Tokyo: Obaida, Robots, Toyota Mega Web, Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden and Shibuya

I had another epic day today. Today I decided to head over to Obaida which is on a man made island in Tokyo Bay and was amazed at what I got to see.

I even got to see the statue of liberty! The bridge in the background is the Rainbow Bridge and it seems to have funky colours at night.

The Fuji TV building (on the right) looked very cool; even the statue raised her arm in agreement.

Walking through the Symbol Promenade Park there were some great sculptures (and a mammoth robot) to be seen.

Inside the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) there were also other robots on display and an excellent display in multiple languages of their uses. The therapeutic robot was a cool seal that reacted when you patted it in various places or spoke to it due to many sensors it has. It has proven to be useful as a “pet” for people and to make them happier.

This robot is capable of standing up, lying down and maintaining its balance. It could be very useful, and what’s also great is that they have open sourced its platform to enable others to innovate further with it with OpenHRP (Open Architecture Humanoid Robotics Platform).

I then found a couple of geocaches nearby and picked up a trackable to bring back to NZ.

Toyota’s Mega Web was pretty good. It is a bit of a showroom, concept room, history of Toyota, Racing games, simulators and more. There was a huge emphasis on hybrid and electric vehicles and education about how they work.

The Venus Fort shopping complex was almost empty and done in the style of an 18th century European town.

The historical part of the Toyota Mega Web is also in Venus Fort showcasing various old cars. I can’t say I was super excited by it.

I then headed back into town

and went to the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. Since it was closing 40mins after I arrived (it closes at 16:30) I had to rush around but still got to see a fair bit of it. The 200 yen cost was worth it and I can imagine it being beautiful when the cherry blossoms are out.

Some fish even came to say hi.

I then walked into Shibuya (via Harajuka) and saw some more cool sculptures around the Shibuya train station.

For my last evening meal in Tokyo I had some superb yakitori  at a busy restaurant (Yakitori Akivoshi) on the western side of the station (which incidentally has lots of guitar shops nearby. Since I could decide between beer or sake I decide that obvious solution was to have big bottles of each; it worked.

On a Friday night, Shibuya seems to be a great place to be and Shibuya crossing was great. I even took a video of it. Enjoy!

Asakusa, Kappabashi-dori (aka Kitchen town) and just over 30km walking around Tokyo

I planned my day out before I departed this morning and after getting off the train at Ueno and making my way to the metro saw a sign to Ueno Park and decided to change my plans.

There was a lot more concrete in the park than I expected but it was still a nice wander and there were temples and candle holders within it too.

Exiting the park I wandered in vaguely the right direction and then spotted the Tokyo Skytree in the distance confirming I was going the right way.

Before long I arrived at Kappabashi-dori (aka Kitchen town) where it seems you can buy anything you need to setup a restaurant including pots & pans, tables & chairs, clothing, crockery, ovens, plastic food, ….

I checked out the golden turd (aka Asahi Flame)

before wandering through the very touristy part of Asakusa.

I caught the metro to Suehirocho and walked through Akihabara and tried out the toilets in the Sega building I had missed on the last visit. They have a peeing game there (bizarre)!

Following a train line while walking can work in some situations but I managed to walk probably about 5 extra kilometres by following the wrong train train line on two occasions trying to get to the Ogawamachi ski shop area, which didn’t have any great deals of stuff I was looking at. The Kanda Second Hand books stores looked quite interesting, with most books being Japanese but some others too.

Wandering further I walked through Kagurazaka which was quite a pretty area.

When looking at my map and looking at the address for Mojo which I couldn’t find on it but thought it was in this area (which I’ve since found it is - maybe tomorrow) somebody asked if they could help with directions. They said Shinjuku was a long way away and to take the subway; sounded like a challenge to me, so I walked there instead via Ushigome which contained lots of apartment buildings.

Entering Shinjuku from far east meant I came in at a different angle which was great. I wandered about for a while and then decided to walk to my hotel in Ikebukuro many kilometres away following close to the Yamanote line. Once past Shin-Okubo it was mostly dull.

Takadanobaba and Mejiro did however have some life to them and the odd cool shop (check out all the balls and shoes (inside) stacked super high).

Close to Ikebukuro I was on a cool street that even had railway control signals and had to wait for a train to pass.

Dinner tonight was Korean and beer (of course).

It’s just past 10pm now and according to my Fitbit I’ve walked 41,883 steps today (a new record) and covered just over 30km. I should sleep well.

Capsule Hotel in Tokyo, Harajuku and a little other Tokyo stuff

Since we were in Tokyo we thought we should spend a night in a capsule hotel. The capsules were stacked two high and you could sit up in them and lengthwise even I found the length to be just ok (and I’m not exactly tall at 173cm!). These ones were stacked two high.

In the bed my view was as per below. The TV (as I found out in the morning had one dodgy channel if you pressed the Band button!).

In terms of luggage, big items were left behind reception and everybody was given a locker with enough space to fit a small bag in. We were even provided with pyjamas which we put on after using the Japanese-style bathing room/sauna (aka Onsen).

The capsules aren’t exactly sound proof, so I did hear people coming and going throughout the night, a ridiculous quantity of alarm clocks going off in the morning and people watching tv.

Earlier in the evening once we finally arrived in Tokyo after snow at Narita airport delayed our flight by a few hours we headed out to Roppongi and Roppongi Hils for a bit of a look. Roppongi is known as the place to go clubbing and there were a few seedy types around. Roppongi Hills on the other hand is quite an upmarket shopping area, where we ended up having dinner.

For Chris’s last day in Tokyo we started off by going to the opening of the day at the Takashimaya department store and all the staff bowed as we walked around. It was a really strange feeling. There were only about a dozen people waiting to go in, so it was great and we made a line to the escalators and did a lap upstairs before they got started for the day.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building as a free viewing platform (in fact one in each tower). It was a great day to look around Tokyo and Mt Fuji was easily to be found.

We then headed off to a bunch of places shopping and had a better look around Harajuku, predominantly down Takeshita street and the surrounding blocks. Harajuku is where you really see individuality in what some people wear.

In the evening I wandered around Ikebukuro and even found a cat cafe, where for people who don’t have the space to have a cat of their own can go and visit some.