Hey Hive!
So if you missed the last post, we're currently on another journey to Japan after we finished our final semester of college back in January 2019! And it was coincidentally around Valentines' Day too! We initially talked about wanting to visit South Korea but a Delta Airlines deal kinda changed our plans so.. to Tokyo once again!
But this time we were staying somewhat outside Tokyo in an area called Omorimachi And last week we finished up exploring the largest Chinatown in Japan at Yokohama and went to Yamashita Park where we saw a lot of cute doggos!
Anyway, the next day was Valentines Day and we were off to a very special place so we had to get up extra early!
14 February 2019. Thursday.
We were at the bus station before 10am and while waiting for our special carriage to take us away we had McDonalds breakfast and also bought drinks and extra snacks to bring along with us!
One of our favourite things at McDonalds is definitely the hash browns!
We bought the exact same meal; Sausage McMuffin with Egg! A true classic that can never go wrong!
Before long, our bus arrived! So if you caught my teaser pic at the end of the last post, you might have a guess as to where we're going. But this picture is a dead giveaway.
When our bus arrived shortly after we finished our meal, the bus driver kindly loaded up all the passenger luggage in the trunk. But we didn't bring any luggage with us since we were only going on a day trip.
That's right; we were going to Fuji-Q Highland! If you've never heard of it before, it's an amusement park at the foot of Mt. Fuji with many attractions with certified world records! And you can enjoy a variety of amusement facilities while looking at Mt. Fuji! If you've been keeping up with some of my travel posts you'd know that both of us really enjoy visiting amusement parks! So far we've been to Universal Studios Japan, Disneyland Paris, and Tokyo Disneyland!
We had heard of Fuji Q before, but seeing their world's fastest and tallest roller coasters got us kinda scared. But since neither of us have been close to Mt Fuji before (the only time we see Mt Fuji is on the shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka) and it was Valentines' Day, we decided what the hecc, so off we go!
The bus ride took about 1.5 hours but eventually, we got in sight of Mt Fuji and even the roller coaster track!
After that, we got off the bus and immediately took in the view of Fuji-san! It was pretty spectacular indeed.
It was pretty tough to take a selfie with Mt Fuji due to the lighting, but we tried our best!
Then it was time to go into the theme park! Even the entrance was a little intimidating, with those fire at the gates it was kinda symbolising the entrance to hell a little bit. Especially with all the red around.
It was thrilling though! I was scared but a little excited.
After we got our tickets, we had to go through the real entrance past the gantries into the park. I'm not sure why there's an apple in the logo, but I thought the first entrance looked cooler.
Just past the gantries we saw a Starbucks but also a Christmas tree? I guess they still had Christmas decorations up, and also lanterns for Chinese New Year since it was mid-February.
We would normally take a stroll around the park first and see what attractions there are so we knew which one was worth queuing for, but since the Fujiyama roller coaster (which was once the world's tallest roller coaster) didn't have a queue we decided to just go for it right off the bat.
Called the King of Coasters, Fujiyama has led the “ Shrill Attraction coaster of the world” scene and is certified with four world records as a large coaster with no overturns!
You could hear the screams of the people riding it even from outside the queuing area and when they came back everyone looked so distraught and relieved. It was kinda harrowing ngl, and I was scared out of my mind.
The whole ride was actually quite long for how fast we were going! And it was indeed really really fast. I'm glad it had been about 2 hrs since breakfast or I definitely would've puked. I was pretty much screaming the entire time and I was so scared to lift my hands up like you normally would on a roller coaster. Here's the picture they took of us and me just trying to survive LOL. >.<
After that we definitely needed a break so we took the time to walk around the park and explore more.
There was a really nice photo spot in the middle of the park with cherry blossoms so we headed there to take a photo together!
We were kinda laughing at how there were so many different decorations around; Christmas, Chinese New Year and now cherry blossoms. It was really cool though; like we were just in time to celebrate all these holidays together at once!
Then we went for a quick bathroom break and even the toilet had some Fujiyama trick art!
I thought the style of kanji they used here looked so cool! It reads Takabisha, which was another world record holding roller coaster!
Takabisha holds the record for the one of the steepest roller coasters, with a 121° freefall! It has seven twists, falling sharply with a maximum drop angle of 121 degrees, sudden rise while looking at the sky, temporary stop in fall position, and frighteningly looks like this:
Sean is a huge fan of the Korean variety show, Running Man, and we've actually seen the cast go on this ride before, so it only stands to reason that we try it out too, since we're here.
This was the Guiness World Record certificate that was proudly on display:
And it was indeed very terrifying! I'm pretty sure I was screaming until my voice was gone. I could feel all my internal organs moving around as we dropped from such an astounding height and speed.
When we were done I could barely stand. I couldn't tell which was worse; this one or Yujiyama, but my heart really got a workout. Here's what we looked like when they snapped the photo. Man we look terrible in all these shots.
But here's a video of what the ride was like! The slow anticipation at a sharp 90 degrees already got me so scared.
The loops actually curiously resembled a heart so we had to take a picture with it especially since it was Valentines' Day!
After that we walked around somemore while trying to recover from that crazy ride, and we saw this Evangelion World which was a permanent exhibition with everything from life-size models to museum-like displays, original artwork and plenty of interactive installations. But since neither of us had seen the anime we didn't see a point to going in.
And I just read that it recently closed down. Maybe the anime isn't as popular anymore, or covid really affected Fuji-Q that they had to close some attractions and this one unfortunately had to be axed.
We also saw this kiddy-looking place that was called Mad Mouse? I guess it's a more tame roller coaster ride compared to what we just experienced so we passed.
Then we saw this stage with a cool backdrop and just had to take a photo!
I wonder if they have live performances here. Maybe on Christmas they had some band performing or something.
But I think that's gonna be all for today! Tune in next week when we explore more of Fuji-Q Highland!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #125 (Japan 6.0): Snackos and Doggos! 🍮🐶
