The nameless passerby

Known for its record-breaking roller coasters, Fuji-Q Highland is a theme park located near Kawaguchiko, with great views of Mount Fuji. As a big fan of roller coasters, this theme park has always been on my bucket list of attractions in Japan, and I finally got to visit it for the first time in December 2022. Due to a variety of reasons, I ended up going back to the park just 3 days after my first visit that month, and again during a separate trip to Tokyo in May 2023. Getting There and Admission Getting to Fuji-Q is a fairly straightforward process. The two most viable options are to take the Fuji Excursion Limited Express train from Shinjuku, or take the Expressway Bus from Tokyo Station. Both options take approximately 2 hours. While the bus is the cheaper option at about c2000 for a one-way trip, the Fuji Excursion is worthwhile for holders of the Tokyo Wide Pass. The park is technically free to enter for those not intending to take any of the rides (or prefer to pay per ride), wh

Having visited Tokyo Disneysea twice in the past, I decided on my most recent trip in May 2023 to check out the more classic of the two parks at the Tokyo Disney Resort. Even on a Wednesday, the park was quite crowded, though considerably more manageable than my prior experiences at Disneysea when I visited in December 2016 and December 2022.  I arrived just after 8am when the park was due to open at 9am, and the lines at the park gates were already massive. Thankfully they opened the gates at 8.30am and I cleared the line to enter within 10 minutes. My Top 5 Rides Splash Mountain Since I was planning to get Premier Access for the Beauty and the Beast ride, I headed straight for Splash Mountain as it was the second-most popular ride in the park. I entered the queue at about 8.45am but the ride only started operating at 9am sharp, as with most attractions here and at Disneysea. Interestingly enough, it seems that some attractions do start early - I spotted riders (possibly Disney Hotel

A pretty spontaneous decision to travel to the Kansai area of Japan obviously meant another visit to Universal Studios. As with my last visit, I visited around the middle of the week (Thursday this time), to avoid the crowds. Admission fees were slightly higher than before due to the recent tax increase, but still manageable given it wasn't the scheduled "peak" period. I paid ¥7,600 for the basic studio pass. The express passes were much more expensive than my last visit - I forked out ¥6,300 for the 3-ride express pass, which included Space Fantasy, The Flying Dinosaur and one of either Jaws, Backdraft or Jurassic Park. (In comparison, I paid ¥6,800 for the 4-ride express pass in May 2018). I got to the park a bit earlier than last year, and it did seem to make a bit of a difference because I only waited about 15 minutes for my first ride versus almost 30 minutes last year. For the rest of the day, I managed to complete a good number of rides and even shows that I s

My first visit to Universal Studios Japan was way back in March 2007. It was a short visit, because my family and I were on a packaged tour, meaning that we did not spend the entire day at the park given the other parts of the itinerary. Coupled with the notoriously long lines at all the rides, and the fact that it was probably some kind of school holiday then, I only managed to cover a measly 4 rides that day. USJ in 2007 was very different from the park as it is 11 years later, without most of the attractions that are now drawing most of the crowds. The movie Despicable Me did not even exist yet, and the Wizarding World was probably in the infant stages of planning. With so much more to see and do now, I knew that I had to come back some day. Before going into detailed comments about all the rides and attractions, here are some general tips: Regular Admission Tickets As all other blogs and articles would suggest, it is definitely a good idea to purchase your entrance tickets i

Another major highlight from my Japan trip this May was our visit to Nagashima Spa Land in Nagoya. My friends and I were all big fans of theme parks and roller coasters, and I was particularly excited about this because I had read about some of the rides here. While it isn't as popular as Fuji-Q Highland, which boasts some of the craziest rides outside the US, this park didn't disappoint either. In fact, while we did not include Fuji Q in our original itinerary, we eventually decided to check it out since we had rented a car for our travels around the Fuji/Hakone area. To our utter dismay, the day we chose to visit happened to be smack in the middle of the Golden Week holidays, and the crowds were just too insane to ignore. What's helpful for Fuji Q is the presence of waiting time boards outside the park, giving potential visitors a rough sense of the expected waits for the popular roller coasters. On the day we were there, the queue times for all the major roller coast