Odaiba

On Monday, I finally headed out to Odaiba, which is across the bay from Tokyo, part of the reclamation. To get there, I had to the metro to Shimbashi station and transfer to Japan's newest form of trasporation: the monorail. The monorail out to Odaiba cost about 370 yen each way and took 20 minutes, with a couple of stops along the way.

Odaiba is Japan's response to the California boardwalk. It has two prominent malls, with a lot of shopping, dining, and attractions (like "Muscleworld" and "Segaworld"... don't forget "Little Hong Kong" or "Estee World" (with spas from around the country). We even got to see the Statue of Liberty (didn't realize France was so liberal in giving out large statues). We walked around for a while taking in the sites and views of Tokyo and then decided to go to Fuji TV (a very famous building with a large titanium ball set in the middle of it).

We got our tickets for the Fuji TV tour (which included an opportunity to go up in the ball and see a panoramic of Tokyo). We walked through the studios but only one studio was live, and the curtain were drawn. This was slightly anticlimatic as all the information was in Japanese and we weren't familiar with any of the shows or characters to get excited over posing on sets or seeing costumes. After this, we waited in line for 35 minutes to take a packed elevator up to the walkway to the ball. I was very antsy in line... if you know me, you know I hate "standing" and it bothers my back... not to mention the heat.

The view was pretty great though! But they have filled the ball with attractions, etc, so it was pretty crowded up there. Everything was based on the upcoming olympics, and they had a displayed of all the previous olympic torches.

After shuffling through massive crowds all day, I was exhausted. We grabbed a snack and took the monorail back to the city to weave our way back to the hostel in time for a light dinner and bed!!