After yesterday's intense sunshine I though that we'd have at least a good day today, but the rain had come back. We headed to Shimbashi where we got on the Yurikomome monorail which runs from Shimbashi station to thorugh Obdaiba, the Tokyo Bay Area. We went almost to the end of the line and got off at the Tokyo Big Sight, a huge conference centre. The building itself is made up of 4 inverted pyramids, looks totally weird.
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| Another series of random buildings. |
From the big sight we headed through a shopping arcade towards a huge bridge which was completely deserted. It was weird standing on the bridge in the rain with no-one around for as far as we could see. The bridge led us to Pallette Town which was full of wonderment.
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| A bridge, a Ferris wheel and Pallette Town |
Pallette town contained a weird assortment of car show rooms and arcades, so after looking at some cars and playing some arcade games we headed off.
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| A car and yet another building (in the rain) |
After wandering around a large part of the bay area which was just like an industrial estate we ended up at the rather strange telecom tower, a huge satellite tower which you can go into. There didn't seem to be any point in going in though, since it was just full of offices although we did wander about a bit looking like lost tourists. It was shortly after this we discovered the Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, which is where the geeky fun really took off. First up was the display of robots, including some bipedal ones and some other crawly ones.
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| The MeSci museum and its robots |
Next was the most complicated way to explain the internet to someone ever. A huge contraption where by you made an ASCII value out of 8 black and white balls, hit a switch and another 8-bit address was added, the 16 balls then went rolling about through this huge machine and 5 minutes later ended up at the place you sent them where that person could see the single character you had sent. Insane!
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| The Internet! |
They also had a huge globe which was covered in LEDs to make up a constantly changing display of the current weather systems and some weird Japanese car of the future with 8 wheels.
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| The Weather across the globe. |
We then left, got some photos from outside, including a cheeky one of the Moonraker girls who staffed the museum. Although having looked at the photo since I don't think I was being as subtle as I thought at the time.
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| Telecom Tower, MeSci, Moonraker, random building shot. |
We then headed to the TV Tokyo building, home to one of Tokyo's TV stations (can't remember which one). The huge ball at the top is an observation deck you can get into which was pretty cool. Although all the photos from the top are of grey skies with raindrops on the window in front, it wasn't really the weather for it.
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| TV Tokyo, TV Tokyo, statues, TV Tokyo, Random Buildings. |
The thing about Tokyo is just when you think you've got it sussed and nothing you see will surprise you along comes something which just isn't right. Like this scale model of the Statue of Liberty just looking over the bay. What's that all about?
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| Why? |
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