This year, our lovely Board of Education invited us to an outing at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. We are so blessed to have such a wonderful BOE. They always take such good care of us and on top of that, organize the best outings ever. Thank you Naka-san!
And onto the attractions....First up was the E.T. Adventure ride. We thought we'd start off the day with a mild journey back into our childhood, where a wrinkly brown alien with the skin of a raisin captured our childish hearts. The line-up was incredibly long and crazy, but we thought we'd entertain ourselves while waiting in line. Yuka and Noriko, in eager anticipation of what was to come later, performed their own re-enactment of the famed finger touching...
By this point, we had already ridden on two rides, E.T. and the overly-hyped Jurassic Park water rollercoaster ride, but even as hot and exhausted as we were, we stopped to pose for a picture after lunch at the Jurassic Park restaurant.
I love theme parks. It's incredible how they manage to re-create just about everything. Walking along the "streets of America", I was suddenly transported back into San Francisco. Strange, it seemed that I had left S.F. a few days before, only to return to it in Japan. The thing that killed me was that there was a replica of the Ghirardelli chocolate factory, but just as I didn't have a chance to visit it while I was in S.F., I couldn't visit this fake one in Japan either...
One, two, three...GENKI!!!
While waiting in the absurdly long line up at the Spiderman ride (so long in which I wanted to kill myself), Pat, Rach, and I decided to entertain ourselves with posing for a pic of us being EXTREMELY GENKI. Whaddya think? I think we did a pretty good job :)
We couldn't resist hamming it up in the store either...
Oh USJ. How much fun it was. After a long day of waiting in the heat, we had ridden on three rides. Spiderman was hands down, the best attraction of the day. It was amazing! Disappointingly though, was the fact that we didn't have enough time to go on the Back to the Future ride; however, we all agree that we will visit USJ again for more shenanigans and such.
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We are lucky to have a great group dynamic this year. The newbies are fantastic and our vibe is relaxed and fun. Everyone is almost always up for anything and I'm loving it. The weekends have been busy with group gatherings, and although I don't have any pics of us in Osaka for our jaunt to Osaka castle and the dinner and dancing afterwards (oh the dancing! the Sambuca! the infamous CUP!), I do have a photo memory of our adventure to the beautiful waterfalls at Akameguchi...
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