Odaiba 「お台場」

As the title says, today we made a trip to Odaiba, a man-made island, originally built in the 1800s for defensive purposes, but today turned into a leisureland of shopping malls, arcades, a couple of hotels and assorted attractions.

To get to Odaiba you need to take the driverless Yurikamome 「ゆりかもめ」train from Shimbashi 「新橋」station. It goes over Rainbow Bridge to get to Odaiba, which turns in a full circle over the ocean-- good photo opportunity (we missed it though). Arriving in Odaiba, we made a beeline for Deck's Tokyo Beach, a department store a bit different from other department stores.

It has the usual facilities-- clothes, shoes, accessories and so on, as well as a restaurant floor (with an unusual amount of buffets), but also has an exercise orientated theme-park, a Hong Kong themed mall, and Sega Joyopolis-- an indoor amusement centre with rides and arcade games and the like.

We wandered around, perusing the nifty shops, bypassing the boring ones. There was a homewares store, selling really cool tables and crockery. There were also some odd sounding shops, so naturally, we took photos.

Making our way through the levels of shops we came across this cool kaki go-ori (「かき氷」, shaved ice) parlour. Every other time we've had shaved ice it has been from a vendor on the side of the road, or out the front of a temple or whatever, and you'd choose what flavour syrup you want on your ice and pay. But this was like a kaki-go-ori bar. You paid ¥300 for a cup of plain ice, then put as many flavours as you wanted from the selection of 15 or so bottles laid out on the bar in front of you.

It was really cool. Ben only had two flavours, but I had a complete mix. Lemonade, peach and melon are the current favourites, with green apple coming close. some spoiled little brat on the table next to us started making banshee noises because he didn't get what he wanted or something, so we finished our ice and moved on.

There were signs advertising some Muscle Park, and in the hope that there would be actual muscle there we went to check it out. Turns out that Muscle Park is not filled with half-naked buff men, but is in fact an amusement park where you come to do activities and competitions to achieve a higher level of fitness or balance or dexterity. Or whatever.

There were obstacle courses, a healthy eating area, courses to test your speed or balance or reflex, simple activities anyone could enjoy (frisbee throwing, soccer, etc.), and this really cool game for kids that involves sucking plastic balls up a tube so that they get launched from above so you can try and catch them in the bucket strapped to your back. Whoever catches the most balls wins.

Pretty cool concept, and more than a little game show-esque. Even if they majority of the kids playing it lacked the coordination to catch many balls, they still had fun running around and competing in a friendly atmosphere.

Not game enough to try anything (everything was in Japanese anyway >_> ), we ran off outside to take photos of Tokyo Bay, Rainbow Bridge, a replica of the statue of liberty they put here for some reason and any other buildings or structures that looked cool.

Sick of all this walking, we figured a bit of a snack and a sit down was in order. McDonald's proved to be most convenient. We sat outside, beneath a tree and ate our authentic Japanese McChicken meals. Shh! >_>

Stomachs content, we migrated back inside to have a peek at this Joyopolis place. Turns out it's a big indoor amusement park, with virtual reality, arcade games and even a rollercoaster. We didn't actually go in-- weren't in the mood to wade through hordes of sweaty smelly teens-- but we did buy this cool ice cream called Dippin' Dots. The sign on the shop assures us it's the "ice cream of the future". Look at the photo to see why.

Why yes. That is a little bowl full of ice cream balls. Pellets... whatever.

Anyway, moving right along...

To... Toyota Megaweb! This is the place where Toyota shows off it's new cars, superior hybrid technology, and has a range of activities and displays (all free) for you to experience. It was interesting to see how the new electric-hybrid engines are improving.

While I read about hybrid cars and why Toyota's models are oh so awesome, Ben lined up with the kiddies and had a go in a race-car simulator (read: Grand Prix arcade racing game).

We fluffed around a little more before moving on to the next place of interest: the game arcade. Crane game is still going strong here in Japan, with all sorts of prizes able to be won-- soft toys, pillows, candy, figurines, towels, game consoles (Nintendo DS, Wii, etc), sea monkeys, ant farms, mini aquariums containing little fugu (puffer fish)... to name a few.

Tried our luck at some crane game, but alas, it seems you have to be Asian to actually win anything from them. The crane itself it ridiculously weak, and kind of just slips around the thing you're trying to pick up. The best bet it to find a crane game with an item hanging over the edge, move the crane over it and just push the damn item into the hole.

Got sick of losing so moved onto purikura 「プリクラ, abbreviated of the term "print club"」、which are those crazy photo booths you see Japanese kids running into, posing, being photographed, then moving to the touchscreen booth next door to decorate the photo of them and their friends with glittery sparkles and cool backgrounds, and ponies and love hearts and... shit.

Ponies and love hearts and shit? Hells yeah! This was our third print club so far (with more to come I'm sure), but our first ultra-sparkly one. It's amazing how gay everything looks when you cover it in glitter. Pity we don't have any scanning facilities, or I could upload some photos to show you all. >.< style="text-align: center;">

By this time we ere tired and hungry and our feet were sore, so we caught the train back to Asakusa, grabbed a bite to eat and settled down in our capsules for the night.

Tried out the photo-stitching application on my camera-- several shots of Tokyo Bay all sewn together, courtesy of Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 ^^ .