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Wednesday 31 August 2011

Japanese Signs


As a little postscript I thought I'd put all the funny signs I found on the trip on one page.

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Don't lean on the lift door or you might find a quicker way to get to the basement.

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No casual idling about please.

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Taking ecstasy and riding rollercoasters do not mix.

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This is not an exit.

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You have beer? We don't want you.

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A whole multitude of don'ts and a single do.

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The logo doesn't really go with the warning message.

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The step down is not for diving onto.

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I want bitty!

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My favourite exit sign ever!

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These seats are for bitty, bellies, bad backs and broken boots!

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Don't muck about or cartoon cop will poke you.

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You can smoke but you're worse than human if you do.

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Not a "high-5 a policeman" advert.

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Look, we've coated this ride in petrol and it might not be a good idea to bring your naked flames on board, thankyou please!

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Missing, one mouth. Is it in my hat?

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In Osaka don't you dare drop anything on the ground or put anything on the wall.

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If you have to evacuate this ascending elevator don't go over the side.

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You put your left leg in (no you don't) you put your right hand in (no you don't)

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Robots shouldn't climb the railings, they should use their jet packs to get over instead.

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If you need to get on the escalator, don't go over the side.

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These are so much better than automated apologies we get in London.

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I hate Nagashima Spaland

tle="EPV0031 by wykah, on Flickr">EPV0031
This is not a sprinting track.

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By all means bring in your pets but don't blame us if the lions eat them.

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This is how to ride an escalator and hold up everyone behind you too!

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How likely are you to trap a single finger in the train door?

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This is not a cycle path so don't be a psycho path?

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We're all for you taking a nap, just not in front of a moving train please.

Hokkaido Greenland

We weren't actually sure of the name of the final park. When I left it was called Mitsui Greenland, exactly the same name as the one we'd visited earlier in the trip. The confusion came from Mitsui being the region in Japan where the first park was located and it wasn't Mitsui that we were going to today.

Following a short train ride full of students who got off halfway through the journey we made it to our station and from there a taxi took us to the park. It was conversing with the driver that I realised he didn't know where Mitsui Greenland was but did know Greenland, so we knew the name was partly right.

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We arrived at the park to find it looking like it was closed and were a little miffed. That was until we realised that the park was open but even emptier than the parks at the start of the trip.

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This was the entire contents of the car park when we arrived.

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Having figured out the paying system (you pay to get in then pay again for the wristband) we made our way around the park. Empty isn't it?

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The park has a massive big wheel overlooking the park.

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One of those weird rotating top spin things that I first saw at Knotts. Didn't bother riding it although the ride staff (mostly elderly) were keen to have us try.

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Hip Hop Cabbage Patch Kids!!

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The first coaster was a little kiddy ride. The worst part of it for me was that a bird had crapped on the handlebar that I inadvertently grabbed as the ride left the station.

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The second coaster, like the first an exclusive walk-on was Dragon King Ryuoh. A large and quite rough corkscrew coaster. One ride was enough.

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Nice park tram, which wasn't operational today.

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The biggest coaster in the park is called Go On, not Goon. Another exclusive walk on the ride op was happy to see us make our way over to his ride. It wasn't a bad coaster, better than most of the gradual sloping coasters on the trip but still lacking that memorable factor.

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Haunted walkthrough was pretty good.

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The final coaster in the park is a peculiar little beast. Part-coaster, part-log flume the ride is unique in having a rubber belt lift hill that is more akin to lifting logs not coaster trains. The smell of burning rubber as it engaged the lift was also a unique factor.

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Two pandas eating the lawn, one of which seems to have an upside down head.

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Another of those Blackpool flying machines.

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The ghost train ride was quite good!

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This was a fun attraction. A maze where you have to find 4 checkpoints, collect a stamp on a scorecard and return to the exit as quick as you could. I managed a time of 12 minutes. Jeppe emerged about 2 hours later having given up. Sorry Jeppe!

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Looking back from the bottom of the park back up towards the wheel, which by the way needs some air-con. It was very hot in there!

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In an attempt of showing just how empty this park was I agreed to go up the wheel and Jeppe would stand in the centre of the park, and we were certain no other people would be in shot, and we were correct!

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A view from the wheel that I only twigged when I got home that the island on the lake is in the shape of Japan.

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The pedal ride that goes around it has a lift hill but doesn't make it back under the station under gravity. If it had been oiled properly it might have done. So I guess this falls under one of those human powered debatable coasters, depending on your interpretation of a coaster of course.

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When jellybabies go bad.

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My favourite picture from today of the goon coaster.

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Back outside the park waiting for our taxi back. The writing on the entrance actually reads Hokkaido Greenland. So now we knew the name of the park.

The park is close enough to Sapporo to make it worth visiting. It has an OK selection of rides but if the crowds today were any indication of how busy it gets then it's not going to last too long.

We got there by train leaving from Sapporo on the Orange/Brown line departing at Iwamizawa A13 station. From there we took a taxi, again waiting outside the station. For the return leg we asked the guys in the ticket booth to call us a taxi.

and the trip comes to an end


After the park we headed back to the hotel, picked up our luggage, took the train to New Chitose airport, flew to Haneda (J-Class again), missed the last coach to Narita and spent a small fortune having to get a taxi instead. So we arrived at the hotel late and tired and went straight to bed.

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Some of the food on offer at the airport.

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and this is what we had. Very good it was too!

On the Korean Airlines flight back I got through the following movies.

Fast and Furious
Four actors try to resurrect their careers by going back to the franchise that made them famous in the first place. Vin Diesel (who's also repeating the plan by making another XXX and Riddick movie). I'm not sure this was any better than any of the other movies (I've not yet seen Tokyo Drift so can't judge that one). The best bit is the opening gas stealing sequence. If that bores you then change over. I was over the Korean dude and his coffee making.

Duplicity
Clive Owen and Julia Robert play spies and the film is directed by the dude who did the Bourne movies so I thought this would be OK. It wasn't. There were no action sequences like in Mr and Mrs Smith, which I thought this might have been close to. Instead it was all about supposedly witty conversation and "intelligent" dialogue which bored me. How I managed to get through all 2 and a half hours of this I don't know.

Echelon Conspiracy
I'd never heard of this film and I think it might have gone straight to DVD, or straight to Korean Airlines in-flight entertainment system perhaps. It's something to do with a defence computer that develops an intelligence and starts to kill of people involved with its design. As daft as it sounds and a film not saved by having Martin Sheen starring in it.

Tactical Unit Comrades in Arms
A weird Korean film about two groups of police officers who compete against each other to get the good areas to police. After bickering they have to work together when a group of robbers rob a bank and head off into the mountains. I couldn't get if it was a comedy or serious but it was still better than the Hollywood junk I'd seen previously.

My Girlfriend is an Agent
The final film of the flight was another Korean one and one that was definitely a comedy. It features a woman who leads a double life as a spy (sound familar) when not being doted upon by a geeky chap who happens to be leading a double life as a cop (sound familar). Anyway this was pretty good and easily the best film of the flight.

After 11 hours the flight touched down in London and after saying goodbye to Jeppe I made my home.

So how was it? Amazing, I had such a good time. I was bummed about the whole Spa thing but the positives totally outweighed that single negative. Japan is still an amazing country and having done my own trip planning at the end I'm a lot more confident in going out there outside of the group. There is so much I'd like to see of Japan that I think I'll be out there soon.

The best part of the trip for me was not a coaster, ironic given the purpose of the trip and the number of coasters I'd ridden. The cable drop thing at Woobang Towerland gave me the biggest adrenalin surge that I've had in a long long time. If I had to pick a coaster it would be Eejanaika at Fuji-Q, which was hilariously enjoyable just by being completely crazy and confusing.

Thanks to Kevin (RIP) and Justin for the trip organisation, some (but not all) of the club for being a great group and to Jeppe for joining me in the latter extension.

Next years trips will be to America/Canada and China.

Sapporo City Walk

Our final day in Sapporo was going to be quite a busy one with us checking out of the hotel, visiting the last park of the trip, flying back to Tokyo and then heading out to the other side of the city ready to fly home the next day. The original itinerary was less stressed but due to a last minute reworking after I'd realised we wouldn't have made our flight home (not a good place to be) I had to rework it. Some of the pressure was taken off by having done Matsuyama Zoo a few days earlier as this was also planned for today.

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This is the hotel that we were staying in. The Grand Hotel. Definitely a good choice of hotel and the place I'd recommend to friends. It's a 5 minutes walk from the centre of town and the main station and it has a Starbucks downstairs to keep Jeppe happy :D

Before heading out to the park I chose to have a short walk around a public park again close to the hotel.

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This is the Akarenga "Red Brick" building that used to be the Government Office before they relocated. Now, like the clock tower, it's a western style building that is a tourist attraction.

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The grounds are nice though.

EPV0023
The first time I've come across a turtle in the wild.

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This piece of art is inscribed with lots of peace messages from various dignitaries and world leaders.

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With the morning jaunt over it was time to head over to the train station and a trip to the final park.


Now where have I seen this before?

Sapporo Downtown again

Again we decided to spend the evening exploring Sapporo again but as we'd done most of the good places the night before we were retreading our steps again.

EPV0206
Dinner was spent at the food fair. This dessert was lush. It's kakigori or shaved ice with fruit sauce. A great healthy alternative to ice cream just totally impractical to make as the ice has to be at a stupid temperature and the shaving is done on some hand cranking machine.

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Back for another walk down Tanukikoji

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Not the Japanese equivalent of the Happy Eater food chain I suspect.

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This restaurant does not look out of place at all.

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The pachinko parlours were LOUD!! and as I never recreated the streak I got in Beppu I didn't really play them all that much.

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Liking this poster. It was advertising a small animation exhibition of animated shorts that I would have liked to have seen, but it was closed this time of night.

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Not something you'd see in London :)

EPV0228
and this would likely be covered up too!

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Cute kiddy bugs!

EPV0219
Lovely looking seafood.

EPV0243
Not sure if this was intentional for Halloween or just coincidence but this looks cool!

EPV0240
Oh dear! A little bit of Ireland, or is it London, in Sapporo.

EPV0246
We spent the rest of the night at Norbessa playing the games again.
I'd managed to miss this billboard with some cool, and some not so cool, manga artwork at the back of the games floor.

EPV0247
Heh Heh!! She's actually a character in one of the coin shooting games.

EPV0248
A selection of drinks in the local 24 hour supermarket. Over the course of the holiday I think I'd made my way through all of these...except the Coca Cola of course!

EPV0235
One of the more neon-lit crossings in Sapporo.

Rusutsu Resort

The main park on the island of Hokkaido is the Rusutsu Resort, primarily a ski resort but to attract a crowd in the Summer they'd built a fairly decent theme park with eight coasters. Getting to it isn't easy as there is no train station nearby and we had to go by bus, but more on that at the end.

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The Kamori shuttle was the bus that took us there. You catch it from a small office a couple of blocks south of the station, and a five-minute walk from our hotel. I discovered that the Kamori company own a number of parks in Japan including the Rusutsu Resort and Teine Olympia, which we'd visited the day before. The coach today wasn't even half full and if you have difficulty finding the pick up point chances are you'll spot the coach.

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Some shots taken en route. The fog looked a little off-putting. The final shot shows the Rusutsu Tower, part of the complex that also has the resort.

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A while later we arrived at the resort and the weather could have been better. The rain was torrential and having not envisaged anything but sun had travelled up in a t-shirt. So I bought a Rusutsu hoodie, which is now my only piece of park clothing that I own (I'm not a merchandise fan)

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There's a small indoor section in the park that contains a number of rides but the majority of us walked past them in favour of the main park. The Daniel Dixie band was a bit odd though in that it was playing an English soundtrack so I doubt the majority of visitors wouldn't understand it.

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Some Halloween theming but not too much.

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Errrrr......WTF!

Into the main park and we were dismayed to find most of the attractions had fallen victim to the weather and were closed. Two of the coasters were running however.

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First up was Go Go Sneaker which sounded like someone provoking a ninja but was rather disappointingly a mouse coaster with trainer themed cars.

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The second coaster was another mine train ride. We managed to break this one when the ride op pulled a bit too hard on the restraint and the whole came out in his hand. So we had to hop into the next car. The ride itself was not bad at all.

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With not much else to do coaster-wise we headed up to mountain to the top of the park. Perhaps expecting some unfit visitors to the park they'd installed a travelator to help with the ascent.

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The fog was rolling in.

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The park has one of the first-gen drop towers. This one didn't open today however.

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and due to the fog the wheel didn't open til it had receded.

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At the top of the park, along with the wheel and drop tower the park has a duck racing game. Not sure I approved of it to be honest and I didn't see anyone else playing on it either.

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The top of the park also has one of those crazy modern chair swings. It did open but we didn't ride it.

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The land train has 3 stops, one just inside the entrance, one close to the SLC and the last one at the top of the mountain. It did come in useful when we found ourselves doing more than one lap of the park.

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Looking back down the mountain at the shuttle loop and the mouse. At the bottom of the park we could hear the stand up coaster running so we headed back down towards that.

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The stand up coaster wasn't the worst I'd ridden but it wasn't the best either. Fortunately it wasn't overly rough and I came off it with my bits intact, which lets be honest is always the concern on these sort of rides.

We discovered that the same group of engineers that had opened the stand up were making their way around the park opening each coaster in turn. Good news! As they headed over to the corkscrew coaster we ventured into the rest of the park to see what we could find.

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This was the haunted walkthrough attraction which we weren't sure was even open as there was nobody running it. But we went in anyway and it was actually pretty decent and the only attraction where I did feel a little bit uncomfortable only because they had the sound of a crying child for most of it; nobody likes that.

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Really impressed with this simple little illusion where the floor doesn't appear to make sense until you see it reflected in that cylinder.

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The corkscrew was open and we headed over to that. Like the stand up it wasn't bad not was it a stand out ride. It just did things well, which I guess is the least you'd expect. This ride did feature the best platform music though with the young guy running the ride playing some great psy-trance, the first time I'd heard that on the whole trip.

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Er, this just looks wrong and the ride-op was a little confused by us taking pics of it.

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I'd seen the drumming game on the right before but this was the first time I'd seen the Japanese take on the rock band franchise with a Shamisen variation.

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The SLC opened next, and earlier in the day we'd feared the worst for this ride when we heard some engineers smashing it with a hammer but I guess they'd sorted out whatever the issue was. The ride was OK but no different from any other SLCs. We'd noticed from the Stand-up coaster onwards that other guests would only ride once we'd been on them. I'm sure it was just coincidence but we found the idea of being a guinea pig quite amusing.

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Next up was the large yellow coaster. Much like the majority of Meisho coasters there are no really steep hills which takes the majority of the enjoyment out of the ride. Something this size shouldn't rely on gentle gradients, but that's what they do.

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Best news of the day was that the Shuttle Loop opened next. This ride has the most awful uptime reliance and I know a lot of people that have come here and found it not open. So we were quite chuffed to see it have its test runs and even more excited when we got to ride it first (although I think that's because the others were waiting for us to go first again).

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The only coaster left to open then was the Ultra Twister, tucked away in the trees at the back of the park. This one is a little different to the others I'd done in that instead of featuring a return leg in backwards, this has a half-twist, half-loop dive element. It does mean that the ride also needs a turntable section so that the car can engage the lift hill facing the right way.

We got very lucky with this ride in that having ridden it, it closed immediately after for reasons I don't know. So it sucks that I didn't get any photos of it running but I can be upbeat that we got to ride it and complete the set.

Although the park was dead and everything was a walk-on we did find ourselves occupied for the 6 hours or so that we got to spend there. Not wanting to miss the coach back to Sapporo we made sure we were there in good time.

Rusutsu is a strange park. It could be really frustrating if its busy, but I don't know if it ever is. It's a long way to go for a gamble, which we're fortunate worked out in our favour.

The park is well served in the winter time with buses running from both Sapporo and New Chitose Airport. It's not so easy in the Summer. I eventually figured out that by contacting the park directly through their website they can reserve you seats on their coach and provide the details of where to get it, and the best news is that its free. To help with the pickup point the Google Street View is below (you'll need to face it south, for some reason it defaults to north).
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