Nagashima Spa Land...

Monday 16th July was a national holiday in Japan, which means pretty much everyone gets the day off and can recover from the exhaustion garnered by copious amounts of work, and going "ehhhhh?!?!?!?" 40 times in every conversation. I was just going to sit about in my pants, but the Japanese teacher at one of my schools - Chieko - suggested that we check out Nagashima Spaland which she had some discount tickets for. After great consideration, I decided that my pants could wait, and the trip was ON.

It was as we were driving there that Japan experienced a pretty nasty earthquake - actually, Chieko was demonstrating how cool her satnav was but showing me it could pick up tv too, and we saw a news program with pictures of destroyed buildings and wrecked motorways.

Me: "Oh, is this from a while ago?"
Chieko: "No, this is today".
Me: "What!?!? You mean this morning?!"
Chieko: "No, now. Right now. This just happened".
Me: "........um.........shit".

Nagoya was untouched, and most people didn't even feel it outside the epicentre, but still - nasty.

Anyway, on a more cheery note - Nagashima Spaland is a big amusement park with loads of rides and roller coasters. Here are some photos:



This is the Steel Dragon - 3rd highest rollercoaster in the world, longest roller coaster in the world, and quite frankly one scary looking bastard. You can see how high it is from these other photos:


Aieee! So before we went on that, we went on some slightly smaller rides:

The White Cyclone - actually made of wooden struts which creak and shudder a bit. Worrying that the tracks your zooming around on might suddenly collapse into a pile of matchsticks nicely heightens the tension.

There was also a cool log flume which I didn't take a picture of (doh). The neat thing was, there was a bridge over the main splashdown zone with a plastic shield so you could stand there watching the wall of water shooting towards you like the Poiseidon Adventure (or Titanic for you young'uns). You could also stand next to the shield and get soaked, thusly:


Chieko also took a rather well timed photo of me about to get shat on:
Here's another ride which was fairly tame by the park's standards - one loop-the-loop? Piece of piss.

If it looks a bit grey and miserable in these photos, that's because it was - it started out as a gloriously sunny day and slowly got darker and darker and began to rain. The upshot of which was....they had to close the Steel Dragon! Apparently one of the cars derailed a few years ago (!!!!!) so they're very cautious about the weather conditions.
On the one hand I was pleased that I didn't have to worry about losing control of my bowels on a terrifying rollercoaster AND having a legitimate reason for passing, but on the other I felt a bit defeated, so me and Chieko resolved to go back again soon and conquer the beast.

Nagashima also has an amazing hotspring place near it with proper hot water coming out of the ground so we decided to check that out too. No photos of that as everyone wanders around nekkid (segregated by sex of course), and frankly you wouldn't want to see aged Japanese winkies bobbing about on your computer screen. But, in the main spa bit you have to take your shoes off, and you can also change into a yukata. This gives the whole place a weirdly serene Star-Trek feel, everyone wandering around chatting a weird language in their eccentric uniforms. I half expected Commander Riker to strike up on his trombone and ruin my day.


Here's me and Chieko in our yukatas lookin' cool:

Nagashima Spa Land ROCKS, and I can't wait to go back and try the waterpark....