Day 52: 22 May 2009

LOCATION: TOKYO (ODAIBA, SHIBUYA, JINBOCHO)
MOOD: ENERGISED
LISTENING TO: GREENDAY – WE ARE THE WAITING

OLD AND NEW FRIENDS:

I woke up mid morning today and spent some time getting acquainted with the various characters I was sharing the dorm with. There was Christof the German, who was on a world trip; Rob the Stanford robotics specialist who was in town for a conference; Carlos, an American guy teaching English in Seoul who was in Tokyo for a holiday; and finally Ryan, a design student from Chicago. As it turned out everybody had their own plans for the day but we all agreed that it would be fun to go out and do something that night so we agreed to meet back at the hostel around 8.

When I came downstairs the girl at the reception came running towards me saying 'Henry! Henry!'. I wondered what was going on, and I soon found out that Henry had come to the hostel looking for me. I knew I was going to meet him that day but as the phone reception up on the fourth floor had been terrible I hadn't received his text messages or missed calls. Apparently he had left just a few minutes before I came down.

I went out onto the street to get a signal and eventually got through. As it turned out I needn't have felt so bad as he hadn't been waiting long. We discussed our plans and, as he had a few things to do and I had a few sights to see we decided to split up and maybe meet up later that evening for dinner.

THE FUTURE REVISITED:

The place heading up my list of sights to see was Odaiba, the waterfront area of Tokyo. It was a little out of the way and as my previous two trips to Tokyo had both been extremely brief I hadn't managed to get away from the centre of the city. But from what I had heard, Odaiba was truly a spectacle to behold – a modern marvel of engineering and architecture that represented the cutting edge of Japan.

Next stop, Odaiba.

The trip to Odaiba was quite an experience in itself. It has its own dedicated train line, which takes you through the city and out across Tokyo bay. The entire trip takes around twenty or so minutes and is a tour de force of Tokyo's scale and grandeur. On the way back I actually videoed a large amount of the trip because it photos simply don't do it justice.

Welcome to Odaiba.

Odaiba itself is equally impressive. Stepping off the train you're immediately greeted by a scene out of an Isaac Asimov novel: futuristic skyscrapers, broad, laid out walkways and massive winding highways. While Tokyo proper is breathtaking because of its frenetic, unplanned explosion of skyscrapers, Odaiba has a carefully planned feel to it that reflects its status as one of the more recently developed areas of Tokyo.

This had the potential to be very tacky, but somehow it worked.

The best way to get to Odaiba by car is across the Rainbow Bridge, so called because it lights up in technicolour at night.

I ran into this place when I was strolling through one of the shopping centres. I can't escape it - even in Japan.

Apart from the sights there are a tonne of things to do in Odaiba and it wouldn't be hard to spend an entire day there if you have the time. There are a number of big shopping centres, several showcases (Toyota has a big showroom there), a big amusement park and even a race track. As I was planning to meet Henry back in town for dinner I didn't really have time to explore properly, so I contented myself with a stroll down the main walking path that takes you around the area. I didn't see everything there was to see, but I saw enough to talk the place up to the other guys in the dorm when I got back later that night.

I think that the judicious use of space is what makes Odaiba's vistas so captivating.

The random statues made a repeat appearance.

As did the ferris wheels.

Where relationships come to die.

Tokyo Big Sight, a conference centre that plays host to the twice-yearly anime/manga festival Comiket. Henry tells me that come festival time there literally isn't room to move, which is hard to believe given how spacious things are in Odaiba.

Tokyo Big Sight also incorporates some pretty futuristic architecture. I reckon this would work pretty well as a film set for the new Star Trek flick.

It also has this jumbo-size saw sticking out of the ground. I haven't work out what it's supposed to symbolise yet.

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC:

As I was wandering around Odaiba Henry mailed me and asked me to meet him in Shibuya, which is pretty much on the other side of town. Given that I had just missed hanging out with Henry in Tokyo when I first arrived in Japan (he had been in Tokyo around the end of March) I was determined not to let the opportunity slip.

Odaiba was fantastic but Tokyo proper is pretty nice too, if somewhat congested.

We met up in front of the mammoth HMV at Shibuya, and it turned out that I wasn't the only one who hadn't finished everything on his to-do list for the day. Despite having hit up a whole range of shops during the day Henry still wasn't finished, and since he had more things to do the next day I figured I would just follow him.

Back to the capital of cool. You can see the HMV in the background.

The first place we went was, strangely enough, the stationary section of a department store. At first I was skeptical, but Henry soon showed me why he had been so keen to come. Japan has some things it does horribly (governmental/judicial transparency is a good example), but the things it does well it does extremely well. Stationary is one such thing.

There was literally every conceivable type of stationary you could think of, including a few that I didn't actually think of until I saw them. From upside-down writing pens to mechanical erasers it was an engineer's paradise. As it turned out Henry hadn't actually planned on buying any stationary that night; he was just out to scout the merchandise and would be back later to pick up everything he needed.

We also took a look around the furniture section of the store as Henry had a chair that he said I absolutely had to try. It took ergonomics to an entire new level, with pretty much every part of the chair spring-loaded so as to be able to mould to and support your body. Unfortunately it also took office extravagance to a new level, and it was looking around this department that I realised how it was possible for all those investment bankers to blow millions of dollars refurbishing their offices.

This wasn't the chair, but it was the only one we could photograph when the guards weren't looking.

Following that we went to a secondhand bookstore in Jimbocho that sold exclusively English language materials. The selection of books wasn't great, but I loaded up on CDs while I was there. I figured that even JB Hi-Fi couldn't beat these prices. The crowd at the store was a curious mix of foreigners, bilingual English-speaking overseas Japanese and local businessmen and students hoping to improve their English. If only they had a place like this for Japanese books in Melbourne I could finally cancel my subscription to the Monash Uni manga library.

The further you get into Shibuya the more it resembles a maze.

TO BEER OR NOT TO BEER:

By the time we finished up at the English bookstore it was closing time and Henry was pretty much baked for the day. We headed back to the hostel and he retired for the night saying that if he stayed up any later he would probably collapse. After hearing his schedule for that day I didn't doubt him.

I thought that by that point the rest of the guys from the dorm would have already left, but when I got back they were all still getting ready. As they were discussing their plans for the night I started to have second thoughts about going out. Essentially they planned to be out all night and catch the first train back in the morning, hitting bars in the big three night spots (Shibuya, Shinjuku and Roppongi) along the way. I realised that if I went out I would no doubt lose most of the next day, and given that I still had a few things I wanted to get done I ultimately decided against it. This decision was made easier by the fact that they were going to pretty trendy places and I absolutely did not have the clothes for it. It was alright for the rest of the guys as they were white, but as another Japanese-looking Asian kid I would have trouble getting in with just my plain running shoes. Rob (the robotics guy) quipped that they only saw the colour of my money and not my skin, but I didn't really have much of that either.

Ryan (the design student) also decided to decline their invitation, and given that we were the only two left in the room we struck up a conversation. We talked about a lot of things, from American high school life to Japanese pop culture and our tastes in music. It turned out that he was actually a 3D artist for video games, which I thought was probably the coolest profession out of anyone I knew. He told me that he had yet to visit Akihabara (the video game/anime mecca of Japan), and given that Henry had told me he was headed their the next day I promised to introduce Ryan to him. Before we knew it it was around 4 in the morning so we decided to call it a night.

Somewhere in this picture, someone is getting really drunk.