New friends and free tickets

So this weekend was so much fun!

On Thrusday I began hanging out with this girl from my speaking class, Margo, and her friends. They're all a lot of fun, and really nice. They told me on Friday they were going to go to Osaka and Karaoke it up. I was like, heck yeah!

I met up with them on Friday and we left around 6 for Osaka. We got off at an abnormal stop, they said they were going to pick up a friend at a Hostel first. Apparentally Jarred met Tony in Tokyo, and since then they've been hanging out with him as he travels Japan, in Kyoto, Hiroshima, and now Osaka. I took "the more the merrier" mentality. Tony was really cool and a lot of fun. He mentioned at the beginning of the night about his friend who's Elphaba right now in the Universal performance of Wicked which of course I was a bit of a fangirl about.

We headed to downtown Osaka:


The downtown area of Osaka is so cool at night. It's all light up and right on a river, it's a lot of fun and enjoyable to just walk through and look at all the lights. We went to this 280 yen place, where everything was 280 yen, the food, and more importantly, the booze (well more importantly to them, I didn't drink.)

It was a chicken place, where you could prettymuch get any part of the chicken from normal things, to ground up chicken patties (which is what I got a lot of, they were yummy) to chicken hearts and cartlege on sticks.


I'm really glad I ran into these people and made friends with them at school, they're all very nice. From the left side of the picture around the table it's: Joanna, Margo, Me, Tony, Jerrad, and Caroline (she was just someone Tony met at the hostel from Hong Kong, nice, but I never saw her after this.)

So at the end of the night Tony mentioned again his friend at Universal, and he offered everyone free tickets that his friend had offered him. I asked if he was sure it was okay, since we'd just met and I didn't want to take someone else's ticket. But, everyone was busy with a gay pride day in Osaka, so I ended up with one of the free tickets.

In the morning Tony e-mailed my phone from the hostel and I rushed out the door. Unfortunately, due to my bus being late due to traffic and a mix up of meeting location I missed the chance to meet Elphaba. But, I still had a free ticket!

Jerrad also e-mailed me and said he was comming, initally he said he wasn't going to and was going to go to the event. But then he said he had a revelation of "when would be the next time I'll get free tickets to Universal" and decided to go. He said he wasn't feeling very gay and proud anyways :P

So we headed to Universal! There's a special train off the loop line in Osaka that runs there. It's astounding how similar Japan's universal is to ours, minus a few differences, for example, citywalk:

And of course, it wouldn't be Universal without a giant steaming globe:

The park was all set up for Halloween, but of course this is Japan, so everything was cute over scary.

After getting into the park we decided to get fast passes. There was a fast pass book that would get us on all the big long wait rides for 30.00US. Since none of us paid for tickets we decided it was worth it. Because of that we got to ride every single ride in the park.

One of our favorite areas was the Jurassic Park area. We were three of the five total westeners I saw in the Park that day. Something about being strange just by existing prompts you to be even stranger. So we thought it'd be fun to do a series of pictures where we all pretended to be dinosaurs. I make a cute velascoraptor don't I?

We also went on the Jurassic Park ride, and got super wet. All the Japanese people had been laughing at (well I like to think with) us all day and taking pictures. We posed by this sign, and then this woman walked up and asked if we could take a picture with her kid, it was very amusing, we were like um... why do these people want random photos of us?


Then at the end of the day something Wicked this way came.

Tony's friend was all in all very very good. She'd just gotten over being really sick, so I think her vocal stamina was weak, but she was very impressive. She said the Japanese aren't very emoative so she asked Tony if we could cheer a bit to let her know we were there. We cheered after every song and at the end we gave her a standing ovation (mind you the only three people who stood up). She saw us, since we were almost front row, and laughed. Since then I sent her a message on Facebook thanking her for the tickets and telling her how good she was. We've talked a little, and she said if I ever need discount USJ tickets to let her know, which is quite exciting.

After that we ate dinner, everyone else went out to the clubs but I went home, I was quite exhausted from two full days of fun.

On Sunday I finished my Halloween costume, and not to brag, but it's pretty cool. I'm very excited and nervous to debut it on Friday. Other than that I did nothing, I was pretty tired still from Friday and Saturday, so I just wanted to rest.

Today has also been good, but not much to be said. It's been a rainy cold day, I'm beginning to learn why people really have slippers and what a drafty house means.

I need to get a pumpkin soon to carve...