Tokyo threeee

Gather round, oh ye that desire to catch the pearls of wisdom that dribble from my keyboard like so many pebbles! Pearls incoming. These particular ones relate to the following day of Tokyo madness, though first I would like to digress on some now-stuff. It being a mere 40 or so days until christmas (and under the duress of enduring 3 hours a week of rehearsing christmas music in handbells), I have decided it is high time to begin my yearly ritual of listening to Handel's Messiah nonstop until maybe Februaryish. I feel like I've grown as a person; in High School, I could barely get excited about any of it except the part I was all 'oh hey I know that (the hallelujah chorus).' I thought I had grown when I discovered there were in fact OTHER choruses is this massive oratorio I had seen as a vast expanse of boring leading up to one song followed by boring. Yet finally, starting toward mid January last year (partially due to the fact that I was not alone in my ritual in my dorm, there were several kids in the University chorus singing it (they do a really great job every year, by the way, if anyone is in Chicago when it happens) and one other kid like me with no vocal talent whatsoever that just can't stay away from this stuff). Anyway, I now love every second of this two and a half hours.. even the recitatives! Even the Soprano recitatives!! My favorite part of them remains the "boop... boop!' from dominant to tonic that the organ does at the very end every time, but the rest is OK TOO I GUESS. Also, 'O thou that tellest good tidings to zion' is baaaaaaller. My favorite, though, remains and always will be "for unto us a child is born.." ah man classic stuff. For contrast, for Christmas the Japanese have so far put up vaguely christmas tree-esque things everywhere. From what I gather from friends and host families, the idea is that on christmas, you buy a "christmas cake" and hang out with your significant other in a bizarre confectionerally confused Valentine's day. I can't make this stuff up! Things are obviously different for Japanese Christians (of which there are several), but talking about that would ruin the 'hey man the Japanese are weird' vibe I've got going.

ANYWAY back to Tokyo! So for that fateful day we decided to see some more electronics, so we headed down to a big old area of reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay, joined to the city by Rainbow Bridge and that I think is called Odaiba? Though that might just be the bit of land at the beginning of the bridge that's a park now, that was originally made as a precaution against the danger of Commodore Perry coming back and bombarding the hell out of Edo. IN any case, this place was weird as I can describe. It wasn't even like being in another city; it was like being in another world. We went on the special train line that starts in Ginza, heads over the bridge, and circles this miracle land that Should Not Be. We got off pretty early on the train to hit up the Panasonic Center, but ever from the train this place was ridic.. I don't know how to describe it. There were no actual businesses or living spaces or shops- it was all convention halls, gigantic high-rise hotels, museums, and corporate showrooms. Giant, flat space with gigantic buildings just erupting out of the empty landscape almost at random. On top of this, there was literally NO-ONE THERE. Especially after being used to fighting through a packed crowd to get down the rest of the tiny tine streets of Tokyo, it was really disturbing coming to this place of massive, spacious promenades with no-one on them. Pretty sad, really.



So after confirming there had been no apocalypse and it was just Tokyo being ridiculous as usual, we hit up the Panasonic center to see if they had anything interesting to sell us. They had some cool exhibits about learning about science, a lot about how they were developing new energy efficient things (why we are not all using induction stoves baffles me), yadda yadda. Then a representative lady accosts us! "oh no we thought this was public" we think, "are we being kicked out?" but thankfully thanks to our slick Japanese skills we learned that in fact we were being asked if we wanted a demonstration of the latest incredibly expensive gadget Panasonic is actually pouring all of its research dollars in while they prattle about 'energy efficiency' and other unimportant things. Yes we did want a demonstration, and boy did we get one. This thing is called the "Life Wall." Remember Fahrenheit 451? The TV that's actually the entire wall of your living room? Yeah it's that. Except it's also a computer, and can recognize you when you walk up to it. The representative walked close to the wall, and it popped up a gui right in front of her.. if she chose something like a video or music, it opened at just the right size/volume for where she was, and if she moved it followed her and adjusted size/volume accordingly.. pretty cool. She could also control what the whole wall was doing with vague gestures (that were apparently as frustrating as one would imagine, but hell the thing's a prototype and you are changing channels on your wall-TV by waving your arms around). It's also called the LIFE WALL. Pretty cool!

We left the center depressed that we never in our lives will have enough money for one. To cheer ourselves up, we walked across most of the island-thing to basically the biggest ferris wheel in the history of the world ever. The walk was, again, distressing.. giiiiant boulevards, no people. To get to the ferris wheel we went through 2 stories of empty parking and 1 story of toootally empty arcade in this building, the footprint of which was easily a football field or two. Luckily there were employees to run the thing, so we went up on a terrifying 15 minute journey into the sky and back (my companions insisted on the clear cabin.. wonderful).




Unfortunately, it was a pretty humid day so the view was somewhat limited. Still worth it, though.. got to stare at the Pacific ocean and all the warehouses/cargo ships in between us and it for a while, and the skyline as seen from the Bay. Disembarking, we resumed wandering, and stumbled on a Toyota exhibition hall where they had a car magically driving itself, as well as a chair for disabled people that had (I kid you not) giant robot legs. Other highlights include about 200 square feet of random quaint 17th century Italian village. After the initial confusion, we got down to some sign reading and discovered this whole thing, shops, fountain, and quaint chapel, was available for rental on a weekendly basis for weddings. Absurd! Wedding village! Extravagance!! Speaking of extravagance, also along the way was a shopping mall known as THE VENUS FRONT, which was made basically to be an ideal italian city at night. If only they didn't have 'poker face' pouring in over loudspeakers, the effect was really good.. the ceiling was all night sky, the storefronts all lovingly crafted from the very living plastic in the traditional style. We had no interest in shopping though, so we headed to the Miraikan (literally means 'Future hall') to check out what people would show us about cutting edge technology when they weren't trying to sell it to you. It was pretty cool.. couldn't hold a candle to the MSI in Chicago or the Boston Science Museum, but they try. There's a walk-through model of one of the ISS modules, a big series of tubes to simulate the internet (you create 'packets' with arrangements of black and white balls and send them in, watch them go around, then someone gets your message at the other end. Pretty cool, but hah hah series of tubes). They had one of those '3d virtual reality rooms' that are always disappointing that was disappointing, some really really cool light stuff (strips of LEDS that just look like they're a flickering line when you look right at them, but draw a picture when you look from one side to the other quickly, which I thought was way cool and spent like 5 minutes taking photos of by spastically jerking around my camera on semi-longish exposures whilst children pushed their ways past me and my companions sighed and checked their watches loudly), and a giant globe covered in active LED displays to show the world from space in reeeaaal tiiiime. They also had ROBOTS! They even have ASIMO, only the greatest robot of all. We got there after his last show of the day (they have a little like glass presentation case that they take him out of 4 times a day to perform), though, so we only got to take pictures of him standing there and being boring. That's about it I guess!

Departing, we resolved to walk back across the bridge to soak in some views, and I took some pretty ok views with my trusty camera. We decided also that, as it was getting sunsetty, it would be nice to stand on the bridge and watch the sun set and the lights come on in Tokyo. It was, in fact, really nice. I have pictures to prove it!



We then hopped the train to the trendiest place to be in Tokyo at night, Roppongi! We managed to dodge the Nigerians telling us 'yeah yeah come into this club your friend is right inside I saw them yeah saw your friend (in english),' and check out some cool stuff. We had dinner at a not-bad-at-all Pan-Asian place (not-bad is the best thing I will ever say about Pan-Asian, as I am morally and philosophically opposed to such trendy things), and checked out the absurd amounts of swank and class that adorn the Roppongi Hills complex. They have some reeeeally sweet architecture around, and a big ol sculpture of a spider. Tokyo in general has crazy architecture.. like no-one is keeping track, they can just put whatever building they want wherever they want and it will fit in because it's not like any of the other buildings make any sense. It's fantastic! Speaking of tall buildings, we caught a bunch of the city by walking for a while to get to Tokyo Tower, then caught even more of the city from the observation deck. Getting there was pretty trippy.. we walked through some real neighborhoods, which was a nice break from touristland, but it meant we ended up approaching the Tower from the wrong side.. and for some reason there was a gigantic white oblong.. land-blimp.. thing with "100% New Zealand 2011" written on it, what sounded like a club going on inside, and men in business suits all rolling in. We still have no idea what it was all about, and I feel like knowing would only detract from the TOKYO EXPERIENCE, which just isn't the same without that special 'what.. the hell' feeling. Also before ascending the tower (I'm not going to talk about the view because I mean it's a view from a tower what do you want flickr it maybe (OH hey there was one weird thing, there's like a little Imperial Shinto shrine at the top what is UP with that (or, why is that shrine UP with what), ah Tokyo you never disappoint)) Anyway, after descending from the tower, we found the nearest subway station and returned to the hotel, for our last night in that particular base of exploration.

OH HEY so I also totally forgot in the day before this (right before shinjuku gardens), in the post before this, we went to sensoji/asakusa that I could have said a lot about but like the moment is totally past and can serve only to confuse you. Nothing particularly special I gueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesss..

NEXT POST: Imperial Palace, Seriousness (we went to Yasakuni Shrine, I want to talk about it but it's not something that I'm willing to be a snarky ass about), and if there is time maybe I will delve into our time in the magical land of Nikko!