160512 USJ~! Harry Potter

so.. i set my alarm for 8am but i didn't know my aka phone wasn't updated so we woke up at 9+am instead and reached USJ at 1030am T_T well, it was still ok except we needed to chiong to our first station at 1050am for shingeki 4D movie. bought the express tickets online previously on the japanese USJ website. if you're keen to go, do follow the guide here to purchase!

here's the theatre for all the 4D shows.

honestly i didn't expect the whole movie to be so bloody and violent because there were kids watching, but i guess japanese has a different tolerance to violence? x.x oh, and we exited through the stage. weird.

anyway some exhibits on the way out. the 3D gear is pretty cool!

just near the theatre there was another area that housed some wax molds of rivai and other team members.

you can queue up to take pic with the cool rivai~ but no touching x.x

just outside it is a titan wall! some japanese even came in cosplay. whooo.

and you can also get eaten up by mr titan.

our next stop was biohazard dungeon, where you explore the 4-5level building to search for clues to solve the puzzle on our device. the ultimate objective is to unlock all the clues and go into this place to retrieve the 'cure' for the zombie madness. it was a whopping 2hr long exploration!

thankfully we were grouped with this other guy from spain if not i would have been totally lost. mr kong on one hand was busy solving his office crisis and had no mood whatsoever to enjoy the whole trip. he even thought of just getting out of usj and flying to korea to solve it. he made my whole usj trip which i was so looking for, a long drawn out pain because he wasn't enjoying and neither was i.

so anyway back to bioshock. we eventually didn't solve beyond the first level and went to this room where it was a GAME OVER for us. haha. only 1 team survived out of 10+. oh, and i was expecting lots of scares but it seems that the 'zombies' were few and far apart, so it wasn't so bad. i'm really bad at such detective games and i wouldn't want to play it again. but for anyone trying... the map you're holding is the key to a lot of things. it's crazy how it's being used.

so glad to be out!

there's some parade going on. not too keen on the characters.

at least there's minions.

we then took the kyary 4D ride. it was pretty fun! you wear the virtual gear thing that looks like an occulus and you travel through kyary's world on a roller coaster. as mr k says, it's just going round and round in the same room if you take the goggles off. our tripod was too big to put in the locker but thankfully we could put it a cabinet at the exit area.

on our way to harry potter i took a snapshot of our waiting times. not so bad!

and we're going into harry potter world!!!

the flying car!! the world!! platform 9 and 3/4!!!

we're really here!!! 

i got my eyes on the butterbeer! they sell the sherbet and gassy version so i just bought the sherbet. SO NICE. but so expensive... almost 2k yen for this. gg. if you get it with the disposable cup it's 700 i think though.

wheee!!!! need to go in every shop!!!

book of monsters~

this place sells the bertie bott every flavour beans

and we go into a dress shop~

what's going in a dress shop without putting on the school robes. hurhur

and trying out the quidditch stick.

there's a mini wand selection performance here and the chosen one gets to walk away with a free wand!! if only i had been more proactive and shouted 'me! me!'...

yay posing with the shops~

went for the forbidden journey 4D ride. very nice!!!

after the longest time carrying the tripod around and setting it up.. selfie is still the most convenient way to take a photo.

some restaurants along the way. 3 broomsticks!

a shop that's closed.

and now we exit harry potter land for a side trip to monster hunter~

there's a mini museum~ they are all so well-made!!!!

there's an inner area where you can also see 2 really big moving dragons

the dragon when it's just sitting still

and when it's breathing 'fire'!

we were fumbling around with our tripod for the longest time with the dragons. lol.

 so the employee couldn't take it and offered to help us take a shot that looked like this..... ok at least a little part of our face is still visible...

our last show was on evangelion, which is on the same level of brutality as shingeki...

a pity, we should have caught the rides instead of the shows. ended our trip with a splash from jurassic... we totally got wet (and cold)!!!

we left around 8pm and everything was already closing. wanted to find a place for a good dinner since we were starving like crazy. in the end because we walked so much and mr k needed to head home to settle his office stuff... we ended up at matsuya near our airbnb.

it's cheap and still delicious! there's really no tasteless jap food (or barely). ooh. saw a limo on our way home.

and thankfully mr k managed to settle his stuff that night if not i really cannot imagine flying to korea the next morning. zzz.