Waterworld

Just came back from a short outing to the second largest city in Japan, Osaka. After a number of minor incidents including getting scolded by a cab driver because the hotel we chose to stay at had taken a name that he found deceptive of the location it actually was in. I promised to tell his complaints to the hotel staff but in the end I chickened out and didn't...

The main objective of this outing was the Universal Studios Japan amusement park. After visits to Disneyland, Disney Sea and Hello Kitty Puro Land I was curious how this would hold up to the rest of 'em. It wasn't bad at all even if Disneyland is kinda in a class of it's own. The park had reasonable space to move about in and the rides were mostly entertaining enough for me to recommend anyone in the area to possibly check it out.

But what struck me the most was how basically all of the rides seemed to be built on the principle that water is sprayed at you at one point or another. Ok, there were a couple of rides that let you stay somewhat dry throughout the ride, but most of 'em managed to in someway fit in liberal sprayings of water on you. This to the extent that I almost think that "Waterworld" might be a better name for the place than "Universal Studios Japan", granted they had a show based on the underestimated Kevin Costner movie from way back in the place, but still. Ok, the movie wasn't that great and it had Kevin Costner in it, but it's still not as bad as it's been portrayed. It's basically a copy of Mad Max on water and we all know and agree that Mad Max: The Road Warrior is a classic movie, I mean, it even has one of those rare, but always great male rape scenes in it. But alas, I digress...

You take the Jurassic Park ride and, no surprise, a dinosaur pops up and sprays water in your face, you take the Spiderman ride and Hydroman sprays water in your face, in the Shrek 4-D adventure they spray water in your face all the time. Someone in the development team at Universal apparently must have thought that water spraying is the greatest thing ever and kinda ran with it...