The next day I woke up to glorious weather. The evening before I had already discussed with Amber what to do. It was too short notice for hiking, and the Enoden would probably be very crowded on Sunday. I had booked the Sky Tree for the following day. So she suggested I try the Odaiba amusement island.
I hadn’t had this on my travel plan, but a quick research showed that it would be quite fun. Lots of shopping opportunities, a fully animated life-size mecha statue, a science museum, and generally something different than just temples.
Under the bridge (and on it)
I set off in a good mood. To get to the island I had planned to cross Tokyo Bay via the Rainbow Bridge, from which one can have a magnificent view of the Tokyo skyline (spoiler alert: it does). The first step was to take the Yurikamome Line to Shibaura-futo. That was the first exciting part of the adventure because the Yurikamome is fully automated (just like the monorail to Haneda). Of course, everything went smoothly and I made my way to the bridge. A few tourists were also looking for the entrance.
North or south side? From the north side, I would have a great view of the Tokyo skyline. Whereas Odaiba didn’t seem so exciting to me during the day. After a bit of searching around, I finally found the right elevator and set off on a brisk 30-minute walk. It was windy, but that suited me just fine considering the sun was already scorching. There was hardly any traffic at that time of day, so I was able to stroll across without being bothered by noisy engines. I took my time to take lots of photos and finally arrived in Odaiba at around 11:30.
Mecha Madness and Cotton Candy Ice Cream
Food and more food
I was now feeling a little hungry. For lunch I headed straight for the Fuji TV area. The Fuji TV building was hard to miss.. I kept the option of using the observation deck there later. First, however, I went to Diver City, a large mall in the middle of the Fuji area. The ELK, which I had actually been looking forward to, was unfortunately permanently closed. But there was still enough choice in the huge food mall on the upper floor. More than enough, to be honest, because I immediately ran into my old “I just can’t decide” problem. In the end, I ended up at the Torikai Express. I still have no idea what I ordered there, something with chicken, but it was very tasty, cheap and filling.
So far, so good. I really wanted to have dessert. I had already added Decora Creamery to my food itinerary. Lots of fancy ice cream in the wildest flavors, along with colorful cotton candy – that sounded as crazy as I expected from Japan. The booth was only a few steps away, but the queue was considerable. But I had already had practice standing in line. I watched the children (and adults!) as they enthusiastically selected their ice cream and candy cotton. I was naturally very excited. After about 15 minutes it was my turn, and after the usual “lost in translation” debacle, I finally had my ice cream.
Wellβ¦ Very, very, very sweet, which is probably due to the mountains of candy cotton, which also made it difficult to eat without ending up stuck in sugar everywhere. The ice cream itself (I had Matcha Sea Salt) was quite tasty, but I just can’t get used to the texture of soft ice cream. For me, it’s no comparison to a good Italian gelato. Sorry, Japan π It was pretty good though, and I slurped it down slowly, got really dirty, and then carried on.
GUNDAM
Now I wanted to see the famous GUNDAM statue in front of Diver City! After all, that was one of the main reasons why I had headed to Diver City in the first place. Even though I don’t relate much to these mecha universes it was still exciting. Of course, there wan’t just the statue. The entire lower floor of the mall was part of it in one way or another, overlaoding you with every conceivable GUNDAM merchandise.
At the main entry of the mall there was the final round of some kind of competition for a J-pop/rock girls’ band. Unfortunately I was way too late to really see much of it. I applauded politely and then went to the large crowd around the mecha.
And yes, the thing is really impressive when you stand right in front of it. It is 18 meters high and weighs 25 tons! At the moment it wasn’t moving at the moment, but I had already planning to see the evening show. The weather was great, and lots of people of all ages had gathered around the robot.
However, I wasn’t that interested in the merchandise, so I didn’t linger and instead went to Miraikan. I was already pretty late.
At the Miraikan
I was particularly excited about the Miraikan. Science museums have always been my thing, and I was curious to see how it would compare to the Technorama. Unfortunately, I was quite late – the museum closes at 5 p.m. – and so I only had about two hours to dive into the various immersive exhibitions.
The focus here is on making science easily accessible. I knew a lot of the facts already, but the presentation was often still new. The “Planetary Crisis” exhibition was particularly exciting. A lot of the other exhibits revolved around looking at the future, with a sometimes more, sometimes less critical look at whether science and technology could solve the problems, especially with regard to climate change. A little ironic when you consider that Japan is one of the countries with the highest per capita waste rate.
The description of the HAYABUSA missions was equally exciting. It made my “cosmology heart” beat faster. There was a lot of information I didn’t know about it. The insights into the the precision and planning of the missions were fascinating, and I lingered there far too long. Resulting in having no time for the “Dome” theater, but I wouldn’t have been able to get tickets anyway. As with many really cool shows in Japan, you have to book ages in advance.
So I went down to the ground floor, played a little with Aibo and Paro, tried to influence the future of the world in the “timeline” game (I didn’t succeed), and admired the “Digitally Natural” exhibition for a while. I had hoped to also find the ASIMO in this area, but apparently the exhibition was closed, or I just couldn’t find it.
Conclusion
It is absolutely worthwhile if you want to see a different way of imparting knowledge and are not only interested in hard data. I think it would be particularly exciting for older children, much more so than the Natural History Museum in Ueno.
A relaxing evening in Odaiba
Beautiful views
Now the day was almost over. To round it off, I wanted to enjoy the view over Odaiba from the observation deck of the Telecom Center, which is only a few meters away from Miraikan. The entrance fee is very cheap at just 500Β₯, and since the platform is open until 11 p.m., I had the chance to experience the evening and sunset.
It was really amazing. Very chilled, with few guests, just a few photographers and a tourist couple. Lounge music, a comfortable sofa, and if you’re really lucky even the cocktail bar is open – I wasn’t that lucky, but I still took the opportunity to just relax for an hour after this exhausting day:
and a delicious dinner
After it got dark, I made my way to Aqua City, the second shopping center on Odaiba. But not without stopping by Diver City again, because the big mecha show should be in full swing there. And lo and behold: The thing flashes and blinks and roars and moves, while all kinds of fight and battle scenes are played on x screens. A cool thing, much funnier than I actually expected. After that, I quickly went to my last destination of the day.
In Aqua City I wanted to eat a good burger at Kua’Aina – maybe not the most Japanese dinner ever, but I had heard a lot of positive things about it. The Statue of Liberty right next to Aqua City confused me a bit, but oh wellβ¦ Vegas has the Eiffel Tower, so why should Tokyo not have the Statue of Liberty. The burger place looked unspectacular from the outside, but you should not just judge by appearances. I devoured an avocado burger meal there, which was actually very good!
After that I scurried into the shopping centre, mainly because I had to go to the toilet one last time. The shops were already closing, but I stumbled upon a nice souvenir shop where I bought a few small things for myself and friends – incense holders, notebooks, soap and the like. The saleswoman was very nice and told me that she had lived in DΓΌsseldorf (of course!) for a few years. I got the feeling that she enjoyed being able to use her few words of German once again.
At around 10 p.m. I set off for home. I took the Yurikamome because my feet were hurting and it was almost three kilometers from Odaiba to the mainland. On the way back I took a few pictures of Tokyo Central Station, but since I was going to go there again the next day anyway, I didn’t linger too long. Satisfied but also very tired, I finally arrived home at around 11 p.m.
