C'mon N' Ride It

Yesterday I went to Nasu Highlands Park. I'm pretty sure for most people only two of those words actually made sense (unless highlands is two words?) so I'll relieve your ignorance with the knowledge that Nasu is the name of a place. In the mountains. Very mountainous. Mountaneity. For those craving MORE information then it is an amusement park set in the mountains. Catching on?

I went there with 3 people who I will refer to as Hayley, Honda and Megumi because those are their real names. Every year the conversation school next door has a summer event and this year it's going to be in a theme park. Pretty much the coolest summer event I could think of. Camping? Yuck. Fishing? Gross. Something other than a theme park? No, thank you. So we were doing some preliminary research for a quiz that would be administered to the children upon entering the park in a matter not to dissimilar to what teachers in Australia give students to make excursions less fun.

Driving to the theme park, I was expecting some kind of shitty carousel and broken down rides with chipped paint and lot's of chairs to compensate the lack of rides. A desolate, wasteland of dashed hopes of fun and enjoyment. But as we turned that curved road along the mountain what awaited us was a brightly coloured FUN LAND OF JOY AND BLISS. Muuuuch bigger than I was anticipating and the sheer amount of roller-coaster rails had me wetting my pants with premature excitement.

(Honda on the ferris-wheel. It wasn't pretty.)

Let me break it down for you. I love rides. I practically exist in this human form so as to have something to do until the next roller-coaster appears before me. Disneyland has 2 decent roller coasters. Nasu Highlands Park has FIVE roller-coasters and then heaps of awesome other rides that are scary and not sickeningly cutesy and covered in Mickey. One of them was even called 'Top Gun' and did all kinds of crazy things. There was a Pirate ship, tower-of-terror-esque ride, spinny things, upy-downy things and more. My organs practically secured themselves in preparation of the beating they would receive.

On top of the plethora of rides there were several other bonuses. The weather was overcast all day which meant we didn't melt into a pile of sludge in the hot sun. Beer is allowed in the park (obviously not very compatible with rides) and there was also like no one there! The most we had to wait for a ride was about 4 minutes!

(Going at the speed of AWESOME)

We ended up going on about 18 rides. Some were amazing and awesome, others were just confusing. One ride, called 'Shinpi' was supposed to be a 45 minute wait (if there had been people in the park) and was just a strange ride in darkness followed by strange sculptures and then it finished. If I had of waited 45 minutes (and not the 3 minutes we actually waited) I would have been quite disappointed I think! If you watch the link and understand it - please let me know!

All in all we thought of some good questions for the quiz, went on heaps of rides, got some free chips because Honda taught the waitress Italian, and had a fantastic day. I didn't. even. get. sunburnt. What a wonderful day. I also managed to fulfill a dream of riding at the very front of a legitimately scary roller coaster! Amazing.

(Hayley after said roller-coaster)

Today I saw 'Salt' at the movies. Yeah it's good! Go see it. Good pacing.