Blogs from Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan, Asia

I’ve been waiting for someone to develop the transporter beam from Star Trek for decades now. Before you scoff, think about cell phones, especially the older flip phones, and how much they look like Star Trek communicators, and there are now thermometers that can take your temperature without touching you, just like a tricorder could. But I digress. Sadly, the Tokyo Teleport Station is far more mundane. It is a just a station on the Rinkai subway line, on the island of Odaiba. Odaiba is a man-made island in Tokyo Bay, which was made from six smaller man-made islands. The original six islands were built in 1853 to protect Tokyo – then called Edo – from an attack by sea, which primarily meant keeping Commodore Mathew Perry and his “black ships” at bay. It didn’t work; ... read more

To everyone that I have been writing emails to, I would love to respond individually and I will as to details of my day but if I do that, I won't want to write here and then things won't be centralized... which is the number one thing for Japanese people. Huh... either I ate really unhealthily (just cooked beef and rice) or it's really close to my bedtime! 8:26 PM... I got Teka and her roommate Katie, Patrick who invited Al Amanda and Will, and my roommate invited Leslie who got her roommate and Teka invited Elle and her roommate Yasmine. Ok, point is, half of IES was there today though we would split up but it was fun. We met up to go to the Anime convention. The first gaijin moment was when we saw ... read more

Friday we spent in Odaiba, the man made island in Tokyo which as we found up you could easily spend a couple days here. After screwing up and taking the completely wrong train, we finally made it to the central part of the island. First place we stumbled on was the Fuji TV Station, a MASSIVE and amazingly cool building we went up and bought a few knickknacks from the store and some shots of the surrounding area. From there we explored the water front area and ran into some cool wildlife like birds, Jelly Fish, and even a snake which paid us no mind, thankfully. For some reason they have a relatively small Statue of Liberty there.. guess it goes with the Eiffel Tower reconstruction they have in Roppongi. From there we hit up our ... read more

Wer sich jetzt fragt, wer Mino ist, der/die sollte erst erfahren, dass es sich um eine analoge Spiegelreflex handelt, mein liebes altes Schaetzchen, die ich nur mitnehme, wenn ich besonders schoene Fotos machen will :) Also, heute war ich allein unterwegs in Odaiba, einer kuenstlich aufgeschuetteten Insel in der Bucht von Tokyo. Dort befindet sich unter anderem auch Fuji-TV. Nach Odaiba faehrt man am besten von Shimbashi aus mit der Yurikamome Linie. Die Bahn ist unbemannt, so dass man (falls nicht gerade besetzt) ganz vorne sitzen und die Aussicht geniessen kann. Mit dieser Bahn ich, nachdem wir die Rainbow Bridge ueberquert haben, die kleine Runde ueber die Insel gefahren, um einen Ueberblick zu bekommen. Man faehrt an den wichtigsten Sehenswuerdigkeit vorbei und mit einbisschen Glueck kann man von der Bahn aus bestimmt schoene Fotos machen. Ausgestiegen ... read more

We stood on the boardwalk, sipping on our drinks and gazing at the Statue of Liberty. It was definately smaller than I imagined, but nontheless I was thrilled, just as I was when I saw the smaller-than-I-imagined Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Lucy let out a wistful "I'd really love to go to New York one day" and with that we were snapped out of our American dream world and back to the Daiba Boardwalk in Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan. Turning our backs on Lady Liberty we continued on our way and asked a group of young foreign (I think they were Indonesian?) men to take a photo of us in front of Rainbow Bridge, they obliged and in turn I had to pose individually for lots of photos with each of the boys. As I've mentioned ... read more