It's Saturday here, so rather than take the weekend off to recover from the week (like we do/would have), Em and Hiro and the kids piled them and us into the car to take us out to Odaiba.
Odaiba is an island in Tokyo Bay, built on reclaimed land (ie an artificially created island). Initially, it was built to help defend Tokyo against pirates, but in the late twentieth century was expanded and redeveloped (with a few hiccups along the way). Eh, you can read more in the Wikipedia link at the top of this paragraph.
Our schedule included Miraikan, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation; Toys R Us, a Cat Cafe, Joypolis, and the a swanky buffet dinner at the Intercontinental, Tokyo Bay. At times, herding all nine of us (four adults and five children) into the same place at the same time got a bit tricky, but on the other hand there were enough of us to qualify for the group discount at Miraikan.
Miraikan
The Museum is housed in a very impressive, custom built space, with a sweeping atrium/entrance hall.
There were lots of interesting exhibits, split into two sections: top floor was called "Explore the Frontiers" - of space, of the sea, of sub-atomic particles, and more. The middle floor was focussing on Innovation, titled "Create your future". The ground floor hosts a temporary exhibition, the present one is called "It's All About Money" (we chose to omit that this time, mainly for lack of time)
There was cloud chamber showing (some of) the background radiation (with Em's voice describing the effect of the Fukoshima nuclear reactor snafu - the sound cuts out part way through as I think I put my finger over the microphone). The short fat straight lines are due to alpha particles, the wibbly thin lines are from beta particles, and the fast, thin, long straight lines are from muons.
We stepped into a replica neutrino chamber - it's a 1/10th scale model of the "Super-Kamiokande" neutrino detection facility, buried 1000m underground (primarily to minimise the background radiation shown above). And we found out about the Subaru telescope (world's largest optical telescope) located in Hawaii.
There was a thermal imager (presumably similar to that we had to pass in front of on entry to Japan). (Thankfully Ky didn't show up as overly sick - he'd had a paracetamol only a few hours earlier to bring down a mild temperature.)
There was the interior of the ISS, showing sleeping compartments (you sleep in a sleepsack attached to the wall.
There was a chance to do some robotic surgery (at which we all sucked, except Hiro who has done it in real life on real patients) and some other recent advances in medicine.
And at the end of the hall, suspended within another huge atrium was a massive sphere, called the Geo-Cosmos, onto which was projected this small blue dot.
Sometimes kids got in the way when you tried to take a photo.
We dined in-house, again due to time constraints. The menu was very limited - five choices (beef hamburg, pasta with tomato and basil, chicken tandoori, beef curry, and some small rice-and-pork thing), plus a small range of drinks. Not fabulous, but not too bad (or badly priced) given the captive audience.
Downstairs were various other exhibits, the most interactive of which had longish queues (thank goodness it was pretty quiet despite being a weekend day). However, clearly the thing most people came to see was the twice-daily performance by Asimo, the 45kg, 120cm tall humanoid robot. The demonstration lasted ten minutes, although people were assembling for twenty minutes before the start.
Of course, all the talking was in Japanese - the male voice is the staff member, the female voice is Asimo. Again, the sound cuts out, but you're probably grateful if you don't speak Japanese. (I'll edit this later, as there was a lot of talking without much moving).
After the Asimo thing, we tried to escape without spending too much at the gift shop, got in the car, and set off to Aqua City. This shopping centre, plus adjacent buildings hosted our next three stops: Toys R Us, a Cat Cafe, and Joypolis. It also has the Sony ExploraScience, a more entertainment-focussed hands-on science museum, which we skipped this time around.
Our first stop in AquaCity was the toy shop, but we passed a few oddities along the way.
Despite my fervent, if foolish, hopes, we came away with a gobsmacking amount of stuff. Jos found his beloved Nerf guns (models not available in Australia); Ky bought an astonishing array of cheap crap; I found some books for gifts; and JD bought himself a VR laser gun that he'd played with at Em's place on our first day.
Once we'd managed to get everyone reassembled after that, half of us went into the Cat Cafe. Attached to a pet store, this is a room with a selection of incredibly patient cats (and kittens) for which you pay admission on a per-half-hour basis. You cannot pick up the cats without permission (they are for sale, typically around Y30,000, $3,000), and you are required to sanitise your hands before you enter. Very weird. Very Japanese.
We dashed from AquaCity to the adjacent building to visit the Joypolis. This is a Sega amusement centre - it's like a cross between a video arcade, sideshow alley, and a theme park. JD and the boys managed to squeeze three or four rides (including the roller coaster) into the hour-and-a-half that we had, mainly thanks to Hiro queueing on their behalf, while they enjoyed the ride before. (I got a simple admission ticket.)
There was some weird shit there too.
And some pretty cool interactive screens, like this one.
We had to leave a little before six, so we'd make our dinner reservation at 6:30pm. I'll put the pics of food porn in a separate post, I think.
Odaiba is an island in Tokyo Bay, built on reclaimed land (ie an artificially created island). Initially, it was built to help defend Tokyo against pirates, but in the late twentieth century was expanded and redeveloped (with a few hiccups along the way). Eh, you can read more in the Wikipedia link at the top of this paragraph.
Our schedule included Miraikan, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation; Toys R Us, a Cat Cafe, Joypolis, and the a swanky buffet dinner at the Intercontinental, Tokyo Bay. At times, herding all nine of us (four adults and five children) into the same place at the same time got a bit tricky, but on the other hand there were enough of us to qualify for the group discount at Miraikan.
Miraikan
The Museum is housed in a very impressive, custom built space, with a sweeping atrium/entrance hall.
There was cloud chamber showing (some of) the background radiation (with Em's voice describing the effect of the Fukoshima nuclear reactor snafu - the sound cuts out part way through as I think I put my finger over the microphone). The short fat straight lines are due to alpha particles, the wibbly thin lines are from beta particles, and the fast, thin, long straight lines are from muons.
We stepped into a replica neutrino chamber - it's a 1/10th scale model of the "Super-Kamiokande" neutrino detection facility, buried 1000m underground (primarily to minimise the background radiation shown above). And we found out about the Subaru telescope (world's largest optical telescope) located in Hawaii.
There was a thermal imager (presumably similar to that we had to pass in front of on entry to Japan). (Thankfully Ky didn't show up as overly sick - he'd had a paracetamol only a few hours earlier to bring down a mild temperature.)
 |
| Apparently Ky has cold cheeks |
There was the interior of the ISS, showing sleeping compartments (you sleep in a sleepsack attached to the wall.
And at the end of the hall, suspended within another huge atrium was a massive sphere, called the Geo-Cosmos, onto which was projected this small blue dot.
Sometimes kids got in the way when you tried to take a photo.
 |
| Ky, Jos, Bubbins and Luke, and Australia (upside down, rounding from the right) |
Downstairs were various other exhibits, the most interactive of which had longish queues (thank goodness it was pretty quiet despite being a weekend day). However, clearly the thing most people came to see was the twice-daily performance by Asimo, the 45kg, 120cm tall humanoid robot. The demonstration lasted ten minutes, although people were assembling for twenty minutes before the start.
 |
| Ky and Bubbins. Kids, and kids only, could sit up the front, but could not touch the red tape. |
Of course, all the talking was in Japanese - the male voice is the staff member, the female voice is Asimo. Again, the sound cuts out, but you're probably grateful if you don't speak Japanese. (I'll edit this later, as there was a lot of talking without much moving).
After the Asimo thing, we tried to escape without spending too much at the gift shop, got in the car, and set off to Aqua City. This shopping centre, plus adjacent buildings hosted our next three stops: Toys R Us, a Cat Cafe, and Joypolis. It also has the Sony ExploraScience, a more entertainment-focussed hands-on science museum, which we skipped this time around.
Our first stop in AquaCity was the toy shop, but we passed a few oddities along the way.
 |
| Any idea where these characters are from (the plastic things, not the humans - we'll accept responsibility for them) |
 |
| Plastic food menus (apparently the plastic replicas are as pricey as they are odd-but-practical) |
 |
| Replica Statue of Liberty. As you do. |
Once we'd managed to get everyone reassembled after that, half of us went into the Cat Cafe. Attached to a pet store, this is a room with a selection of incredibly patient cats (and kittens) for which you pay admission on a per-half-hour basis. You cannot pick up the cats without permission (they are for sale, typically around Y30,000, $3,000), and you are required to sanitise your hands before you enter. Very weird. Very Japanese.
We dashed from AquaCity to the adjacent building to visit the Joypolis. This is a Sega amusement centre - it's like a cross between a video arcade, sideshow alley, and a theme park. JD and the boys managed to squeeze three or four rides (including the roller coaster) into the hour-and-a-half that we had, mainly thanks to Hiro queueing on their behalf, while they enjoyed the ride before. (I got a simple admission ticket.)
There was some weird shit there too.
And some pretty cool interactive screens, like this one.
We had to leave a little before six, so we'd make our dinner reservation at 6:30pm. I'll put the pics of food porn in a separate post, I think.
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