The first time I picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, I couldn’t get past McGonagall sitting on that brick wall as a cat. I thought it was boring and gave up pretty quickly. Hard to capture the attention of such a young’un I guess. But, after my brother finished reading it and my friends started talking about it, I just had to give it a second chance. From that point on, my life would be forever changed.
Many people in generation will tell you that the Harry Potter series isn’t just a book series (or a movie franchise). It’s not even a way of life, because it really just is life. It was real for us because in many ways it was what we were going through and really resonated with our time growing into angst-ridden pubescents. So when I heard about this magical opportunity to actually live out a life-long dream, there was no way I was turning it down.
Last weekend, six friends and I booked a weekend excursion to Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. We took a night bus on a 7 hr drive from Nagoya to Osaka, a trip that would normally take a few hours without stopping. Honestly, it was one of the worst bus rides of my life. The seats were tiny. The air was so stuffy I felt like I couldn’t breath. All the windows were covered by curtains so it was impossible to see outside the bus. That mixed with the somewhat terrible driving made for a lovely carsickness filled journey. Needless to say, I couldn’t have been happier when we arrived at USJ around 6:30 am.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter installment is a very new attraction to USJ having opened just this past July. There were already about 100 people lined up at the gates, their partners lined up in front of the yet unopened ticket windows. We quickly did the same, separating into two groups and snagged out tickets right after the windows opened.
Luckily, I got Ron Weasley!
Then, they opened the gates. Like a panicked whirlwind, we were ushered quickly through the turnstiles where a camera clearly recorded our faces (incase anyone got into trouble I suppose). The plan: RUN. Since Harry Potter was the main attraction, nearly everyone at the gate had one destination in mind, and we weren’t about to get left behind. Everyone went through the turnstiles and ran without looking back to wait for the rest of the group. The weather that morning was particularly great, the streets and sidewalks wet but doable. Thankfully, nobody fell and we got to Hogsmeade in record time.
Now, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that since Harry Potter world was all the way on the far side of the park, I had no idea what the rest of the attractions were as we passed them by. It would be until after we left that we were actually able to get a good grip on the surrounding lands. But first, the best part of the park.
Don’t be fooled! All that snow of the roof is fake.
Upon entering, you walk through the archway into Hogsmeade. It’s smaller than it looks but the magic of optical illusion blows everything out of proportion, in a good way. More of a mixture of Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, there were a lot of shops and a restaurant where you could buy any Harry Potter related paraphernalia you could dream up. Oh, and did I mention, there was non stop Harry Potter soundtrack music playing, sometimes quite loudly. We initially skipped all this to head to the biggest and more waited for ride that took place within Hogwarts itself.
Once again, that beautiful optical illusion. The structure was so tall and detailed that it really did look like Hogwarts if you’d seen it from a distance. Of course, up close it’s more obviously how diminutive it is in comparison to actual life-sized standards, but holy cow was it a site to behold! We lined up for the ride and only had to wait a pretty miraculous 25 minutes to get inside. I can’t even describe how cool the inside of the castle was! It was pretty dark and we were made to leave our backpacks and purses in little lockers for the ride, but I did snag some photos with my phone.
The man and woman on either side of that center lamp were both moving portraits
The infamous moving staircases component of the castle was limited to two small stairways that lead up just on floor, but the moving paintings were a sight to behold. Not all of them moved of course, but quite a few did. The texture of the paintings playing on the monitors was basically exact to the non moving paintings. It was really shocking a realistic as we walked past them while they chatted (in Japanese) about Harry Potter or something about new Hogwarts students.
Further along, past several different scenes and hallways, we past Harry, Ron, and Hermione hiding out by cover of invisibility cloak in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. I can’t remember exactly what they were saying, but it was pretty cool. I will say that Hermione’s Japanese voice is highly irritating (think something along the lines of typical anime girl high squeals). Ron’s was on-point though, and Harry’s wasn’t so bad either. We also came upon Dumbledore’s office, equally dark as most of the castle rooms. Since the line was moving pretty quickly, we couldn’t linger long to hear what the Headmaster was talking about but I snagged a photo. (Also, no Fawkes in sight! Disappointing.)
Just before getting onto the actual ride, we were greeted by none other than the Sorting had. This guy wasn’t a video on a monitor like the others, but a really impressively lifelike animatronic. He would pop to life welcoming us to Hogwarts and curiously wondering about who would be in what house before gently becoming lifeless and restarting his routine.
Now onto the best part–the ride. I can’t describe how fun this ride was. Were were seating in a four person, chairlift like seat (but since we had to separate it was three in my car and four in the other). We pulled down the bar to strap ourselves in tightly and slowly made our way sideways to the ride. It was CRAZY. (Warning to those unfamiliar with Harry Potter, you probably won’t understand a lot of this.)
We were whooshed to Hogwarts courtesy of Hermione and some floo powder, appearing about the castle with Harry (all of us on broomsticks). Harry quickly says hello and tells us to hurry and follow him without much explanation. We were whooshed up, down and sideways through the air, narrowly missing towers and bridge ways. Out of nowhere, the Hungarian Horntail dragon appears and starts chasing us! Moving seamlessly from video to tangible, we flew into one of the towers as the dragon clawed on the roof top and later blew a load of steam into our faces. (Great time to have glasses…). It gets blurry after escaping the dragon but I’ll give you the gist of the rest. We ran into the Whomping Willow, passed Aragog in the Forbidden Forest, and a few other places all the while being spun up, down, and practically upside down. The whole ride lasted maybe 10 minutes but it was a total blast from start to finish.
Once off the ride, we were ushered into the adjoining gift shop. They had everything from cloaks, scarves, books, and chocolate frogs. Since we didn’t want to carry a bunch of stuff around all day, we met up and left. By the time we were out, the line for the ride was now an incredulous 235 minutes (that’s almost 4 hours), and Hogsmeade was packed. Since none of us had actually eaten since leaving Nagoya, we made our way to the Three Broomsticks/Hog’s Head for some late breakfast.
Here, we got some of that famous butterbeer and I had the most delicious shepherd’s pie in the world. Now, I’m probably only saying that because it’s been ages since I’ve had my favorite dish and it’s pretty damn hard to get good beef here. The butterbeer wasn’t amazing, i will admit. It’s basically just cream soda with some caramel flavoring and some fake marshmallow beer foam. After the late breakfast, we took some time to walk around in the different shops. They were all pretty crowded and had basically the same merchandise aside from whatever specialty was advertised, but they were still interesting.
Ollivander’s boasted an incredible set of wands. Almost all the walls were covered in shelves of wands from basic to specialty. You could buy an elder wand or the wand of any of your favorite wizards. Or you could just search through the stacks for whatever wand Pottermore had bestowed upon you. They were each about 3,000 yen (roughly $27 dollars), with the special ones of course being more expensive.
After Ollivander’s we went to take a look around Honeyduke’s sweets shop. As you can imagine, it’s one of the most popular stores in Hogsmeade. The line took about 45 minutes to go through and the inside of the shop was relatively small, but I still managed to make some purchases. However, the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans were absurdly priced at 1,800 yen for a pretty damn small container, so I of course skipped them. (They’re made by jelly belly after all, so not that difficult to get).
Throughout the day, there were a few performances, of which we only managed to see 2. They cast were all non-Japanese and I’m pretty sure most if not all of them were also not British, but the songs they sang were in English. They had the singing toads, and even the Beauxbatons ladies and Durmstrang gents do their performances.
After walking around a bit, we decided to hop on the other ride offered, a hippogriff themed small roller coaster that I can’t remember the name of. It was getting closer to the afternoon so more people had come to the Harry Potter area and the wait time for this ride was one of the longest we waited for all day, about 1.5 hours. It was a pretty small coaster with only two cars going, each with about 12 people, so it was no wonder why it took so long. I generally avoid coasters since I’m not a fan of heights but it was pretty tiny so I choked down my fears (and the 1.5 hour wait just made me irritated and with sore feet). The line for the coaster wrapped around Hagrid’s house and some woodland areas where the howl of a werewolf sounded every few minutes.
We saw Hagrid’s house and flying motorbike. As we were ushered onto the ride and the coaster began it’s ascent, Buckbeak gave us a bow from his little nest and sent us slowly climbing. I’ll be honesty, my eyes were closed right until we got to the top and I can tell you that split-second view was pretty cool! The ride only lasted 30 seconds but it was pretty fun, for a coaster.
Apprehension.
After the roller coaster, we’d pretty much finished up with the Wizarding World and were ready to head over to the rest of USJ. We did, however, go back once it became night time to go on the castle ride again, buy some souvenirs, and see Hogsmeade lit up at night (which didn’t disappoint!).
There were a few other icons sprinkled throughout Hogsmeade, of which I’ll just post some photos below!
Overall, the trip was great, especially the Harry Potter parts.
To read more about how the rest of USJ was, stay tuned!
A Little Slack in Japan 