In Japan, we took the monorail to Odaiba for a Joypolis adventure. 

You know that feeling when you’re a little kid where you get so excited you get tired, but then you’re so tired and that you’re really really excited? That was me this entire night. By the end of it, I wanted to go on every ride eight more times. I was like a toddler on a sugar binge. 

Joypolis is Sega’s five story arcade. While we were there we rode a runaway train car through the sky, went white water rafting, visited a haunted chapel…

…played Taiko, the world’s cutest game (you play the drums while a smorgasbord of cute cartoon characters, like smiling drum sticks and a fox dressed as a cat, prance across the bottom of the screen, and your cartoon drum coos and babbles, periodically yelling “yeahhhh!” in a high pitched voice)…

…played this game and a had a guy be our own personal announcer, then both won curried potato sticks at the end….

…killed gigantic mutant spiders, after we were busy killing gigantic mutant zombies…

…did a jet training where the jet did 360 degree turns, often several times in a row…

…and went on this ride. Look, I don’t hate scary rides. I don’t mine zig-zagging, I love spinning, I even found out during this evening that going upside down is pretty fun. But I hate drops. At the beach, Dan loves that ride where you get into a pirate boat and just swing through the air. I’ve braved that ride once and all I remember is making the horrible mistake of closing my eyes (don’t. close. your. eyes.) and screaming at the top of my lungs. So this ride, pictured above, is a skateboarding half pipe ride. You get strapped in, standing up, and it feels like you’re flying through the air as you zip up and down, sometimes spinning around as you go. Nothing but scary, dizzying drops. My knees knocked together so hard I think I bruised them.

After all that terror, it was time to feed some virtual fish and tap on the screen to teach them how to dance.

Dan drove one of these beauties in a car racing game. Then we went hang gliding, had our fortunes told after an adventure through a magical forest, and did a professional photo shoot dressed as a bunny and a sumo judge.