tokyo, japan - sanrio land

i love cutesy japanese characters - hello kitty and friends.  so of course we had to go to hello kitty's town, also known as sanrio puroland.  

my favorite character is pochaco - a little doggie

pochaco's mailbox

had to take a picture of the seaweed - adorable!

wave your arms and random dresses would pop up on the screen and you can twirl wearing your new dress ;)

tokyo, japan - disneyland

there are some similarities of tokyo disneyland and our disneyland, but i definitely like our disneyland better.  tokyo disneyland is more spaced out and they do not have as many rides and stores.  it was weird going on rides and the songs were mostly in japanese.  some of the rides were similar - space mountain, pirates of the caribbean, peter pan, splash mountain, and big thunder mountain.  

their version of cinderella's castle

they have a pagoda for their tiki room

it's a small world

disneyland hotel and monorail

instead of mickey's face when you first entered disneyland, this is their welcome

getting ready to go on big thunder mountain

inside the castle

isn't this cute???

tokyo, japan - tokyo tower

tokyo tower was built in 1958 and was inspired by the eiffel tower.  the tower is a communications and observation tower.  at 1,093 feet, it is the second tallest artificial structure in japan.  there are two observation decks - the lower one (main observation deck) is at 490 feet and the higher one is at 820 feet.  i didn't even want to go to the main deck, but figured fight my fear and go on it.  there was no way in hell i was going to the top deck.  

view of tower when you got off the subway

getting closer

reason it says 2020 on there is because tokyo is a candidate city for the 2020 olympics

view of cemetery from main observation deck

bridge is called rainbow bridge

futuristic looking temple

glass observation to ground below.  i didn't even come near this thing - i asked the tour guide to take a picture for me.  :)