It was a sunny day today, and to be honest, the one that would have been best to make any attempt on Mount Fuji.
But I went to the theme park. Fujikyu Theme Park to be exact.
And a good one at that. It was showing it’s age a bit, but I went along with a Canadian guy who is in my dorm, and we splashed out 4400Yen for a days pass. We then spent the afternoon hopping on and off rides, in a park that has two Guiness World Records coasters.
The Eejanaika rollercoaster is so good it’s got it’s own website (by the way the video on the website just doesn’t do it justice). It has the greatest number of inversions and we went on it twice. Fourteen inversions during its 90 second ride. The first time we were first of our batch to get out to the ride but were allocated seats so couldn’t choose – I reckon lives would be lost in a fight over this elsewhere in the world. The second time we were at the 
rear, and it was an even more exciting ride as you had the appearance of being at the front, then the back but you were always in the same place, it’s just that your seats rotate as well as the track!
We went on the Red Skyline or something like that, where you get hauled up 60m or something, then you pretty much freefall down. I’ve been on the one at the top of the tower in Vegas before in the dark, but this ride still gives you a really bizarre feeling – weirder than any coaster I reckon. We went on this twice back to back, then again before we left.
And off it was to the world’s tallest complete circuit rollercoaster, the Fujiyama, topping out at 79 metres.
And then onto more tame things. A cracking day and totally unexpected as I had only planned to chill out, and maybe take a bike around the lake for a couple of hours. 11 rides, and probably the most adrenalin pumped day so far!
Mount Fuji also decided to make our day by coming out in full view just after dinner time. The worst thing about that is I wish I had tried it, especially as the Canadian in my room had tried it the day before. We celebrated for him last night with a burger, a couple of beers, and watching The Da Vinci Code. We watched this with some French Canadians as well. No-one thought anything of the Japanese subtitle, especially as French was their main language. It wasn’t until two thirds of the way through the bloody film I said “I wish it had English subtitles for all the French parts” and all I heard was “oh we worked out to do that yesterday, but we never thought”. Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to read this to complete my Dan Brown novels!
Some more pics from the theme park :
I also had my first visit to a Japanese supermarket. Some interesting stuff there, including the octopus!
