We visited Universal Studios Japan this weekend. USJ is a theme park in Oosaka with lots of different attractions related to Universal Studio shows and characters. It was a fun but also really exhausting trip as we went by night bus.
We departed at around 23:00 with a group of 16 people. Our first destination was Nagakute Kosenjou station which we reached after a 20 minute walk. We then took a train to Fujigaoka station and rode the Higashiyama line to Nagoya station. Usually, we take a Meitetsu bus to Fujigaoka or a school bus to Kamiyashiro, but in our case we were too many people and it was late already so buses were running infrequent. After arriving at Nagoya station at around 23:50, we went to the bus stop and successfully boarded the bus.
The bus ride itself was really uncomfortable as the seats were too small for me, so I could only get like an hour of sleep in. We had a half hour break at 2:30am and continued at 4:00 cause the bus driver had to sleep too. We went through Oosaka though so we at least had a nice urban scenery to gaze at. Final arrival was at 6:30 and everyone was really exhausted, but the day had only just begun.
I’ve never really been to a theme park before so this experience was the first for me. The park was still closed after we arrived so we had to wait around thirty minutes at the gate plaza. Even though the park didn’t open yet, lots of people were already taking pictures of the huge-ass universal globe. Film music was blaring constantly, of which I sadly couldn’t recognize a single piece. Even though there were hundreds of people and only like 10 gates, it took only a few minutes to enter the park once it opened and because it was enormous, the large crowd disbanded pretty quickly and it became easy to walk around.
Our first stop was Super Nintendo World. After passing through a pipe, we reached an elevated platform from which you could see an incredible real-life replica of a Mario level. We also rode the Yoshi express which had buttons in the front you could press to create incredibly annoying sounds.
After wandering around for a while and getting something to drink, we headed towards the Harry Potter/Hogwarts section. We went through a small strip of forest with speakers howling like wolves and imitating owls everywhere. Reaching the end of the forest path, we could see a huge castle which was a replica of Hogwarts as well as the small town near it. I’m not a big Harry Potter fan, but the atmosphere was just incredible and it all felt very real. There were also lots of stores you could actually visit that sold for example butter beer or weird prank articles, but the lines were very long already so we were content with just watching.
They had another ride which was called “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey” where you ride on a rollercoaster-like track, turn around a lot and lose orientation. It uses lots special effects like fog and giant screens which simulate things like playing quidditch and fighting death eaters. I obviously couldn’t take a video so here’s one if you’re interested cause the ride was really fun.
There were loads of things to explore which I can’t present all. Some honorable mentions include Jurassic World which had a giant in-door rollercoaster with water, a Resident Evil escaperoom with loud noises and zombies chasing you and minion land which had, who could’ve guessed, minions. We didn’t visit everything though so there’s quite a lot of stuff I can’t talk about like the Jaws or Terminator section. Generally, there were also lots of stores and food stalls not belonging to any particular movie franchise and lots of people were wearing non-USJ-related costumes.
There was also a special Jujutsu Kaisen screening for which we stood in line for over an hour. It was one of those 4D-cinemas where the seat moves and you get sprayed with water. Afterwards, we went to a merch store and I bought a JJK mug. I have no idea though how I’m supposed to bring everything back. Well, that’s a problem for future me. Oh, and we also met a random group of people with which we had a bottle flip standoff. They won.
Later in the evening the atmosphere completely changed. After 18:00, zombies, skeletons, clowns and other halloween-related monsters came out and roamed the streets. Some of them had chainsaw-like tools and pretended to cut people’s legs off. Others were just pumping bass and dancing like crazy. It was really fun to look at.
After a while, we all got hungry and decided to leave at around 21:00 to get some food. There was a shopping district nearby so we went there and had dinner.
The way back went pretty much the same as our arrival. We got into the bus at around midnight and arrived completely exhausted at Nagoya in the morning. After taking the metro lines and walking back to the dorm, we all went to sleep and got to enjoy the rest of the sunday. It was a nice trip overall, but next time I’d take the train and pay the extra money as the bus was really uncomfortable for me.