#11: Legoland Japan! (June 29)

On Saturday my fellow student Tim and I rode the train to the Nagoya bay coast to Legoland Japan! Visiting Legoland was one of the bucket-list must-do items for me on this trip, and the weather forecast was showing Saturday as the only rain-free day for the next week, so we jumped on the opportunity to make it happen. 

We arrived mid-morning and started in the Miniland section, where staff spent thousands of hours constructing a sprawling recreation of Nagoya, Tokyo, Kyoto, Hokkaido, and other parts of Japan using millions of bricks to make city streets, temples, cars, trains, boats, famous buildings, historic sites, and all kinds of other stuff. Most impressive was the Nagoya Dome of the Chunichi Dragons model, which using hundreds of thousands of bricks and a massive crowd of minifigure spectators recreated the home of Nagoya’s beloved baseball team. I recognized some other places in Japan I’ve already been to recreated in Lego form: Kyoto’s Golden Temple, Port Nagoya Aquarium, and the big orange ship outside the aquarium. I didn’t see my dorm building built in brick form though. 

Lunch was unique. I got fried chicken, ice cream, and Lego fries, which look like yellow studded Lego plates. Tim got a chicken sandwich with a green Lego bun that looked like two green Lego plates. It was a very tall sandwich to where you couldn’t fit the whole thing in your mouth at once. It was all pretty delicious.

It was quite hot, so most of the other things we saw were indoor attractions, like a 4D show and a How Legos Are Made tour. The roller coaster was closed for some reason, and neither of us like spinning rides, so we didn’t do much in the way of rides. We saved the best for last though: The Big Shop. The largest Lego store in all of Asia, The Big Shop was where I bought my big set. I'd been saving the vast bulk of my personal souvenir money just for Legoland, and so I went into there with a 50,000 yen budget--and found a set that was 48,980 yen and 5,686 pieces! It was the biggest Lego box I'd ever held, and had over four times as many pieces as any Lego set I've ever built. My arms were very sore after hauling it and all my other stuff back through the train stations back to our dorm. I'm going to ship the set back to Kentucky via insured mail. 

So, yeah! Legoland Japan! Very special day of the trip and my big shopping spree.

                 

Park Entrance

Ninjago City Gardens Set: 5,686 pieces

French Fry that looks like a Lego

Cool Lego Fountain

How Legos Are Made "Factory" Tour

Kyoto

The Nagoya Dome

Nagoya Castle

Famous Japanese Antarctic Exploration Ship: The Fuji

Lego Japan

A 220,745 brick and 987-hour creation