Day Fifteen - Odaiba

So today, it rained. This was day 2/2 of making up for lost sleep, and it was nice ^_^ it also worked out for the best because it rained all day until around 4 ._.

Because it was raining, I chose an indoor thing to do in Tokyo, which was going to the Odaiba area. It's an artificial island that contains many futuristic, industrial, and otherwise interesting buildings. This includes the Fuji (as in TVs) building, which is all these pieces at 90-degree angles, with a big sphere set amongst them. To get there, you have to take this new train system that's pretty cool, actually... it's unmanned, and all new and modern. You go all woosh up and over the bridge to Odaiba ._. woosh...

First I went to Venus Fort, which is a big shopping mall with an old Roman theme, like the Caesar's Palace shopping mall in Las Vegas, except smaller. It was a good place to kill a couple hours, even though I didn't get anything. Across the walkway from VF is the Toyota showroom/info center/entertainment place, where you can do things like go on a ride where you sit in a hybrid car, which I did not do. I spent no time in the Toyota place, really, except walking through it to get to the giant ferris wheel.

Supposedly, it's the tallest ferris wheel in the world, as of 1999 (I think). I'm not sure if it still has that distinction, but it's still pretty cool. It was a nice ferris wheel and gave good views out over the water to Tokyo. I went up around dusk, so the lights of the city were just coming on. The whole thing made me feel kind of nostalgic and, of course, made me think about Honey & Clover :<

... :<<<<<<

Anyway... after that, I made my way over to Sega Joypolis, which is a sort of indoor theme park. Like most theme parks, it's the kind of thing where you pay a high admission price, and then everything inside costs money, too. I got the "passport" which lets me go on any of the rides without paying more, but everything else... food, video games, carnival games, etc... costs more money, of course. Annoying. ALSO ANNOYING which made me really sad, is that they were doing this stamp program where you get a stamp card and try to fill it up by going on a bunch of rides and playing 2 carnival games. Then you turn it in and get... something or other. I got my card filled up by 9.30 and headed back to the card place... it was gone! You had to do it by 9! ._. I was really sad about that. I don't know why it made me so sad, rather than just mildly annoyed.

Other than that, my experience was pretty good, although it made me miss my friends... everyone there was doing everything in pairs at least. I went on the spinning roller coaster, which was actually really painful... very very jerky. It's unfortunate, because it would've been fun. I also went on a bunch of virtual reality rides where a bunch of people sit in a car or something in a dark room in front of a screen and the car moves around, etc. Those were all pretty enjoyable. I also did three different things that were similar, except they were games... two shooters and one hang-gliding game. Those were interesting though not as enjoyable.

The only thing I actually skipped because I was alone was probably the coolest thing there (sadly) but it also had the longest line. It was a half pipe with giant snowboard shaped things attached to poles in the ceiling. One person stood on each end of the board, facing out in opposite directions, and the arms swung them back and forth, while they tried to spin the board around. There were four going at the same time and the team with the most points at the end won. It looked pretty sweet, I have to say.

I came away with some prizes, all won in the carnival area (I bought carnival tokens to get some stamps on my card, but... we know how that turned out >_>) and I have to say that Joypolis was fun... definitely a good way to spend a rainy day.

After all that, I came back to Shibuya again, cos all the restaurants in Odaiba were closed ._. I ate Italian again .____. mostly because I wanted to eat at a nice-ish sit down place after walking around all day, and it was the first and possibly only one open. There are a lot of places to eat that are open late or 24h, but most of them are very casual, or stand up places, or those little shops with one small counter with just a couple of stools. Wasn't in the mood for that. The place where I ate was called La Bohemme, I think, and the food was good and reasonably priced. I had some risotto... nom ^_^;

It's supposed to rain again tomorrow, but I'm going to Nikko, which is north of Tokyo, and home of the infamous "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys, among many other cool things. I'm pretty excited about going, even though it's likely that it will rain for at least part of the day. I walked through a bamboo forest in the rain in Usuki, so some temples and such in Nikko shouldn't be too bad.