http://www.flickr.com/photos/lovendestroy/2697815923/


If someone had suggested to me that I might one day stand in an amusement park line for 4 and a half hours to go for a 90 second ride, I would have suggested they get their head examined..

But we did, and the really crazy part is that it was worth every minute of the four and a half hours wait. The ride is called Eejanaika, which loosely translated unaccountably means "no worries."

Do we look worried?

The amusement park is at the base of Mt Fuji--the mountain itself gave me goose bumps when it first loomed in the distance. Not something I ever thought I would see. We were with Andrew, Hiroe, and three quarters of the population of Japan due to it being a national holiday called Golden Week. It took 3 hours to drive the 100 km, and when we arrived there were signs informing us the waits for the various rides were 3 hours. We determined that surely the wait time would shorten as the day wore on. Aww, how cute we were.

To make a long story short, we spent a total of 12 hours in the car and in lines to spend less than a combined 5 minutes on 2 rides. Andrew's comment: "This day is epic." Uh huh.

And STILL worth it. The warm-up ride was fantastic, but the Eejanaika defies description, unless maybe you are Stephen King. Usually I scream non-stop on roller coasters, but I was too terrified even to utter a peep for the first half, which afforded me a rare insight into what Matthew actually jabbers on these kinds of things. By the end I was in full siren mode, and couldn't stop even after the ride was over. Matthew kept muttering, "I don't even know what I just did."