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What to do on my last full day in Japan? What was left to do in Tokyo? Tons, frankly. I opted for trying to get to the ocean, Tokyo being a seaside town, technically. This was something of a failure -- I did see expanses of water, but never a view that said "oh hai! I'm looking at the Pacific from the opposite side" (from California, which isn't even true since I'd have been facing south or southeast, most likely) -- but I had fun anyway.
First step, finally mailing postcards. That went well. Then, food. I found another hole in the wall by the train station, don't even recall if it called itself udon-soba or not. I asked for chirashi. I was asked if I wanted 700 yen or 900 yen chirashi. "Different pieces". I opted for expensive. Piece of tuna, piece of salmon, pieces of more exotic seafoods. Miso soup... with the head of a giant prawn, or even crayfish, sticking out of it. First time I took photos of my food. I figured out how to ask how to eat; she responded with sucking motions and sounds. Honestly, that didn't work well. Neither did cracking it open; it was easy, but what meat there was was pretty attached to the shell.
Then the Yurikamome line, a "driverless" train going through Odaiba district, basically a bunch of islands in the bay. Oh, something not mentioned in the previous entry was my seeing my first subway station with barriers, waist high walls and gates that wouldn't prevent a detemined suicide, but prove how accurate the train pulling in has to be. The Yurikamome stations are fully enclosed, though, in glass walls and doors; no suicides on that line.
I rode the whole line, went back part way. Saw some wacky architecture, particularly including the Tokyo Big Sight convention center, known to me from the anime Genshiken as the site of Comiket, where I'd declined to go the previous weekend. "Oh, there it is." I took photos of me and it, as my one token to anime pilgrimage. Relatively large amounts of open green space in this area, which one could look on with envy. I noticed a bunch of the freeways were painted in blue, green, or pink pastels. Don't know if the colors mean anything or if Japan just likes being more colorful than the US.
Then I got off. I could have tried to enter the Big Sight, but I opted for the museum of emerging technology instead. Robotics, space, space, geophysics. There's a model of an ISS module, and signs asking what we can learn from the ISS. I never saw an answer. After that, I checked a shopping mall, Venus Fort, due to a description in my guide: "no windows, optical illusion of a sky." It's an indoors pretending to be an outdoors, which always makes me happy. Italian architecture, blue ceiling with painted clouds, and indirect lighting, shifting to emulate sunset, supposedly emulating storms with forked lightning at some point but I didn't see it. This all reminded me that somewhere in Japan is a bigass enclosed artificial beach, 300 meters from a real beach, which sounds silly until you think about Pacific water temperatures at this latitude, and also "weather". Venus Fort was far from perfect: the bluesky was just most of one level, with the level above having an obvious ceiling though trying to continue the "Italian streets" illusion, and the level below just being shiny pastel kidsmall. And the clouds were fixed, not moving projections. Still, it was nice, especially as outdoors was still pretty gray.
Then a second mall, Decks Tokyo Beach, to track down rumor of a Little Hong Kong on floors 6 and 7. I passed Sega Joypolis, some indoor amusement park or something. Hong Kong proved to be one building over, and was neat, and I had dim sum. More dim sum, as I'd found a teashop in Venus Fort, though expensive and with limited selection. Lots of choices in Little Hong Kong; I went cheap and chicken when I found a kaiten dim sum place -- trays on a conveyor belt, like kaiten-zushi, but with Chinese dishes. Wasn't the best I've had, but was a nice change of pace and cheap.
This day really cries out for photos but that's a whole big undertaking.
First step, finally mailing postcards. That went well. Then, food. I found another hole in the wall by the train station, don't even recall if it called itself udon-soba or not. I asked for chirashi. I was asked if I wanted 700 yen or 900 yen chirashi. "Different pieces". I opted for expensive. Piece of tuna, piece of salmon, pieces of more exotic seafoods. Miso soup... with the head of a giant prawn, or even crayfish, sticking out of it. First time I took photos of my food. I figured out how to ask how to eat; she responded with sucking motions and sounds. Honestly, that didn't work well. Neither did cracking it open; it was easy, but what meat there was was pretty attached to the shell.
Then the Yurikamome line, a "driverless" train going through Odaiba district, basically a bunch of islands in the bay. Oh, something not mentioned in the previous entry was my seeing my first subway station with barriers, waist high walls and gates that wouldn't prevent a detemined suicide, but prove how accurate the train pulling in has to be. The Yurikamome stations are fully enclosed, though, in glass walls and doors; no suicides on that line.
I rode the whole line, went back part way. Saw some wacky architecture, particularly including the Tokyo Big Sight convention center, known to me from the anime Genshiken as the site of Comiket, where I'd declined to go the previous weekend. "Oh, there it is." I took photos of me and it, as my one token to anime pilgrimage. Relatively large amounts of open green space in this area, which one could look on with envy. I noticed a bunch of the freeways were painted in blue, green, or pink pastels. Don't know if the colors mean anything or if Japan just likes being more colorful than the US.
Then I got off. I could have tried to enter the Big Sight, but I opted for the museum of emerging technology instead. Robotics, space, space, geophysics. There's a model of an ISS module, and signs asking what we can learn from the ISS. I never saw an answer. After that, I checked a shopping mall, Venus Fort, due to a description in my guide: "no windows, optical illusion of a sky." It's an indoors pretending to be an outdoors, which always makes me happy. Italian architecture, blue ceiling with painted clouds, and indirect lighting, shifting to emulate sunset, supposedly emulating storms with forked lightning at some point but I didn't see it. This all reminded me that somewhere in Japan is a bigass enclosed artificial beach, 300 meters from a real beach, which sounds silly until you think about Pacific water temperatures at this latitude, and also "weather". Venus Fort was far from perfect: the bluesky was just most of one level, with the level above having an obvious ceiling though trying to continue the "Italian streets" illusion, and the level below just being shiny pastel kidsmall. And the clouds were fixed, not moving projections. Still, it was nice, especially as outdoors was still pretty gray.
Then a second mall, Decks Tokyo Beach, to track down rumor of a Little Hong Kong on floors 6 and 7. I passed Sega Joypolis, some indoor amusement park or something. Hong Kong proved to be one building over, and was neat, and I had dim sum. More dim sum, as I'd found a teashop in Venus Fort, though expensive and with limited selection. Lots of choices in Little Hong Kong; I went cheap and chicken when I found a kaiten dim sum place -- trays on a conveyor belt, like kaiten-zushi, but with Chinese dishes. Wasn't the best I've had, but was a nice change of pace and cheap.
This day really cries out for photos but that's a whole big undertaking.