Universal Studios Japan!

First I had to go to pick up my passport, I remembered the way and so went to pick up my passport, which took about 90 seconds, and also posted some postcards to England, then I agreed to meet Mina in the Osaka train station and we planned to go to Universal Studios Japan in Osaka for the day. 

We got the train for 20 minutes to the right stop and picked up the tickets at the empty kiosk at the station, saving a huge line when we got to the actual ticket office in the park, and the price was the same!

 We went in at around 1.30 which seems to be a sweet spot between the morning people and the people who come in on a cheaper ticket (slightly cheaper) at 3pm, so we had an hour and a half of very short queues, it also helps that it was the day BEFORE the summer holidays started in japan! 

We went on spiderman the ride, a 3d car ride which was very immersive, back to the future which is very well done, a rollercoaster there with some random story behind it, which was cool and a space ride which apparantly used to be E.T. but now became a crazy teacup like ride spinning through a rollercoaster in the dark, which was fun too. We also saw an animation show which used a cleverly disguised window to project animated characters on who then 'interacted' with the real live characters behind the glass, it was very well done, and a seseme street movie which wasn't so well done, or possibly lost alot in the translation (and dubbing). 

In japan most things seem to be dubbed into Japanese, unlike in China where it is almost all done using subtitles, the voices in japan however really don't match their origonal voice, most obvious was on back to the future where the professor was voiced by a very young man, not a good fit!

We left universal studios in the evening and saw it in the dark and went for some dinner in a Japanese burger chain, Moss burger, very very tasty! While eating Mina got a call from her friend Hiat, wanting to meet up. We were both tired from a long day but agreed to go and so he met us at a convenient metro station and drove us to a place near his house, a very cool tiny little japanese bar! We had a few beers and some tasty japanese snack food, kebabs and other things on sticks which was great. Hiat also speaks good English, really good, and hes a really interesting guy, hes lived in England, Denmark and around the world and so it was cool to hang out with him as well. He even offered to meet us the next day and drive us to a scenic spot outside the city as without a car in Japan it can be hard, or at last very time consuming, to get out to the sticks by bus and train. Excellent!

We got the last train back around midnight and agreed to meet up the next day, cool!