Week 17

My last week in Japan was jam-packed with activities! We spent one of the days on the island of Odaiba in Tokyo which had tons of attractions and museums. It also had that Ferris wheel I saw weeks ago. It was raining but the view that Sarah and I had was awesome. It was also kind of freaky to be that high and hear the rain on the roof of the Ferris wheel cabin and we swayed gently in the wind.

The view was definitely worth it though, even despite the rain.

The other attraction that we went to see on Odaiba was the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. It has 5 large floors of hundreds of exhibits but the main 2 that we went to see was the large globe of made of over 10 million pixels displaying the last 24 hours of weather as seen from space.

It has a diameter of 6 meters and is an impressive display of the beauty of Earth.

The other exhibit that we went to see was ROBOTS!!

There were several demonstrations, some which were in the uncanny valley (kinda creepy) and others which were "naked" and just kinda squirming around.

As a finale, there was a 10 minute demonstration of Asimo, a humanoid robot designed by Honda. It was entertaining to see this little robot's showmanship but also to see the complexity of behaviors that robots in 2017 can enact.

Another place that we went to check out during the week was the Kawaii Monster Cafe.It had a really cool interior and a show on a main stage which looked like a giant cake.

There was also descent food and great ice cream with sprinkles! Sarah got the weird parfette with 5 different flavors of icing, 3 kinds of ice cream, a cookie and some lips in the background but the simple vanilla ice cream I got was where it was at. Just sayin.

The same day that we went to the monster cafe, we got caught in an umbrella traffic jam. It was raining fairly hard and the combination of people wanting to shop, people wanting to leave, and the rain resulted in a a stalled clustering of umbrellas. It also made me realize something about being taller than most other people in the rain. My umbrella needed to be placed higher than others to make room for shorter people's umbrellas but this meant that their umbrellas would be under mine and would drip onto me and be eye poking height. So even with a good umbrella, I was totally soaked.

After finally getting out of that mess, Sarah and I went to a clothing store to buy me a tshirt and found the funniest/worst English translations on tshirts we could find. I bought one which had the poetic words:

Does a person have you gently?

That is thought the parson who can do it to be an actual good repson.

Truer words were never spoken.

On the second last day we went to the Ninja Cafe. The theme of the restaraunt is Ninja everything. Ninja entry, cool Ninja adventure across a draw bridge to get to your seat.

Ninja scroll for the menu

Throwing star crackers on a tree to go into throwing star cheese.

A secret Ninja magic box with a smokey egg which had a salad in it.

Superb steak and sushi

And 3 different kinds of ice cream and stick cookies which was shaped like a bonsai tree. There was also a Ninja magic show. It was a great evening :)

On the last day, we went to a Zoo which had baby pandas. We weren't able to see the baby but we saw the momma snoozing out the midday. Sarah and I realized that we had never actually seen a panda in real life before so it was a rewarding experience.

Finally, on August 19th we boarded a plane to head back to Canada. I had a great experience in Japan and made some good friends along the way. I learned a lot about artificial intelligence, Japanese work culture, and living day to day in Japan. My top 4 things which I recommend to anyone going to Japan are:

  1. Get a Suica card, it is the easiest way to get around the transit in Tokyo and other cities and it is accepted at almost all restaurants and stores.
  2. Try to head out to parks/cool restaurants/amusement parks/anything touristy at about 10 am on week days because it will be after rush hour and the lines will be mostly dead compared to say, 1 pm on a weekend which is crazy.
  3. Go to Ippudo for very good and reasonably priced ramen.
  4. Buy and eat these:

I have eaten 9 course meals at a traditional Japanese Ryokan, had magic Ninja meals, had many kinds of traditional Japanese meals at restaurants, and still these 128 yen sweet buns filled with a melon custard remain in the top 10 best things I have eaten in Japan. My first bite made me stop thinking and just enjoy the melony goodness of the custard, lovingly wrapped in a soft blanket of sweet pastry emanating the scent of euphoria and the beauty of life. So it was well worth the 128 yen.