Universal Studios Japan, Osaka

Universal Studios Japan

I haven’t been to Universal Studios in Orlando. I also haven’t been to Universal Studios in Hollywood in about 20 years, so I wasn’t sure what to expect for our first visit to Universal Studios Japan. We decided to stay near the park, at the Kintetsu Hotel which is situated inside the Universal Studios Citywalk which is a collection of restaurants and stores right before the entrance. There are a number of partner hotels in this area, and it’s nice to have some good food choices after a day at the park, as well as being right next to the train station and park.

Season Passes

We decided to get a year’s membership to the park, which gives us unlimited entries for a year, but not much else in perks. There are a few levels to the membership, we opted for the mid plan which has a few black out dates on major holidays. We now realize, this is a solid choice because we will definitely not want to be at the park when it is at full capacity.

Morning

The hotel buffet was the usual stuff, with a mixture of western and Japanese choices. So I loaded up on eggs, bacon, french toast, curry rice and miso soup! I dunno why, every Japanese hotel has had curry rice for breakfast, I think it’s for hang overs. We then proceeded to line up to enter the park, which officially opens at 9:00am but they told us we could actually get in at 8:00am. Unfortunately, local schools are out for summer vacation, so there were a LOT of people even on a Tuesday. Another challenge for the day, it was going to be hot. The morning started in the mid 80s and creeped into the mid 90s for the afternoon, with the perpetual high humidity steam bath blast in your face, every time you walk outside.

We hit our first ride, the Spiderman ride, and we were near the front of the line, only like a 5 minute wait! The ride was great, with a mixture of 3d visuals to augment an indoor ride. Then we went to our next ride, which was a Despicable Me (Minions) ride and that turned into a 75+ min wait. Ugh, did I mention it was hot?

The typical rides were about 45 minute waits, but the popular ones turned into 60+ ordeals. It’s a good thing we got season passes, cause we weren’t gonna hit every ride at this rate.

Look, we’re back in SF!

Lunch

Lunch was actually pretty decent. I dunno why it feels like we get screwed for food in America at amusement parks, with high prices and usually terrible quality. Here, the food is not marked up much, and is quite edible. In fact M had her favorite kid’s meal here, with 2 kinds of fried chicken, a pancake and fries. I wanted some ice water to take on the road, so I went over to ask the lady serving drinks and literally said ‘Ice Water, please’. I guess something was lost in my Japanese or maybe I looked pretty beat, and she asked if I was alright. I said, ‘ya, we’re a little hot, but we’re fine, thank you.’ She came back with a huge bag of ice, ice water and said take care not to get heat stroke! I didn’t know what else to say, she was super concerned like she was my mom, and very sweet. We put that bag of ice to good use, and headed back out into the heat to finish our day!

Hello Kitty

There was a Hello Kitty encounter, where you get to visit her in her studio one on one. She chats for a bit, and takes some pictures which our daughter really enjoyed. I think this must be unique to Universal Japan? It was a nice change from the long sweaty lines and we got to chill inside a comfortable area for the price of a couple pictures. This was probably the highlight of the day for M.

Super Mario World

I hear this attraction is coming to Universal Hollywood next year, so it was fun to try it out here first. You can get a bracelet that interacts with numerous spots around the area, including some places while you wait in line. It added another layer of fun things to do, looking for secret ‘?’ boxes to collect coins, eggs, etc. Afterwards, you can register and check in your Universal Studios app and see how much stuff you found and compare with others. We were able to get on Yoshi’s ride, but we didn’t make it to the Mario Kart ride, which had a line over 90 minutes long and we were too exhausted near the end of the day. We’ll save that for our next visit, it was the most popular ride at the park.

Summary

The park was fun, but we’ll wait till the weather cools a bit before coming back. Since we will be living about 15 minutes by train, we can head back over on a less busy day and finish checking out some of the attractions. I think they will have some seasonal events too, maybe stuff like Halloween will be fun. We can’t really compare with the other parks, but this one does not have a tram studio tour, which I fondly remember in Hollywood. However, Mario World was amazing, and we only did one ride in Harry Potter so we’ll have to explore that area more too.

Dinner

The Citywalk has a good variety of places to eat, with some local and a few American joints like Bubba Gumps, and The Hard Rock Cafe. We found an all you can eat Shabu Shabu (hot pot) place so we gave that a go. Shabu Shabu meat is generally really thin, and you cook it yourself in a broth at the table. You get a choice of some sauces and broths, plus a 90 minute time limit. I remember the food was about 3000yen for adults ($24 USD) so the quality was ok. They also had all you can drink, for about 1500 yen ($12 USD) more so we couldn’t resist. We ate too much, and probably drank too much as well, but it hit the spot after a looong day in the sun. Nice that the hotel was just a few feet away!