Monday was another early start, Jose had to work and in his words we were to spend the day with Auntie Ray. Off course I couldn’t ever imagine Ray as my aunt but never the less I understood where Jose was coming from.
The journey out to Odaiba is worth mentioning for two reasons; firstly Dewart amusingly requested that Darwin done something stupid for a photo and then promptly remarked “Darwin that’s just stupid!” Possibly the quote of the the trip. Secondly if you ever go out take the Yurikamome line which goes over the Rainbow bridge circling as it rises up to it.. giving you a great view.Â
Odaiba itself is all pretty new by the looks of it and apart from a mass of shops there’s some cool things in the area. A tiny Statue of Liberty, I’ve no idea why they have one.. perhaps they’ve just got a thing for tiny statues. Then there’s the Fuji Television building, which is pretty impressive. However the coolest thing by and far is the Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation . Not only is everything in English as well as Japanese the staff are pretty much all trained to help you in English, well they do their best.Â
Being a Physicist I loved the place. Given that Ray is a Biochemist and Darwin et Dewart are Mechanical Engineers they too loved the place. It’s all extremely hands on, brand new and bang up to date with the latest things going on in the science world. There’s even a scaled down neutrino detector. It’s a great place and unsurprisingly was full of school kids. Darwin et Dewart drooled all over the window to the room with moreLego than their minds could cope with. There was a very interesting display of a mechanical internet, plus some rather expensive working robot displays.
This is one of the best museums I’ve been to, unlike the Science Museum it is bang up to date, on the other hand it doesn’t deal with that much history. I honestly can’t think of a better place to stimulate interest in science in kids. The Experimentarium in Copenhagen is very hands on but it’s more a collection of interesting effects in science than cutting edge science, still great for kids though.Â
Anyway enough of all the fun we had there.. if you’ve any remote interest in Science or Engineering then go there it’s cool. After that we popped around to the Tokyo International Exhibition Center, being best described as a collection of upside down pyramids it’s interesting to look at. After that it was a trip to the Toyota showroom, probably the biggest car showroom in the world, complete with concept cars, several cafes/bars and other delights. From there we grabbed some food in Aqua City (big mall basically) before heading back to meet Jose after work. From Joe’s work it was straight to the bar with some of his work-mates and there we stayed till about midnight I guess. I said goodbye to Ray and we returned to Joe’s. Another early start beckoned.
Tuesday begins. We drag ourselves of the floor (even Jose, who had the luxury of several layers of foam mattresses). We head to Tokyo station and pay a small fortune for some Shinkansen (the Bullet trains) tickets to Kyoto. We boarded, I fell asleep, 2 hours later we’re there. Not much happened during our first day in Kyoto, we sorted out our hotel, night bus tickets back to Tokyo, wondered around, got our bearings, had some food and admired some Temples lit up in the dark. We returned to the hotel and had an Onsen (traditional Japanese bath).Â
It has to be said that the hotel was not only a bargain (we simply showed up at the tourist office who have a list of hotel rooms that are available for that night, quiet often on offer) but very traditional. Well Ok I don’t know if it was but it seemed quite traditional. Certainly Darwin, Dewart and myself were glad of some foam mattresses to sleep in. Alas Jose decided to snore to add to the chorus produced by Darwin.Â
Where was I? Onsen.. are a traditional Japanese thing, with lots of etiquette surrounding them. In short you go down to the Onsen, get naked, get washed with taps and a bucket whilst sitting on a tiny stool, rinse yourself clean then get into a large pool of roasting hot water with whoever else is there. It’s a public bath in the truest sense of the phrase. It’s an unusual experience and the heat of the water is quite relaxing. The baths are normally male/female only but there are family/mixed/couples etc in places. Tattoos are a big no, no Jose said.
We all eventually got to sleep, Wednesday was going to be a very long day.