Monday, November 13, 2017; Odaiba, Tokyo Bay Dinner Cruise

Monday, November 13, 2017; Odaiba and Tokyo Bay Dinner Cruise

I’ll have to take back what I said earlier about the breakfast at Villa Fontaine Hotel Shiodome.  They made the same runny scrambled eggs this morning and served them with flattened meat balls in BBQ sauce on soggy steak fries.  I guess the Japanese just don’t get western breakfasts.  We got to take it easy this morning since nothing in the Odaiba district opens before 10am.  It was a quick and easy ride on the train from the Shiodome station, which is just outside our hotel’s lobby.  The train rides on elevated tracks and crosses the Rainbow bridge to Odaiba.  

We started at the Miraikan Museum of Emerging Science and Technology.  Most of the exhibits are in both Japanese and English. Ben was surprised at how cutting edge some of the medical science was.  They had an exhibit trying to explain genomic assays and how they can be used to direct cancer treatments, and they even had a robotic surgery simulator you could play with.  

They had an extensive exhibit on disaster analysis and prediction that was wrapped around a huge Rube Goldbergian machine with marbles mowing down icons of people in a variety of simulated disasters.  The whole thing was way over our heads, but it was interesting to watch. 

The centerpiece of the Museum is a suspended globe covered with OLED elements that can project a near real-time false image of the earth using recent satellite data.  They could also project other data on it, such as tracked migratory patterns of individual tagged tuna and migrating birds.  

The highlight of our visit was a performance by ASIMO, a humanoid robot made by Honda, who came jogging out of his closet, danced about, sang a Japanese song with hand motions, and even kicked a soccer ball.  

From the Miraikan, we walked towards the Tokyo side of Odaiba, where we encountered a mall with a giant life-sized Gundam (Transformer robot man thing).  They had a nice food court, where we had the mandatory Octopus balls, and then tried a Kyoto specialty of fried yakisoba noodles with egg and spring onions called okosoba.  It as quite tasty, but not the Okinawa specialty Okonomiyaki that we were hoping to find.  

There is a Statue of Liberty replica on the Odaiba waterfront with the Rainbow Bridge for a backdrop.  If someone shows you a picture of the Statue of Liberty with a suspension bridge in the background, you can tell them that it is located in Tokyo, and not New York.  

We then made our way to the Toyota MegaWeb, which is a 3 part museum/amusement park.  There is a History hall with all sorts of interesting old cars and real rally sport racing cars.  Ben’s brother Franklin would be interested to know they had a post WWII Plymouth sedan converted to run on charcoal gas because there was no petroleum to be had in post war Japan.  Just load up the furnace with charcoal, fire it up, and then drive away.  The heat and incomplete combustion in the furnace converts the charcoal into hydrocarbon fumes, which are then filtered and then fed into the carburetor.  Another part was a show room where they had a 4 story tall carousel of Toyota vehicles where if you had a Japanese driver’s license, you could dial up a car and take it for a test drive. There was also an amusement park with go carts and other rides, and a science museum like area with exhibits on hydrogen fuel cell and hybrid technologies.  There were also several free driving simulators to demonstrate Toyota collision avoidance technology and hybrid technology.  There was also a free simulator that strapped you into Toyota racing vehicles across 5 continents.  The best part was that it was all free. 

For dinner, we had booked a Viator reservation on the Symphony Moderna Dinner cruise on Tokyo Bay.  That turned out to be a very elegant and enjoyable event, kind of like dining at the top of the Space Needle.  There was an excellent live pianist in the dining room, and fine china with an impressive array of silverware arranged on the table.  By the time we finished our appetizer, soup, fish and steak main courses, and dessert, we had depleted our silverware and knew the dinner was done.  There were a lot of people celebrating birthdays, and just before desserts came out, the lights dimmed, and the pianist then transitioned into a piano bar rendition of Happy birthday.  Then waiters came streaming into the dining room carrying lighted birthday cakes, not unlike the parades normally associated with the serving of baked Alaska desserts.  It was all very romantic and well worth doing.  The food was excellent- on Par, if not perhaps a tiny bit better than Princess’s main dining rooms.  It was a very nice way to begin winding down our Japan tour.  

Tomorrow is an open morning.  We will see if we can get into the first act of the Kabukiza Theatre’s Kabuki show.  In the evening, we will attend a Roppongi Kaguwa “Oiran Show”, which will wrap up our vacation.