Of all the things I could do on Christmas, I decided to go to Tokyo DisneySea! I don’t normally like Disney parks (I’ve been to Disney World in Florida more than enough times for one lifetime) but it just seemed like a fun thing to do on Christmas. While Tokyo Disneyland is the same as all the other Disneylands in the world, DisneySea is only in Japan. And I knew DisneySea would have lots of fun Christmas lights and other Christmas stuff, which cheered me immensely. (As I mentioned in my last entry, Christmas is not a holiday here and everyone goes to work.)

Waiting for the train to take us to Maihama Station (the closest station to Disneyland). Way, way off in the distance you can (barely) see the Tokyo Skytree. Tokyo Disneyland is quite far if you’re coming from west Tokyo — it was about an hour on the subway. It’s right on Tokyo Bay, and is technically in Chiba.

Because I’m so not a Disney nerd, I didn’t want to spend ¥6200 ($75 CAD) to get inside the park. Instead, we left later in the day to take advantage of the “After 6 Passport” which gets you into the park after 6pm for only ¥3300 ($40 CAD) which is much more reasonable! Plus, in the evening is when they have all the cool Christmas illuminations anyway. To kill some time before 6pm, we hung out at Ikspiari, which is the equivalent of Downtown Disney in other countries.

Mike made friends with this alpaca.

Ikspiari is sort of a combination indoor/outdoor mall with restaurants and stores and stuff.

Pretty decorations! There was actually a Santa Claus around the corner with a long line of people waiting to have their picture taken with him, but there were NO PHOTOS ALLOWED so I didn’t take one of him. He was a strange version of Santa though, dressed all in silver and white with moon boots and a stick/wand thing. (I probably should have just taken a photo of him.)

Eventually 6pm rolled around so we were off to DisneySea. DisneySea and Tokyo Disneyland are the only Disney parks in the world not owned by the Walt Disney Company. ANOTHER FUN FACT: DisneySea is the most expensive theme park ever built.

But I’m fairly certain that the park has paid for itself just in sales of Duffy. Duffy is this stuffed bear that was exclusively sold at DisneySea but he is now available in other Disney parks. Japanese people are SUPER CRAZY INSANE OBSESSED with Duffy. I don’t even think I can explain Duffy mania to you — you really just need to go to Tokyo and see it. Duffy is everywhere. This store was wall-to-wall people. It was so packed you’d think they were giving Duffy away for free.

These mini Duffys were constantly being snapped up and replenished.

Soooo… obviously I bought a large Duffy and a small mini Christmas Duffy. I couldn’t not buy Duffy. You can’t go to DisneySea and not buy Duffy. If you don’t buy Duffy, I can only assume that some staff member springs out of the bushes and pins one to you. Everyone (and I mean everyone) had some kind of Duffy attached to them. Duffy is not a souvenir — you must buy him when you arrive so everyone can see him. As we were standing in line for a ride, I looked down the line and every single person had at least one Duffy or Shellie May (Duffy’s girlfriend bear). Some girls have three or four or eight Duffys hanging from their bag. Some just carry around a giant four foot Duffy or Shellie May in their arms. Couples will have matching Duffy and Shellie May bears pinned to their clothes. It is weird. But at the same time I was also compelled to BUY DUFFY IMMEDIATELY.

This was part of the “American Waterfront” part of the park.

More American Waterfront.

We went to the The Teddy Roosevelt Lounge to have a drink. I like how the swizzle stick has Mickey on it. (Details! I like them!)

Duffy waits patiently for us to finish our Manhattans.

Christmas lights.

A Toy Story ride we did not go on.

We watched some hanabi (fireworks) set to Christmas music.

There’s a two-storey carousel in the “Arabian Coast” area, which is kind of cool. I’d never seen a two-storey carousel before.

Arabian Coast really just means “Aladdin.”

Creepy Aladdin Genie fountain.

“Mermaid Lagoon” (aka Little Mermaid Land) was pretty impressive — it’s for younger kids, but the design of it is very well done. It’s mostly indoors and it’s meant to look like you’re underwater.

See, Mike totally looks like he’s underwater!

I love the ceiling.

More Christmas-ness.

Ugh, the level of detail that goes into Disney parks kills me. This is on the monorail that goes around DisneySea and Disneyland.

And of course, Mickey-shaped windows.

On the way home, we stopped for some noodles. Duffy would like some soba.

As someone who has lukewarm feeling about all thing Disney, I really liked DisneySea. I might have been blinded by all the Duffy bears, but it was fun! It’s obvious that a lot of money was spent on the park and that a lot of thought went into the design. I liked how compact is it — it’s easy to get to each of the different lands, and each one is interesting and full of amazing details.

There’s also this thing with popcorn there. I didn’t try any, but it was really popular. Each land has its own flavoured popcorn — some of the ones I saw were strawberry popcorn, curry popcorn, and black pepper popcorn. You can buy a refillable pail (shaped like Duffy, of course) if you want to try them all.

DisneySea = my new favourite Disney park. (I didn’t have a favourite before, but if I had to pick it probably would have been Epcot in the USA). I’d even go again! (Maybe just to buy another Duffy.)

Christmas in Japan is kind of weird. Well, weird if you’re from a country where everyone is mostly Christian. Christmas here is not a religious holiday. Something like 1% of the Japanese population is Christian. It’s also not a family get-together kind of of holiday the way it is in Western countries. (That’s what New Year’s is for — Oshogatsu, or the Japanese new year, is the big holiday.) But at the same time, Christmas here has a lot of the same stuff as Western Christmas — Santa Claus, Christmas carols everywhere (usually in English), Christmas decorations, Christmas trees, Christmas lights, etc. It’s basically what Western Christmas would be like if you removed the religious aspect completely. It’s a commercial holiday, and also a romantic “date night” for couples. Sort of like Valentine’s Day in North America, I guess. People go out for fancy dinners, or eat KFC. They buy each other gifts (but not millions of gifts the way we tend to do). They eat Christmas cake. Christmas Day isn’t a national holiday here; everyone goes to work. (Christmas Eve was a holiday this year though, only because the Emperor’s birthday — an actual national holiday — fell on on the Sunday before.)

As weird as it is, it’s also kind of nice. With the absence of religion (and all the baggage that comes along with that), Japanese people have embraced Christmas wholeheartedly. “Merry Christmas!” is everywhere and “Happy Holidays” doesn’t exist. It’s just a fun holiday, with no strings attached.

Japanese people are really into Christmas lights — or “illumination” as they’re called here. This is the some of the Christmas illumination in Roppongi, but there are illuminations all over Tokyo (and all across Japan).

So pretty!

 More illumination.

Cute Santa cutouts outside a mall in Tokyo Midtown.

This tree was made up entirely of a zillion tiny Santas!

 There’s a lot of seasonal winter foods around now too. Japan likes its bizarre Pepsi flavours, and the one for this season is Pepsi White in a “snow mikan (orange)” flavour. I have no idea what a snow orange is (don’t oranges grow in warm climates?), but it was actually kind of tasty. Some of the past Japanese Pepsi flavours have included cucumber, shiso, baobab, and salty watermelon.

 Another flavour that’s in season now is ichigo (strawberry). There are tons of strawberry desserts and strawberry drinks and strawberry-flavoured everything. Again, I don’t know why strawberry is a winter thing, but it is.

I bought these cans of chu-hi (a Japanese alcoholic drink — pretty low in alcohol though, around 3%) at the ¥100 store. They’re all seasonal winter flavours — more strawberry and orange. (Also, how awesome is it that they sell alcohol at the dollar store?)

I did not eat KFC on Christmas Eve*, but I saw lots of KFC employees dressed as Santa Claus handing out chicken orders (you have to order your Christmas chicken in advance) when I walked by. There were more Santa Clauses trying to sell the last of their Christmas cakes outside 7/11, and I even saw little Japanese kids dressed up as Santa, which was adorable.

* I ate some non-festive but delicious sushi instead.

I spent my Christmas Day at Tokyo DisneySea (the second of the two parks at Tokyo Disneyland). It was a little strange to wake up on Christmas morning and have everything seem so… normal. A lifetime of going to bed on Christmas Eve full of barely-contained excitement will leave anyone feeling a little disappointed to wake up in Tokyo, where Christmas is just another day. DisneySea ended up being the perfect cure. Although I don’t really like Disney parks (Disney World in Florida is ugh), DisneySea was brimming with Christmas cheer (and Duffy bears) and was actually really fun. But I’ll post more about that in the next entry!