Japan Day 10 (jū)

Odaiba Day! And our first ride on an above ground train!

Odaiba is a manmade island in Tokyo Bay that you reach by crossing the Rainbow Bridge. If you look hard you can see the Tokyo Tower hiding in the background. This shot is looking from Odaiba back towards Tokyo proper.


We got off at a station next to a maritime museum, shaped appropriately enough like a ship.


Our goal for today was the Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. It's basically a giant hands-on kid's science museum. And the main attraction was to be a ten minute show with Asimo, Honda's amazing walking robot.


Here's the lobby where we purchased our tickets.


BMW had an exhibit on hydrogen, with their hydrogen powered 7-series being the star.


There were lots of neat things to look through, buttons to press, and touch screens to touch. Most of the text was also in English so we had some idea of what was going on.


This was a model Maglev train that floated along this little track to the wonderment of this kid.


A lady also gave a neat superconductor demonstration. That's a liquid nitrogen cooled hunk of superconductor hovering over the track. She then moved it up to one end of the track and let go, causing it to race down the track like a hotwheel car, go through the loop and up the other side. It went back and forth like this a couple of times, and she could even tip the track over, yet the pellet would stay right on the track. Until it finally warmed up enough to lose its superconductivity, that is.


On this floor there were also a bunch of robotics demonstrations, with the star being....Asimo!


He walks out of his little room during the demonstration. It's a little creepy to watch. He's pretty funny when he runs though. I'll post a link to a movie of it once I get it uploaded to google.

Once we finished with the museum we headed out for the next station to go back towards the Fuji TV building, the Odaiba AquaCity mall, and a certain famous statue. This neat building is the Telecom Center. The jets taking off from Haneda airport can be seen during take off right through the center.


A quick trip back to the other end of the island and we can see the very distinctive Fuji TV building. Yup, that's a giant ball in the middle of it.


This Aqua City mall was the first mall that seemed like our malls in America. They had several American stores inside, and they weren't all high-end designer stores where you pay an arm and a leg for everything.


Wait! This isn't New York!


Your humble blogger.


It was a beautiful day on Odaiba, and the ocean breeze really was nice in the gawd awful humidity.


And Fuji-san even decided to make itself visible for the first time so far in the entire trip. There's something vaguely ominous about a volcano lurking on the horizon.


I'm using this last shot as my desktop picture. (grab the original size from flickr)



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