On Sunday July 29th, 2007 eight of us went to Universal Studios Japan to spend a day together riding rides and practicing English. It was a lot of fun! To be sure it was HOT and HUMID but not unlike what I remember Universal Studios Orlando being several years ago.
To view the page on the school’s website: Smith’s Okamoto Universal Studios Japan Day
We started by riding the the “Hollywood Dream” jet coaster and I was surprised that my wife even rode and survived that one. The wait time was only 20 minutes! Wow! We then followed up with the “Spiderman” ride after posing for a nice picture in front of “Finnegan’s Bar”. For those of you who have not heard about Finnegan’s Bar, it is a part of the Smith’s curriculum and all the students become familiar with this routine during their study at Smith’s School of English. So it has some special meaning for all.
We rode the “Back to the Future” ride, “Jurassic Park”, “Jaw’s” and “Backdraft”. During each wait time I tried to spark some English conversation by asking trivia questions about the movie which was the theme for each ride. What I soon realized was that many of the students were too young to have seen the movie and so they could not answer the questions. However, the more recent ones were known and they were able to answer some of the questions. We enjoyed lunch and dinner together and watched the “Peter Pan in Neverland” show and the fireworks at 8:30 p.m. After 9 hours together we said our goodbyes and parted ways until the next fun event.
This was just another fun day for a Smith’s School of English franchise. One of which, I am sure, there will be many more.
Al Bartle (Smith’s School of English – Okamoto)
Leave a Reply