Yomiuriland!!

Finally, a good weather day...time to go to Yomiuriland! It's an amusement park located on the western edge of Tokyo. Yesterday was also Children's Day, an official holiday in Japan celebrating children. It used to be Boy's Day; girls had a separate day that wasn't as big a deal. Now, you might think that this would be the worst possible day to go to a park. And you would probably be right. Was it crowded? Oh my yes:

The huge crowds waiting to buy tickets nearly made me decide to leave and come back another day, but it turned out that the wait to buy tickets was about the longest I had all day (45 minutes). It was mostly families with small children, and while the wait for the "family" attractions was ridiculous, the wait for the bigger rides was pretty manageable.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. To get to the park, you take a gondola ride up a hill from the train station., past the field where the minor-league team for the Yomiuri Giants plays.

Notice the date marker at this photo spot. I'm really smiling although I look kind of pained in the picture.

The first ride I went on was White Canyon, the park's big wooden roller coaster.

The amount of padding in the cars was absurd...you could barely see out. There were even padded dividers between the seats. I've been on much rougher rides so I'm not sure why they felt all this was necessary.

A walk-through attraction depicting creatures from Japanese monster movies has replaced the haunted house that was there in 2005.

The park's adorable and rather bizarre mascot is Land Dog. He was everywhere in the park. The writing in the last picture reads, "Land Dog's House."

Bandit is the best coaster in the park, a smooth non-looping steel coaster that packs some serious forces into its signature upward spiral.

The second picture was taken from the ferris wheel, which provided some great views of the city and the surrounding countryside. Click on the next picture to enlarge it, look just to the left of White Canyon, and you'll see the Tokyo Sky Tree. From here it's still taller than the skyscrapers of Shinjuku to its left, even though it's about half again further away than they are.

You can also see the huge crowds on the main walkway.

The park's looping coaster is Momonga, which means flying squirrel. (Toby, the mascot for Rainbow Pride a few posts back, is a mononga.) Land Dog doesn't look to happy in the second picture; he has tears running down (up?) his face.

This ride is interesting in that it has one stand-up train and one sit-down train; depending upon which side of the station you board from. The boarding track slides back and forth. Land Dog doesn't look impressed with the restraints!

Time to head home...but first a couple more pictures with my good friend Land Dog!

Land Dog shows the way back to the gondola ride. Notice that there is a small temple located right outside the park, next to Bandit and right under the gondola.

It was a fun day. Next...a second try at Tobu Zoo!