Greenland Themepark

Yesterday the foreign students in International House (and a few others) all went to Greenland Themepark in Kumamoto Prefecture. We had to get up pretty early to meet at 8:30 on campus, where we were given maps and badges with 福岡大学  (Fukuoka University) written on them - I'm not sure why we needed a badge? In case we got lost and someone had to take us home maybe =p

On the coach trip, around 2 hours long, we were entertained by the Japanese students helped giving self-introductions, and then going around the bus with the microphone so that all of the foreign students could do the same. I may have said before, but the self introduction seems to be a really Japanese thing. Every time anything happens you have to give your short introduction - your name, age, degree specialty, where you are from, what your hobbies and likes are.

Ash being harassed by the paparazzi while trying to do his self-introduction

You begin with はじめまして　(hajimemashite - what you say the first time you meet someone, pretty much this is the first time we've met) and end with よろしくおねがいします or どうぞよろしくおねがいします(yoroshiku onegaishimasu or douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu which is a polite way of ending a self introduction. It's hard to translate to English, but it pretty much means please be kind to me, accept me into the group etc.) It's not really something we would do in England or the west in general I don't think, maybe a name introduction, but nothing more than that. In Japan I have had to do it so many times! Anyway, my attempt was a little childish 'I am Ruth, I am English, I study Japanese, I like music, nice to meet you =<" but at least I spoke Japanese alright =p after each introduction there was a polite round of applause.

When we arrived we were given wrist bands and some group photos were taken (another Japanese thing, always with the group photos >.<) and then told we had to be back at the entrance to leave at 2:45!! I think a lot of people, including me, were disappointed that we had such little time. But considering the price we paid for it, I can't complain, the whole thing was only 500yen, including the bus, entrance fee and we were also given some meal tickets that amounted to 1400yen! The normal entrace fee is I think 3000 or 4000yen, so it was a massive bargain.



Even though we didn't have all that long, I still had a great day. Greenland is a really cool place, and amazingly empty. When you go to a themepark in England it's always jammed full of people, you have to queue for maybe an hour for a ride, but in Greenland the longest queue was 5 minutes and that was for their biggest ride.
There were some cool rides. The first one we went on was actualyl really scary, lots of sideways turns and loops and spins. I just freaked out the whole time, but it was fun. The second one was my favourite. You sat in the seat and rolled forward into a sort of lift shaft. Then the whole thing tipped totally backwards so you were facing up the shaft and rose lying on your back in the seat. AT the top you tipped over a vertical drop and flew down a circular shaft, spinning round and round as you went. Then at the end you stopped, the floor moved down a level and you shot backwards down the shaft again, spinning again. I was SO afraid going up at first, but I love vertical drop rides, so much fun.

scary spinny ride! the bit on the left is the weird vertical lift shaft you go up

HUGE ferris wheel that I was too afraid to ride

 I also went on one shaped like a dinosaur that was great fun, and one with little killer whale seats. There were also some really cool seats that floated along wires to move around the park on.

I bought a cute kumamoto kuma (bear) with Hello Kitty phone charm from the store, and cuddled a big cuddly Totoro =3 and with my free meal tickets I bought ice cream, a green tea ice cream crepe and some tofu udon soup, and had some ice melon soda for a drink. Yummy.

In Japan they put a whole cake inside a crepe!

And then in the evening we went to the Izakaya for drinkies and lots of food. More nice times =] and tonight we watched Drag Me To Hell and ate tasty food in Joyfull. Time to sleep now though. I have a day off tomorrow because it's school sport's day! Hurray 3 day weekend.