopping and makes stupid demands)...so long that i was getting really impatient and was falling asleep.
Then mum started reading the guy's palm and saw some shockin stuff. She analysed his personality and the things that mite start happening (like his health deterioration and family issues)which were SPOT ON!!! he was so surprised. So was his wife. And me. We spent the rest of the time discussing his situation and what he and his wife can do. His whole story came out - and damn is he in a crisis...
This is something that you could never tell from the outside. On the surface, they seemed like this nice welloff family who has a family business, and their son went to college in US and graduated and married a wife who also graduated there. Wife gets along wif mother -in-law and son has a nice job. Everything happy-gooey. Stable family.
But when the whole truth comes out...shocking. Turned out that mother is a controlling person, treating her 34yr old son like a kid. Like telling him when he shud shower, telling his wife not to wash her hair so much (like not to wash it once a day), calls him up in the morning, control this, control that. And its obviously having a toll on his life cos he's not able to persue his dreams. his ambitions. And yet he is very respectful to his parents. He thinks that obedience is respect - so he listens to everything his parents say. But he's jus abt hav enuff cos his parents are basically ruling his financial and personal life - and causing rifts btw his wife and him as well (potentially). ITs such a complicated issue...all i could do is sit there and listen. How there can be such stories behind pple. What i was more impressed with (but not surprised wif cos i know alreadY) was my mum's ability to calm pple down, analyse the situation, come up with solutions, and motivation! Its amazing. I love her more jus watching her do just that. Helping pple out. Explaining her own experiences and empathy. Even tho a lot of what she was doing was reflection - i think it helped to convey understanding. And judging from their reaction, they really opened up to mum abt their troubles and felt better and more hopeful by the end of the session. I think my mum is suitable for lifeline. They think so too.
This was a night that made me realise how lucky i am. To have what i have, and to have mum beside me still. Supporting and caring for me, but not controlling me. To have mum willing to still travel wif me and live with me. cook for me. wash for me.
Even tho it is suffocating at times.
It's moments like this that refreshes my mind and my love for mum. I am priveleged to have her as my mum
And that concludes Day 4.
By the way...there's so many gossips through the tour - abt the tour guide, abt the 3 ABCs (american born chinese) that were on the trip...i mite mention them if i can be bothered explaining.
So we got up to take the densha (electric train) to universal studios. THe tour guide kindly wanted to explain to me how the densha works, but it seemed that he was confused himself! I thought we shud be travelling in the other direction, but he was not able to explain to me why i was not correct. Well we ended up in the correct place, probably cos there's a special train to universal studios but still! i would have taken the train in the opposite direction!! oh well - nxt time i'm in jap i'll definitely be complelety lost...
So we got there. Got told to meet back up at 6pm outside starbucks to go together for xmas eve dinner. We walked ard with this other family visiting the shows. Cos the mum from the other family had some sort of lymphatic blockage on her leg, apparently it swells up if she stands for too long and she can't walk far. So we avoided all the major rides and took only the onces that had 5 min waiting time. We went on the jurassic park ride (which was the big splash one), the jaws ride (pretty boring boat ride with good acting skills from the girl-tour-guide-boat-driver), and then went to watch waterworld show at 1230. The show was pretty nice - good acting, and nice special effects! like they splashed ard in the water with their water-bikes and boats. They even manageed to throw this plane across the wall and make it land right on the water!! with flames buring and stuff. Its based on the movie waterworld if any of you know. Oh yea we also went to the backdraft thing which was a recreation of what a fire in a factory can be like - with lots of blazing fire everywhere. The exciting parts were when this huge eye-flashing fire boomed right infront of our faces and the staircase on top of us dropped down till right above our heads and the floor below us suddenly dropped. Many girls screamed.
Oh yea the waterworld show was funny cos they had seats warning that you'll be wet if you sit there. Which was fair cos those waterbikes and boats were making some substantial splash ard the theatre that it definitely got to the front seat pple. But i think most of the pple were wet because thhe 3 introductory guys in the beginning blatantly SPLASHED water on them!!! It was so stupid - the carried buckets of water and just splashed it all ard the audience...purposely getting them wet!!
So we went back out for lunch, had chashuu ramen (which was not very nice, i regret going to that restaurant) but was ok. Then the lady wif bad leg went home, so me and mum went back in again. The weather became really crappy at this point - cold and wet - so i had to put on my big jacket. Got back into the park and found the number of pple has increased since the morning. The 40min queue time on the rides and shows became 70min. THATS ONE FREAKING HOUR!! Eventually i decided to go onto the E.T. ride - which was disappointing cos it was the same as the one in LA that i went to 10yrs ago. Then we went to the terminator 2 show. The 3D effect thing with the mercury spider's pointy leg pointing directly into ur face. Pretty interesting but not worth that 1hr wait i had to endure. Really wanted to go on the spiderman ride but didn't hav time. Then me and mum just walked ard the place again aimlessly - wandered in to the snoopy area to take a look and buy some stuff, then jus walked ard exploring the place. Then we went out and did some window shoppin at the shops outside. nothing interseting there either. By then time was up. It sucked cos when we walked out there seemed to be this big big show abt to happen - cos everyone was gathered ard that big xmas tree in the park. But apparently it only lit up for pple to take photos...thats abt it...
Oh yea at lunchtime we also went to the rock and roll show - which was like the rocky horror show dance version kinda - with monsters doing dances...like this guy dressed as a vampire doing ricky martin and singing (dun like his voice)...and girls doing its raining men...=.= (hate that song...) anyhow it was interesting...would have been better if i could understand jap cos THE WHOLE FREAKING SHOW WAS IN JAP!! AND PPLE WERE LAUGHING!!
Actually the whole place speaks jap. Instructions were given in jap. The shows were done in jap. I couldn't understand a THING cos they spoke so fast. THen it hit me that maybe this was wat the pple who can't speak eng feel in nz. So isolated. Struggling to make connection with anyone. It was such a relief to me when i found someone who could speak english in yodobashi, the big electronic store. Cos i could explain what i want to her, instead of asking the other pple and getting told that they dun hav wat i'm lookin for but not really trusting that they did actually understand what i said and not jus sayin NO cos they dun understnad me!!
Anyhow btwn 6pm and dinner we had 1hr of free time so me and mum walked ard the underground shopping centre near osaka station. I found this nice jacket that i really wanted -except it was a bit, tiny bit too small for me and it was 27000 yen (which is 9000NT$ which is 450$nz)...crazy!!! and there was this other jacket which was 23000 yen...but made in china...and i liked it but it was onyl normal looking. mum didn' like the material. I really liked that 1st jacket tho...but shit...$450NZ....mum didn't think it was worth that much...so...i had to content myself with the hope that i can find something similar and cheaper in tw...
Walked ard somemore jus windowshopping. By 720 we went back to meet the tour guide to go to the restaurant. He told us to go find it ourselves cos he was still waiting for other pple. But then HE DIDNT REMEMBER THE NAME OF THE RESTAURANT...and told us this random name that he wans't sure of. So no problems, we found that restaurant, and looked in - no one we know! (cos he said 5 pple were already there). Then we saw that ABC lady arguing with the waitress to let her in cos she thought our tour leader booked that place. And i thot...well, since those 5 pple were not in the restaurantt, lets look elsewhere... and luckily, someone found them in this other restaurant. The waiter wouldn't let us in and didn't understand english until i remember how to say isshoni (together) and pointed to the other 5 pple - and then they welcomed us in. We had to call that ABC lady to tell her to come here...it was funny tho, how she argued with the waitress to let her in!! haha
Sake is nice wine. We probably had heaps that nice - well i had enuff to make me happy =) I started chatting to that ABC boy sitting on my table. I thot he was like 16 but he turned out to be 1 yr younger than me...!! =.=" He was always talking to his brother so i never talked to him b4. That was when i realised that hey...if i had been more friendly and opened my mouth earlier maybe i could have made a friend and enjoyed my trip more. But oh well. He seemed like an ok person - a boy scout apparently jus became an eagle scout, doing archi in this community college near LA. ABCs are generally pretty up-themselves eh? Anyhows...it was also funny watching mum drinking hardout with this other guy - gan-bei-ing with this other 32yr old dude all the time abt random stuff...haha...it was funny seeing them joke ard! Altho later mum told me that the jokes they were making were actually hidden knifes pointed at that ABC lady...(cos she annoyed everyone on the tour)...but i didnt' realise it....
Adult world is so complicated. I thought abt this many yrs ago. And now that i'm 20, i still think its complicated. How the hell am i gona handle it...???
But it was a fun nite. Alcohol definitely loosened my up and got me to chat more and laugh more. IT was nice. Shud try to be more like that normally...
I got told i'm too 保手...shud loosen up more...
Guess i'm too scared of the world to loosen up more? or i jus dun trust the pple ard me...
Anyways we got back to the hotel, and had 10min rest before this couple came to our room. It was initially to exchange emails and show me the photos they took (cos they had canon 300D which is awesome SLR camera) and took pretty nice photos. But it ended up being this major gossip and palm reading session!! I learnt alot from that nite. We chatted till like 3am...from like 10pm? It was amazing tho. It was my mum at her best too.
At first we just compared our photos we took, and spent ages discussing the pple on the tour and gossipping and complaining abt the tour guide (how he's crap, unorganised, try to cheat us our money all the time, missed out places that he was supposed to take us to, bullshits all the time etC) and that ABC lady (who thinks she is so awesome as a home-tuition teacher in USA, spends AGEs shopping and makes stupid demands)...so long that i was getting really impatient and was falling asleep.
Then mum started reading the guy's palm and saw some shockin stuff. She analysed his personality and the things that mite start happening (like his health deterioration and family issues)which were SPOT ON!!! he was so surprised. So was his wife. And me. We spent the rest of the time discussing his situation and what he and his wife can do. His whole story came out - and damn is he in a crisis...
This is something that you could never tell from the outside. On the surface, they seemed like this nice welloff family who has a family business, and their son went to college in US and graduated and married a wife who also graduated there. Wife gets along wif mother -in-law and son has a nice job. Everything happy-gooey. Stable family.
But when the whole truth comes out...shocking. Turned out that mother is a controlling person, treating her 34yr old son like a kid. Like telling him when he shud shower, telling his wife not to wash her hair so much (like not to wash it once a day), calls him up in the morning, control this, control that. And its obviously having a toll on his life cos he's not able to persue his dreams. his ambitions. And yet he is very respectful to his parents. He thinks that obedience is respect - so he listens to everything his parents say. But he's jus abt hav enuff cos his parents are basically ruling his financial and personal life - and causing rifts btw his wife and him as well (potentially). ITs such a complicated issue...all i could do is sit there and listen. How there can be such stories behind pple. What i was more impressed with (but not surprised wif cos i know alreadY) was my mum's ability to calm pple down, analyse the situation, come up with solutions, and motivation! Its amazing. I love her more jus watching her do just that. Helping pple out. Explaining her own experiences and empathy. Even tho a lot of what she was doing was reflection - i think it helped to convey understanding. And judging from their reaction, they really opened up to mum abt their troubles and felt better and more hopeful by the end of the session. I think my mum is suitable for lifeline. They think so too.
This was a night that made me realise how lucky i am. To have what i have, and to have mum beside me still. Supporting and caring for me, but not controlling me. To have mum willing to still travel wif me and live with me. cook for me. wash for me.
Even tho it is suffocating at times.
It's moments like this that refreshes my mind and my love for mum. I am priveleged to have her as my mum
And that concludes Day 4.
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