Sunday, April 26, 2009

Odaiba With Angelica

Angelica and I bought day passes on the Yurikamome line and then spent a whole day cruising around Odaiba, the man-made island in Tokyo Bay. The line is new and it's pretty cool because it is fully automated. It runs on an elevated track, which provides some nice views while traveling.



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Daiba means fort or battery in Japanese, as this place was originally built in the 1800s to defend the bay.




I saw some Wicked ads and I inquired about show times. That interest was gone as soon as I realized the whole show was going to be in Japanese.


Me in front of the Fuji TV building. Wikitravel notes Odaiba's architecture as "hypermodern and just plain strange buildings memorably described as the result of an acid-soaked pre-schooler's architecture class". Zing!


We went up into the building to see the view. This shot came out pretty cool despite the windows. The bridge is the Rainbow Bridge. Its lights change color according to the season or something like that. Here you can see some of the smaller defensive islands, Tokyo Tower, and even a small blimp overhead.


This is Tokyo Big Sight, a convention center.


We discovered a pretty cool place on the second floor of the Decks Tokyo Beach mall. It was still a mall setup, but modeled on an old street with lots of thematic additions. It was a lesser version of the excellent Ramen Museum we saw a few days earlier. A highlight not present at the ramen place was an old school arcade.






This place was memorable. For a few bucks we tried our skill at knocking rotating prizes off their bases with a little gun that shot tiny corks. It was one of those games where you still got a bad deal even if you won something, but it was super fun. I knocked a couple of little toys down before it happened. The conveyor belt rotating the prizes began having some mechanical stutters, causing a ton of un-won prizes to fall. The crowd went wild, and the flustered game operator ran around trying to collect everything before anyone ran off. He went behind the machine to fix it and the same thing happened again. It was hilarious.


By this time it was starting to get dark, so we probably only had time for one last thing. I think we made a good choice. We stopped at Megaweb, a Toyota exhibition hall. A good portion of everything was probably more for people who care about cars, but I found plenty to keep me occupied.


I don't know why, but I thought the marketing on these were interesting. They seemed to be talking as if someones car is an extension of their living room.



My favorite part of the whole thing was the concept car area.


All I care to read about this one is that it was made in collaboration with Sony and it's named Pod.


This one is called the Fine-X. These names are pretty pukey but the cars look cool. The gull doors and swivelling chairs are something I don't think I've seen before.


Its even got this cool Flight of the Navigator steering wheel going on.


The concepts really started to get out of hand.


A futuristic concept video for the Toyota i-swing.


I tried to get conceptual with the Ferris wheel outside.

1 comment:

  1. odaiba is a cool place. I've only been there twice, but really enjoyed it both times haha.

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