Odaiba

Three weeks ago it was pretty gloomy, so we decided to go to Odaiba. Odaiba is a little seaside area in Tokyo. It took about an hour from our apartment. You get to it by bus (boring), train, or water taxi. We took the train, which was cool because it goes over the Rainbow Bridge. The building above is the Fuji TV building. The globe thing in the middle has an observation deck, but we didn't go up.

This is Decks, one of the big shopping malls in Odaiba. It kind of reminded me of something you would find in Myrtle Beach. But huge, of course. We found a really cool housewares store. We got my dad a Father's Day present and some wine glasses and a yakiniku (mini BBQ) set for ourselves. Gen won't let me use either, though. He's afraid we'll get evicted for the yakiniku set (you're not allowed to have open flame outdoors in Tokyo) and he said I'll probably break the wineglasses. So they're just sitting in their bag in the corner of the living room.

Gen with an old-fashioned Japanese arcade game. They had an area inside the mall that depicted Japan in the 1950's. It was cute, in an amusement park kind of way. They also had an area that was supposed to be a little Hong Kong, but that was disappointing. It was just a bunch of Chinese restaurants. We were hoping for some fun food stalls, but they were all sit-down.

Gen really likes this picture. The polar bears are crying because of global warming. There were a lot of people having weddings here. We spied on a few and decided we would like to attend a Japanese wedding. But we need to figure out how to get invited.

Here's the view from outside the mall. Behind my head is the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo. It was pretty gloomy during the day, but wait until the next picture...

Pretty! How funny is the Statue of Liberty there? I think it's a 1/6-size replica. But look at the lights! Odaiba also has the biggest Ferris wheel in the world. We were going to ride it at night, but it took us too long to figure out where to eat dinner. There are a lot of good restaurants in Odaiba. We ended up at an izakaya (Japanese pub). We had some great sashimi. Probably the most unusual thing we ate there was grilled tuna jawbone. It was yummy. We wanted to sit outside, but the waiter said it was going to rain. It didn't. We think he just didn't want to go outside for one table.

This is my number one favorite picture. We think the boats are party boats. You can rent them for a certain number of hours and the price includes food and drinks. The boats don't go anywhere, though. They just float around the bay. Tokyo Tower is right in the middle of the picture. It was so pretty. Odaiba was lots of fun!