Disneyland!

Hello everyone! I woke up this morning and my first thought was (besides commenting to myself about the gloominess of the day outside) "[GASP] I only have 7 days left!!!" This is true: I am leaving Japan in only seven days. I'm really sad. Last night after church Melanie, Jenna and I went to Starbucks instead of coming back to Tsukishima... It struck me after church was over, and before we left, that this was our last normal Sunday together. Next Sunday is all booked, from just after dawn 'till long past dusk. I'm really going to miss our three-some-ness! I'm going to miss the Lowther family. I'm going to miss the Japanese, and Korean friends I've made here! I'm really going to miss the trains, my ...braveness... to go places by myself without doubting whether I'll be mugged or worse. I'll miss the freedom I have here to hop onto a train and visit friends up to an hour away! ...Being able to walk to the grocery store! (My home is at least 15 minutes away from the closest convenience store, and 25 minutes from the nearest WalMart.) 


 Anyway, that's not what I wanted to write about... I wanted to write about my trip to Disney Land on Saturday... It turned out that Micah and Seth couldn't come, so it was just Melanie, Jenna, Satoshi, Yukiho, and me. We had a great time! We all met at the station gates at 9:00 in the morning. It ended up that I was the only one without a ticket, but everyone else was kind enough to stand in line with me while I bought mine... Actually Roger and Abi paid for my ticket as a gift! I was really surprised. After we got into the park, we stopped to look at the map. First we rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. That was really fun! I think I saw the Captain Jack that I had my picture taken with... :) Then we made our way around the edge of the park until we came to the Western Railway ride. We took a ride along the "Mississipi River Western Railroad". We saw Indians, caribou (which was really funny, because I'm from Mississippi and I know we don't have any caribou down there!), and the Mark Twain ferry boat. Then we stood in line for a record two and a half hours to ride a roller coaster. It was worth it, I believe. That was the longest roller coaster ride I've ever been on, and we got to find out a lot about each other while we were waiting in line... We kept asking questions, and made our own 'get to know your friends' game. :) That was lots of fun! After that we climbed the Swiss Family Robinson's tree house, since that was one of the main things Jenna and I remember from when we went to Disney as small, little, tiny children. :) After that and watching the very end of the Christmas parade where Santa Clause spoke with a funny accent, we walked over to the Queen of Heart's royal banquet hall for lunch. I had a hamburger patty shaped like a heart, a few vegetables, and half a coke. It was so cute! The waiters and waitresses all wore aprons with hearts in the middle. We have some cute pictures from there, but I haven't uploaded them yet. Directly following lunch, we made our way to the teacups! (Don't ask me why that was the one we decided to ride just after eating!) The tree house, the teacups and the Dumbo ride are the only ones Jenna and I remember from our previous Disney trip, so we had to re-do all three of those. All five of us couldn't ride in one teacup, so Jenna and I got dizzy together, and Melanie, Yukiho and Satoshi got dizzy in another cup. To tell the truth, I couldn't tell when the ride actually stopped either time we rode! I say either time, because we did ride it twice! We rode it once after lunch and then, quite by accident, that's the one we decided to re-ride right after dinner! After the first time around, (pardon the un-intended pun) we rode Dumbo!!! I loved it! It brought back so many memories. I think I must've ridden that ride four times when I went to Disneyland when I was three years old. After that I don't remember what we did.... I know we had dinner at some point, so I'll skip ahead to there... We all ordered pizza for supper. It was pretty good pizza, but by the time we had decided where to eat, and gotten our food, there were no empty tables inside... So we tried eating outside at those tables. The wind just happened to be horrible at that time, and it was...7:30....which means it was dark and cold, on top of being windy. As we were leaving the restaurant, I noticed one of those penny mashing machines... The kind where you put in your penny and your quarter, and then press a design onto the penny... As I was trying to find a 100 yen piece to insert, I realized that they don't use pennies here. :) So, instead of a dark penny where you can see Abraham Lincoln's head squished sideways on the back, I got a shiny new piece of copper cut to the right size with Eve from WALL-E on it! I can add it to my squashed penny collection at home! Last time I went to Disney, I believe I had one with... Minnie Mouse on it. After dinner we walked over to the Winnie the Pooh ride. It was a giant book that you walk into and through!!! It was amazing! It had giant 50 foot pages, like from the book. Then when you got to the ride itself, it was a huge honey pot that just happened to sit exactly five people! I loved it!!! Then it took you through the story of Winnie the Pooh's Honey Hunt. We even got to hear the Tigger song sung in Japanese! "The wonderful thing about Tiggers is Tiggers are wonderful things. Their tops are made out of rubber, their bottoms are made out of springs. They're bouncy, bouncy, trouncy, troucny, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. The most wonderful thing about Tiggers is I'm the only one! I-I-I-I'm the only one! T. I. double G. ER - TIGGER!" That in itself was funny. Then we went to the Pooh Bear gift shop. I bought the most adorable hooded sweatshirt there. It has Pooh's face on the front, and lots of embroidered flowers and a honey bee on Pooh's nose! It's soooooo cute. I'll have to take a picture of it and post it later.. 
  
We finally left the park at 10:00 when they pushed everyone out and said they were closing... :) The trains were absolutely packed!!! The Fukudas had to go home, because it was really late... But Jenna, Melanie and I came back here and had ice cream together before we crashed, realized how much we ached, and how tired we were! By the time we finally got to bed we were too tired to lay out futons for everybody... We all just took pillows, lined them up off the edge of my twin sized futon, and slept sideways along it! It was so much fun! I certainly slept better than I thought I would have. We woke up late, and just sat around talking and realizing how much we were going to miss me not being here. :( But we ended up having a great day, and I'm looking forward to going to Chiba on Saturday morning for an early lunch at the best ramen place in the country! Then we're coming back here for my surprise going away party. (Don't tell anyone I know about it...) 


This post is really long, and I know I'll have more to tell when I get the pictures anyway, so I'll go for now.


Lessons from a future housewife:


#3 - Recipe for deliciously baked eggplant. When cooking eggplant on a baking sheet in the oven, it is always wise to put oil of some kind under it. I like using olive oil, because it gives whatever you're cooking more taste. The easiest way to make sure the vegetables are completely coated, and not going to burn, is to pour oil onto the pan, rub the eggplant in it, and then turn all the eggplant over. This coats both sides, and then you can salt the top. Always cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 350 until it's soft. Pouring the olive oil onto the pan first, saves extra trouble. Since you want them evenly coated, it's much easier to just rub them in the oil and flip them over, than to try pouring it evenly over them. Pouring oil over them doesn't get the oil underneath the eggplant, so they still stick to the pan... See?  


All my love,
Hannah