DISNEY!!!

Yes, all-caps and three exclamation points. It IS that exciting. If you're not a fan of Disney, feel free to skip this one, as it covers my sisters and I visiting Tokyo Disney!

In my family, Disney is kind of a big thing and my two visiting sisters were very excited about the chance to visit the Tokyo Disney parks. This was also my last chance to visit the parks while living in Japan. I went with them to visit Tokyo Disney Sea, a really amazing park I visited once with my mother and once with Lee for quite a few enjoyable days. Same park, still love it, but didn't quite love the crowds or the temperature this time. It was cold! We started the day with a non-working alarm. This didn't delay us too much because the anticipation of the parks and jet lag had my sisters up and moving since about 5 AM anyway. This being Disney, there's always a reason for extra special thematic decorations, and the beginning of 2012 is no exception. There were quite a few displays to celebrate the New Year and the coming Year of the Dragon. Mushu, the "dragon" from Mulan, was the character of the hour, decorating all kinds of souvenirs and displays including the monorail tickets and a stand to get your picture taken that had long, long lines the whole day (hence the night-time picture):

Disney Sea was still celebrating its tenth year, as it was when I visited with my mother in July, and there were quite a few reminders of this fact:

I'd like to think we were, in fact, magical.

Each of the areas had their own thematically decorated wizard hat to celebrate. I took pictures of every one I saw.

Obligatory carousel shot

We spent the day seeing the the park, eating strawberry popcorn (the only one without a huge line that wasn't curry or black pepper flavored) and Duffy taiyaki (seen in the last post). Aside from waiting far too long for a few rides, we had a very enjoyable time. We had pancakes for dinner, the hallmark of any successful day:

The next day I bowed out, now that my sisters knew where to go and what to do, and they visited Tokyo Disney Land on their own. Luckily, they showed up back at the apartment on time as expected, no late-night calls trying to figure out where they went wrong or anything. They got to see the Haunted Mansion in a Nightmare Before Christmas revamp:

They also got some pretty striking pictures of the Electrical Parade:

There are a whole bunch more pictures that you can see over at Flickr, if you want. Next up, what Lee and I did while my sisters were at Disney for the second day.