Feeling touristy - Odaiba

Yesterday me and David decided we hadn't be nearly touristy enough so far. We met at 10am and set off for Odaiba, an artificial island off Tokyo bay. It was a strange little place with some amazing futuristic architecture and stunning views across the bay.

You take a driverless transit train called the Yurikamome line. We couldn't work how if it was a monorail or on a track - wikipedia informs me that it's on wheels and is guided by the side walls.

A peek of Tokyo Tower between the sky scrapers.

 Past some ships in the harbour.

 Tokyo Big Sight, or the Tokyo Exhibition Centre. What an amazing building! This is where the guys went to a games expo a couple of weeks ago.

 The back of the Fuji Television building.

 A slightly better view of the fuji television building. I'm not really sure why this little artificial island off Tokyo bay seems to be a hub of futuristic buildings like this but it's quite an impressive sight.

 Me beside the sized down statue of liberty. Your guess is as good as mine as to why it's here...

The Rainbow Bridge which we had previously crossed on the Yurikamome train.

After checking out the view across the bay and the bizarre statue we turned around to explore what was on the island. There were a few office towers, such as the television centre, and in one we discovered the Shell museum. Yep, a museum dedicated to the oil company Shell. If you couldn't guess; it was dull. Luckily for us it was free entry and consisted of one room so the whole experience was over quickly. It was mainly company propaganda and promises about how green their intentions were. I didn't buy into it, nor did I buy anything from the gift shop which was actually larger than the museum itself.

Beyond the office buildings was a pedestrian suspension bridge across a motorway, on the other side of which was probably Tokyo's answer to Blackpool. There was a sorry looking outlet shopping centre, a large car showroom, an arcade and a pretty awesome ferris wheel.

 Just like the Tokyo Tower, it has been painted this hideous 'international orange and white' due to aviation rules (I wonder how the Eiffel tower gets away with being green?).

 Me and David decided to give it a go and were just about the first people to ride it on the day. Because there was no queue and it didn't cost more I took an executive decision that we wanted the glass bottomed pod (you might be able to see it on the photo above this one, the pods which are a different shape to the rest). As it turns out David has a mild fear of heights so I guess I enjoyed it more than he did...

The view from the ferris wheel was fantastic and, luckily, the glass bottomed floor had gotten pretty scratched from use so it didn't feel unsafe (well, I didn't think so).

 The tallest car storage elevator I've seen so far. It went down into the building containing the car show room, I guess these were just surplus cars in storage for the moment.

 A huge container ship docked in the harbour.

 A view of the back of the Fuji Television building. I really did love this building more than I was expecting to, it's just so brave and unusual.

 Tokyo traffic; better than London's at the same time of day I'd say.

After getting off the ferris wheel we had a wander into an amusement arcade. I guess because it was early afternoon on a Wednesday the place was deserted. Here's what we found:

 Pachinko. Strange gambling game played with little silver balls, sort of like pinball I guess. I have no idea how to play but this game is hugely popular. All over Tokyo there are pachinko parlours with storeys and storeys of these machines with flashing lights and noises and they're all very popular with the Japanese. I'm still too baffled to give it a go, but I hear it's very addictive.

 Weird ride on animals.

 Purikura booths. I mentioned these in a previous post, these are the photo machines with green screens that distort your eyes and mouth. They're usually sponsored by a company of some sort, often make up; one machine we've used gave me some free fake eyelashes. This time me and David opted for a Hello Kitty booth.

As we were leaving we noticed a fortune telling shrine - if I remember correctly you chose a paper slip with your fortune on it, read it, and if you don't like it you tie it on the grate. Anything for a bit of luck at the pachinko machines, I guess!

At this point we left Odaiba, so I'll end this post here. Still a lot more photos to come, I took about 300 from the whole day! Next post(s): sushi on a conveyour belt, Zojoji shrine and Tokyo tower at dusk.