Yikes, another big post. Yesterday I took a whopping 303 pictures. I would have taken more if I hadn’t totally killed my camera’s battery. I may have to get a spare for the future. (Do I hear an excuse to go to Akihabara? …like I need one) I did, again shuffle through the hundreds of Megs of pictures and trimmed it down to under 1Mb. It’s still sort of big for you 56k users, sorry.

As planned yesterday I slept in a bit before getting ready for the day. I took the train to Shinjuku and switched to the JR Yamanote headed for Shimigawa. I had been through Shimigawa before, as it’s a Shinkansen stop. (Note to Sparks, its closer to my apartment than Tokyo station by at least 15 minutes.) I disembarked and marveled at the size of the station. It was at least as big as Tokyo station. I left the station as per what I remembered my guide book saying. Outside I didn’t see the mono-rail station that was supposed to be there. I did see a police box, however, and asked how to get where I was going. The policeman said (in English) “Oh, wrong station. You want Shinbahsi, not Shimigawa. You need to get back on the train.” Yeah, I totally mixed up the stations. The Kanji aren’t ever remotely similar. D’oh!

Re-disembarking at Shinbashi I immediately found signs pointing to the monorail station. I bought a $10.00 pass, which the guidebook said was enough to get around for the day and got on the monorail. The tracks go through the city for a bit before popping out along the harbor near the Rainbow Bridge (a famous Tokyo sight.) We went up on the lower deck of the bridge and crossed over onto…

Odaiba: A massive man made island that is the result of a project started in the 80’s. Those of you in/from Michigan know of Mt. Trash-more? Well, Odaiba is Trash-more Island. As many other costal cities around the world have done, Tokyo dumped billions of tons of garbage in the bay to create new land to build on. The name “Odaiba” comes from “Daiba” which were forts built in Tokyo bay to fend off Mathew Perry’s Black Ships. Daiba specifically refers to the cannons placed on such island forts. After the bubble popped in the 90’s Odaiba was a wasteland, but after being opened to commercial and entertainment businesses it has made a great comeback.

I rode the monorail to its terminus which gave me a good overview of what was to be had on the island. Outside the last station is a place than anyone worth their beans in the Anime community knows: Tokyo Big Sight.

Pictured above is the main hall. Every year there is a gai-normous Anime convention held here. Having seen the place in person, I will return and attend that convention some time in my life. Yesterday was the last day in the “Packaging Machinery Convention.” Alex, I’ll take “Topics I’m not interested in for 500.” I walked around the outside of the building for a bit. I really like how the architect played with angled in designing this place. The anti-Frank Lloyd Wright, there are almost no horizontal or vertical lines.

Heading across the street to have lunch at a McD’s I saw I found a food court with a Subway. It took every single thread of my being to not run through the door and hug the staff behind the counter. Lunch looked so good, I took a picture. Mmmm, 30 centimeter sub (drool.) The brown bag has steak fries. I don’t know if the US has them, but they’re awesome!

After lunch I walked around for a bit. I found a “wedding village” which looked like a fake Italian village. It even had a square with a steeple (with a bell that rings when people get married.) Next I walked along the waterfront to a building that hasn’t even been built yet.

I found a nice promenade than ran through the center of the island and walked along that for a while until I came upon an odd building with a Ferris wheel on top. It turns out this was the Toyota Experience (or part of it was.) The Ferris wheel is the second biggest in the world (to London’s.) At the Toyota Experience, if I had had an international driver’s license I could have driven any (Toyota) can I wanted around their test track. Instead I wandered around the “showroom” and looked at all the latest models. The Detroiter in me felt a little out of place in a Japanese car showroom… There was also a museum attached to a mall in the same complex. The mall looked like a rip-off of Cesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. It’s called “Venus Fort”, because Venus and Venice are pronounced the same in Japanese. I bought a keychain and the requisite small set of Legos from the Lego store there. The museum has several Toyota racing team cars, a Delorian, an old Ferrari, and a car made by German WWII airplane maker Messerschmitt.

Using the monorail stop attached to the Toyota Experience I rode to the south end of the island. There I walked along the shore in a very nice park. I had to use the “facilities” and had chance to take this:

To clear up any confusion, this is a Japanese/Eastern toilet. Hint: the handle bar goes in front.

Walking around to the west side of the island, maybe about half way up, I encountered this:

What is it with these people and the Statue of Liberty? Really people, come on.

Adjacent to the SoL was a large mall complex. Spotting a sign for a Toys “R” Us, I went to investigate. Sure ‘nough, Japanese Toys “R” Us stores are awesome! I picked up a Gundam model I had been looking for there.

Across the street from the mall is the Fuji-TV building. I swear, it this building ISN’T a giant transforming robot, I’ll eat my hat. The globe at the top is an observation platform and looks like something a villain form James Bond would build to house his devious plot. On the 5th floor there are observation windows from which you can watch as they make TV shows. Also on the 5th floor is a history of Fuji-TV. As I haven’t watched Fuji-TV and don’t’ read Japanese well, I skipped through the history section.

Outside the Fuji building and another block over is a beach area. A beach, you say, did you go swimming? Are you going to go back with a bathing suit? To this I remind you; to build Odaiba they dumped billions of tons of GARBAGE in the bay, so, no.

At 4:30pm the drizzle/haze/clouds that had been around all day gave way to a little sun. Note that at 4:30, it’s already making as to be sunset.
Here are some pictures of 3rd Daiba, one of two remaining original Daiba. 3rd Daiba was made into a national park area in 1923 and you can still see the foundation of the barracks and remains of the powder magazines. 6th Daiba (the one with trees) remains, bit is in-accessible.)

After seeing the Daiba, and being close to the causeway. I decided to do something insane and walk across the Rainbow Bridge (1.5Km) to the monorail station on the mainland side. There are walking paths on either side of the lower deck of the bridge and high fences to keep people from accidentally (or purposefully) falling off the bridge.
To those of you who don’t know, I’m not a fan of high places. Especially ones where there’s a chance to plummet. I did manage to make it all the way over the bridge without soiling myself, which I think was an achievement on my part. I suppose you’ll never overcome your fears if you don’t confront them. As I got to the other end of the bridge the sun set and the sky turned a beautiful shade of red. It was very pretty.

I got off the bridge and walked to the monorail stop and rode home. I was too exhausted by the day’s activities to write this entry.

Today had turned into another day off. It turns out the Tokyo auto show opens this weekend and there’s a big baseball game in the same area. I think I’ll go next weekend when there won’t be such a mob scene.

I cleaned and did laundry this morning and used my elite Japanese skills to call and see if the Tokyo “Games-Workshop” store would be open today.

I went by train to Jimbo-cho where the G.W. store is located. Exiting the subway station I found it easily enough. It’s right across the street. I went in and chatted with the staff for a while. I mostly asked questions and listened to the staff’s responses as most of my answers tend to be yes/no similarly short. It turns out that there’s only one official G.W. store in all of Japan. There are also several other stores who carry product, but only one of the real deal. The store itself looks like all the other G.W. stores I’ve ever been in. It was a little empty today and the manager suggested I come back on a weekday to meet some of the regulars. Evidently Warhammer Fantasy is bigger than 40K over here for the simple reason that the Fantasy rule book has been translated into Japanese and the 40K rulebook is only available in English. I’ll have to go back at some point and talk with some of the players.

After G.W. and a late lunch I wandered around the rest of Jimbo-cho. For those of you who have seen the R.O.D. TV anime series. Yes, it’s THAT Jimbo-cho. For the rest of you, Jimbo-cho is the book store district. If you want ANY Japanese book ever published, printed, or written you can find it in Jimbo-cho. Might not sound like fun, but it really is. I found a shop that specializes in manga and graphic novels and games. Their English language board game selection would make many an American game store cry.

On the way back to the station I found a map and determined that Jimbo-cho is at most 3 kilometers from Ichigaya station so I decided to save myself some train fare and walk it. On the way I found another Kendo supply store which I noted for later. The rest was the normal journey home.

“Which way do I point this thing again…”

Ja Mata Ne.