The weather report on monday called for scattered rain so our plan to visit Ginza was scrapped in favor of a trip to Odaiba. Odaiba is a man-made island, primarily using fill from other construction projects. Took the Yamanote line to the Yurikamome line, which has particularly scenic views of the city and Tokyo Bay. One really great feature of the ride is that the train crosses the Rainbow Bridge, which connects the mainland to Odaiba. In order to obtain the height needed to cross the bay, the bridge does an upward spiral before the crossing, allowing views around the city. Another neat feature is that automobile traffic runs immediately adjacent to the train.
On Odaiba is Aqua City, which is a group of shops, restaurants, displays and exhibitions. Adjacent to Aqua City is an artificially created sandy beach in a small cove. I imagine that on a hot-sunny day the crowds would be unbelievable. Although it may not sound exotic, we ate lunch at the "Sizzler", which is an american chain, if I'm not mistaken. Food was Western style with a few Asian dishes offered also. Had an "All-you-can-eat" soup, salad and beverage bar, which we knew Anthony would like. Tried several types of "seaweed" salads, aloe yogurt, many types of "non-sea greens" and some type of tropical tea, which had a sweet, flowery smell. They had a large patio area overlooking the bay and Rainbow Bridge, so we ate outside. Very enjoyable, and we had nearly the whole place to ourselves (1 other couple there).
Next we walked through the mall and found some really great shops. They had a Disney store, Snoopy store and many designer stores. A shop lady took to Anthony with comments of "kawaii" which, roughly translated, means "cute". She spoke a little english, so I asked her how to say "shy" in Japanese, which is "hazukashii". A good term to know as every occasion where we meet someone, Anthony buries his face in his hands (Strange, because he won't stop talking any other time!!). She gave him a cute little charm of a Sea Breem that we attached to his shoe......he really loves it.
Within Aqua City is the Sony ExploraScience museum, which has some of the latest interactive science exhibits. It's broken into three distinct areas, red, white and green, with each featuring different types of experiences. The LoCiceros enjoyed the green area, or Digital Dream, part of the exhibit the most and we spent most of our time there. The area showcases the latest Sony digital technology in a format that entertains children (Anthony and I). Two displays that really entertained Anthony were "Marble Mania" and "Holowall Table".
Marble Mania is a game where projectors cast the images of Marbles and a catch area on a table. The object of the game is to gather the most virtual marbles in your catch area. To gather marbles, ou put your hands on the opposite side of where you want the marbles to go and move....they are repelled by the location of your hands....Anthony kept saying, "this is really cool !"
Holowall Table is a table where you make what amounts to shadow puppets on the face of the table. If you make the images as they are shown next to the table, the shadows turn into images of the animal shadowed, and they begin to move around and make sounds. There were Butterflies, Birds, Elephant, Snake, Moose and several other animals. If you didn't get the shadows just right, a different animal than you intended might pop up. We must have spent half an hour making shapes with our hands.
On our ride home, we met some English speaking folks from the Hollywood FL area and had a nice conversation with them. They are staying with relatives on the outskirts of Tokyo. We exchanged our stories and experiences in the short period on the train together, said goodby and we were on our way back home.
Deanna made Salmon, Rice and veggies, flavored with some oriental spices and also a really great Miso soup with tofu and seaweed. Anything homeade is great, and when it's got a different kind of flavor, its a real bonus in my mind. Sunday, she made an Apple Curry dish with chicken and veggies and rice.
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