April 7, 2006

• Japan At Last! Part 7- Odaiba

  Since Andy had to go back to work the next day, I was on my own in
  Tokyo. So I decided this would be a good day to get some touristy
  shopping time in. To that end, I decided to catch the train over to
  Odaiba, home of my favorite mall in all of tokyo.

  Odaiba is built on the remains of the six Shinagawa batteries (daiba)
  that were built in 1854 to protect Tokyo from attacks by the Black
  Ships. In fact if i recall my nihongo correctly Odaiba means big
  cannon,

  First of course I had to take the subway/monorail over there
  
  
  Every time I ride this shuttle, it honestly feels like I am going to
  disneyland or something. Also, the subway goes through the divider of
  the freeway before going over the harbor and finally touching down at
  odaiba. Good times, good times
  
  Once there Odaiba basically consists of two giant malls, the toyota
  history garage, and of course the famous ferris wheel which makes an
  appearance in every anime movie based in tokyo and probably a live
  action films as well
  
  Not too impressive during the day but…
  
  But check it out at night! and onyl the inner 2 rings are lit up!
  Now this ferris wheel is well known for both the excellent romantic
  view it gives rubu-rubu couples, but also it’s height-115 meters tall,
  the  3rd tallest in the world!
  
  
  A pic of the corridors of Venus Fort, one of the shopping malls
  inside palette town and one designed with women in mind. No, seriously,
  this is actually known as the mall for ladies, with all of the stores
  carrying clothing boutiques, jewlery, perfume, or chocolate.

  Luckily, the desginers of this mall were clever enough to see how cruel
  and unusual that is to subject the male race too, so attached to the
  mall is the Toyota History Garage with a number of famous vehicles
  
  Such as this Toyota 2000 GT, aka the bond car from You only Live twice
  
  or the 1986 Toyota Trueno from Initial D
  
  Or even this 1973 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS
  
  Tired?
  
  Me and this racer show you that only “dummies” wear helmets
  
  Acht nein! where are the breaks on this crazy german scooter

  Next stop, Toyota’s concept Cars
  
  
  Isn’t this what George Jetson Drove?
  
  
  
  After the Toyota History Garage, I crossed over to Palette Town
  mall…which is the awesome because they have a dog cafe. No, not like
  the maid cafe…but all the food courts and most of the stores allowed
  pets, and one place even had little water bowls and a dog park built
  into it’s dining area
  
  The Palette Town mall also contains the exciting book store, which
  always ends up costing me a fortune in the various toys..erm…i mean
  collectables, i purchase there to add to the toy cabinet back home.
  Notable Acquisitions this year: curious george, the gremlins, some
  nightmare before xmas, and a few other geegaws
  
  Next it was over the rainbow bridge to nearby Joyopolis…home to
  Sega’s gameland park, and a number of other wonderful oddities, like
  Condomania
  
  The prophylactics…lubey, pokey, and bob…i mean rubber
  
  You may have noticed my new hat. Japan is the only place I can buy hats
  because I have a pinhead too tiny for american hats ;-P So i purchased
  some  varied articles of clothing when the opportunity arose
  
  Happy Josh, and Happy Cat!

  Afterward, it was a brief walk around ginza, too expensive for my broke
  loan taking butt, and then back to meet up with Andy for dinner at a
  famous curry place.

  Tomorrow it was off too kyoto…

  -J

  • 11:24 pm
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