Fujikyuu Failure - January 6th

Legend has it that there's a magical place in Yamanashi prefecture, at the foot of mount Fuji. This is a land where inexplicable things happen, and dreams come true. It's a place where people do consective loop-de-loops whilst spinning upside down and sideways; where they go from 0 to over 100 mph in an instant; where they fall from 80 meters up and live to tell the tale.

This land is called Fujikyuu Highland, and it's the only theme park I've ever actually been excited to visit.

We first learned about Fujikyuu back when we first arrived. Brian had been there with a group from CSU last year, and regaled me with stories about how people were throwing up and crying when they got off Eejanaika, the ride with the most consecutive backwards/upside-down loops in the world. It was at that point that I knew I was going to go there. How could I pass up an opportunity like that?

I let people know that I was planning a trip eventually, and that it would probably happen sometime during winter break. A lot of people expressed interest, but few actually did anything more than that. It seems that most people either conveniently forgot, or just weren't willing to take the necessary steps to plan and execute the trip. All for the better; as the apparent leader of the trip, I would be responsible for any disaster that might befall us, so the fewer the merrier. The final head count was Hans, Hilary, Kaoru, Yurika, Sacchan, and myself. We bought a bus ticket + free pass package, and I met up with the three travelers from Tokyo in the morning to catch the bus. Sacchan and Yurika were coming from Odawara, so they only had one bus either way that day, and had to get there a couple hours ahead of the rest of us.

The original plan was quite spectacular. We were going to party all day, and stay all night for an 24 hour skating rink in the park, and leave the next morning. It was going to be a hell of a weekend! But alas, it seems that the fates had once again conspired against us. I had an inkling that there would be weather trouble the night we bought our tickets, but I figured that if it was going to be anything worth closing the park over, the travel agent selling me the tickets would have at least warned me about it. Moreover, up until that point, we had been having the warmest winter Tokyo has seen in over a century.

So we arrived at the bus terminal in Shinjuku around 10am to catch our bus, and I get a call from Sacchan. It's snowing at Fujikyuu, like, Wisconsin snow. There's already a foot on the ground. They didn't say anything about the park, so I figured everything was still ok. We'd already bought our tickets, it'd be a waste not to use them now. At least we should go hang out with the girls. We soldiered on and boarded the bus.

About three quarters of the way there, we started to see signs of winter. The snow that dotted the landscape soon became overwhelming, as if someone with a giant paintcan dumped whitewash all over the valley. When the bus stopped, we jumped out into a miserable mixture of snow and slush and dirt. The bus took off, and we stood bewildered for a moment, trying to figure out exactly where we were. We could see one of the rides from the freeway, partially obscured by low-lying clouds, but distinctly roller-coaster in shape. We called up Sacchan and trudged down to the main gate, our feet already getting soaked by the icy water. At least it had stopped snowing, but now it was raining.

We got to the main gate, and Sacchan and Yurika were just inside, beckoning to us. We had come all this way, so we figured what the heck, and exchanged our passes to enter the compound. The park attendant gave me a small list of attractions that were still open, and warned me that the park would be closing at 6pm that evening, and that there would be no all-night skating. Like a victim of shell shock, I took the list and stumbled through the gates. Sacchan and Yurika had been making the most of their time, checking out the various rides that remained open through the snow storm. None of the roller coasters were on that list.

We sought shelter in one of the park's food courts. We tried to trudge through the snow, but it was so deep and wet that we just ended up soaking ourselves further. There were practically no other people in the park, and those whom we did see were wearing uniforms indicating their employer. I was probably quite visibly upset. While everyone else took a "shouganai, you can't control the weather" approach, I knew that I had my own stubbornness to get here to blame, and I thanked everyone for being so understanding. Poor Yurika had a flimsy pair of shoes on, and had to be absolutely frigid, but she didn't complain once.

However impressed I might have been by how well my little Donner party handled the situation, I was still upset. What kind of park keeps any percentage of its rides open in weather like this? What an absolute waste of our park passes, if we only get to check out a whopping 10% of the attractions. If we had any warning when we bought our tickets, we could have rescheduled our trip. Now we were stuck in the snow.

We trudged back out of the park to talk to the lady at the bus stop to reschedule our return to Tokyo. Sacchan and Yurika would just take the lone bus back to Odawara, for which they already held tickets. Upon returning to the park, we decided to try to talk to the gatekeepers about the situation and see if we could salvage our park passes for another day. I was still upset, and spoke to Sacchan and Yurika in hurried English as they conveyed our plight to the workers. Finally, the gatekeepers relented and handed us back our free passes, which would be good until the end of the Month. Our saving grace was claiming that I didn't understand any Japanese, and didn't realize that they were telling me "hey, 90% of the park is closed, do you still want to go in?" when we first entered.

Despite the small triumph, I was still dejected, and since Sacchan and Yurika had already been there all morning, and Kaoru let slip that she was Japanese, they were unable to redeem their passes. Despite all this, they were still very upbeat about everything. I still wanted to hang out with the girls a bit longer, since we had really come all that way to see them. We stopped at the hotel adjacent to the park and had nikuman in the lobby, before going back to the bus stop to once again change our itinerary. Sacchan and Yurika returned to the park in order to "save the princess," and play at the few remaining attractions before their bus would arrive. While we were waiting in the bus stop, Kaoru went outside and disappeared around the corner. I was worried that she might be upset about the whole ordeal, and I got up to go check on her, trying to think of words of comfort (lord knows I needed them at that point). When I got around the bend, I saw her hunched over the snow. Making snow bunnies. In spite of all of the grief we had seen that day, she was playing in the snow. I was moved, so much so that I scooped up a handful of snow and patted it into a sphere before chucking it at Hans when he came rounded the corner. We played a bit more before the bus finally arrived and took us back to Tokyo, which was amidst a light shower. We stopped at a La Pausa for dinner before going home, but I later found out that our luck wasn't all bad. The bus we took back to Tokyo was the last one before they completely shut down the roads due to the icy conditions. If we hadn't left when we did, we would have been stuck at Fujikyuu for the night. And that would have been a much longer journal entry.