Over the last few years Tokyo DisneyLand has been transforming into Tokyo Disney Resort. In May last year they had build a new hotel and some shops, and were working on another hotel, the monorail, more shops, and Disney Sea. So today we went to see how it all looked now that they’re finished.

I’ve been trying to work out why they named the new park “Disney Sea”. It does have a watery theme throughout, although you still mostly walk between the attractions. I think that the name was thought of before the park was designed, and it was named because they build the park on reclaimed land where the sea used to be.

I have seen two of the attractions (Indiana Jones and 20000 Leagues under the sea) in other Disney parks, but everything else seems to be unique to this park. This is also the most beautiful of all the Disney parks throughout the world, but I assume that is because it is the newest: Disney just seem to be getting better at making their parks.

The queues were quite long; some attractions had 2 hour waiting times. We got some FastPasses for “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, and then went to find some of the less popular things.

One of the amusing bits of scenery that they have built at Disney Sea is a replica of part of the Giant’s Causeway!

My new camera has a USB port, and it uses the USB mass storage protocol to allow the computer to access the files. Protocol standards are great: it’s a pity all developers don’t read them, especially when they are developing a product that implements the protocol.

I connected my FinePix to my ThinkPad, they said hello, then Linux got confused. I asked what the problem was, and Linux told me that FinePix was answering all the questions strangely: there was extra bit where there should not have been extra bits.

I asked the Google-monster if he’d heard about any similar problems and it told me about Linux and a Sony Clie who seemed to be having the same conversation. The solution that worked there was to ask Linux to just ignore the extra bits and hope they didn’t matter. I tried this, and FinePix and Linux have been best of friends ever since.

I don’t know for sure who caused the proble. Being a Linux fan(atic) I tend to believe that the Linux hackers got the protocol right, and my other USB mass storage devices seem to agree with me. But that isn’t really the point: if I hadn’t been using a Free OS, I couldn’t have fixed the problem in 20 minutes, and my new camera would soon be full of images that I couldn’t access.

I’ve just bought a Fuji FinePix F401 digital camera in Yodobashi Camera Shop in Shinjuku.

Shinjuku is a mad place! I’ve been told that Shinjuku train station has over 3 million people pass through it during rush hour. If only 1% of these people bought a camera from you, you could make a lot money. That’s probably why there are so many people selling cameras at Shinjuku. Or maybe they’re all just crazy.

This time tomorrow we’ll be on our way to Japan. I think I’ve got everything I need. I’ve started to write a schedule for the holiday; I hope to finish it today, but that will never happen.