weeping lilies: 180423 USJ

after monster hunter, we only had time for one short ride before we headed over for ff. we chose to just browse around. i got my chocobo popcorn bucket earlier in the day and when i was there for the ride around 4+ it was already all sold out!!

i also got that cactuar churros for 550 JPY. the greenish thorn thing on it didn't taste good. it was just colored sugar. yeeps. it still looked nice though.

and of cos my beloved chocobo at 3,480 JPY with popcorn was probably the best thing i got from the whole usj. it is soooo cute and if you open the beaks it will actually squeak. kweh!

anyway here we go into the ride! the waiting time was around 80-100mins. but if you chiong to this in the morning first thing, it was actually less than 15mins. we did regret we didn't go for this in the first place and went for spidey instead. if not we'll be able to take it twice...

anyways... in we go! no queuing for us so no one to block our path all the way... and thankfully we got the express pass because there was nothing to see except the following exhibit, which isn't really part of the queue, and the screen on top. the animation was also pretty short (less than 5mins?)

and we are now at the front of the door...

and then we are in! pretty crystal right in the middle that actually shows a prelude of what's gonna happen. basically we are just making an escape in the mogship.

and so we are preparing our entry into the ship..

and into the tunnel we go!

since everything is powered by VR, not much i can take. had a great time watching cloud and sephiroth but i was expecting more characters to appear but nope. it was just ff7-centric. oh well. it was still a great ride nonetheless!

and then into the merchandise store! this is also the same place as where sailormoon stuff was sold since that store is in the middle of all the 4 event rides.

anyway, i've to say i'm quite disappointed with the ff merchandise. the person designing it probably has no idea what the hell ff is, because s/he basically just slapped the logo across everything he can find. so logo + bag, logo + shirt, logo + can, etc etc

1) the t-shirts, bag (cheapskate looking canvas material...). cups - should i even take a picture of the eco bag below? it just looks like an eco bag with a big logo.

2) headphones with logos on both sides. i can't stop laughing at it. it just looks so cheap. i can print the sticker and paste it on my white headphones. and towels with what else, BIG logo. you know if they have even put a little effort into it, like make the logo smaller, embroider it with shiny threads and put it at the side, the decorate it with some iconic characters, it would be so much better. but nope, guess they are rushing for deadlines so logos would sell, no?

3) logo boxed cookie. and when you finally decide to put some characters, they had to be something you eat and shit out. not that my shit will look like the characters later on for me to keep.

4) whaddya know, guess people will pay for a watch with the logo? dear product designer, do you know how easy it is to actually print a face on a watch nowadays? 6k yen for this thing? i don't even want to spent 500yen for it. compare it to sailormoon - they had at least changeable faces and a bracelet strap. but yours... 'nuff said.

5) hoodies and bags with better lv monogram-lookalike design, but still with a big logo at the edge

6) designer: oh yeh, i think i used too much logos, i better use pictures. and colored ink costs less, black and white looks so much cooler so let's just print a black and white photo on tshirts.

either you have all the colors in the world, or you have none at all!

7) led light stands - the products are a little better when they start to use different characters. but instead of spamming logos, this time they just decided to spam characters.

8) character brooches. but you know, you're not wrong for spamming characters because i might just buy till i get my fav squall. they also had character sweet cans which looked a little like the led stands but i forgot to take pictures of it.

9) cookie drawers, tumblers, note stand, plushies - i think there was probably 2 designers on the team. one who spammed logos and one who actually tried to integrate the essence of ff using the mascots. at least the cookie boxes had drawer uses this time and looked better. i almost wanted to get the plushie cos they are so cuteeee

10) ff game (of cos, you should sell the game!), another led stand. key chains, magnets and pouches. i felt like i needed to buy one of the mascots and i finally decided to spend on the key rings since all 3 mascots were inside and i could easily hang them as accessories.

11) the chocobo hoodies, hat, cape towels and socks were cuter here too

actually who will wear the hats outside of usj? at least the cape towl has uses on beach...

12) and finally they had something done tastefully - mascot necklaces. (though it looks like you could buy them off taobao too)

the day was getting colder so we decided we will go for one last ride - jurassic park water ride before we go on. thank goodness we didn't get splashed on much!

and after starving for the whole day... (the food is so expensive) and surviving on ramune sweets... we decided to go for sukiyaki buffet. it costs about 3,000 JPY per person w tax for dinner time, and comes with free flow haagen daaz ice cream!

we had like 3 plates of beef and one plate of pork... and some vege and noodles. and we were soon knocked out.

and then we had at least 2 servings of haagen daaz each. yum yum!!

for the rest of the night we just toured around umeda trying to digest all the meat.. came across this pretty neat water thingy near daimaru mall that could show the time and greetings, as well as various pictures. cool!

there was also a basement level with lots of food at lacua (?) and restaurants that look like high level 'pubs' because there was so many workers drinking there even though it was past 10pm. found a super nice green tea!