Day 6 part 2: Tokyo Cruise and Odaiba

After our long day out in Ueno we headed back to our home base of Asakusa to get some lunch and prepare for the last half of the day. Before even coming to Japan we had heard about these places that serve sushi on a conveyor belt. The chef makes a bunch of different kinds of sushi then places them on a conveyor belt that runs around the restaurant. If you want that sushi you just grab the plate. Luckily there was one of these right down the road from our apartment. Something we didn't know was that you also make your own tea here. It took me (Kyle) a while to figure out that the water spout wasn't a lever and I made a small puddle while trying to figure it out but soon afterward we were pros and we had a great lunch. No pics unfortunately, we were too noobish to draw more attention to ourselves.

We ended up deciding that we would head out to Odaiba for some night time fun. Odaiba is a man-made island that was initially created as a defensive structure against American attacks in the 19th century. Now it is a hub of shopping and is quickly growing to a be a huge part of Tokyo. To get there we took the Tokyo Water Bus which runs all along the Sumida river down to the Odaiba Seaside Park. We finally got to relax a bit and enjoy the scenery while we made our way there.

At a stop while we waited to change boats

After the long but very enjoyable cruise we were ready to see some of the wonders of Odaiba. The place where the boat dropped us off was right near one of the areas biggest malls so we headed in there to check out the shopping and food.

Looks tasty

One Piece...One Piece everywhere...

This was some kind of betting game, I wanted to play but had no idea how.

Oh, I get it, it's like a self deprecating t-shirt, cute.

Oh...

One interesting thing about Japan is the pet culture. We had seen a lot of people walking their dogs around, almost always small dogs of course, and hadn't really paid much attention to it. Now though we have a whole new understanding. We stopped in the pet stores in this mall and noticed something interesting:

At 80 Yen per dollar I'll let you do the math, no I won't. That is a $6000 kitten. The dogs were all similarly priced as well. They ranged from about $2000 up to about $7000. Now we see that having an animal her might be a sign of wealth or status, at least certain breeds might. Attached to the pet store was a Cat Bar where people can pay some money and hang out in a room full of cats for a while. This kind of makes more sense when you know how much it costs to buy a cat.

Food:
We had a lot of fun wandering around the mall but it was dinner time. Chrissy's been having some issues with our food choices and has been wanting some specific stuff so I told her it was up to her....wrong move. We traversed every square inch of this mall. All six floors, sometime multiple times per floor. Each floor had a multitude of food choices, there was pretty much everything you could possibly imagine. They even had a Red Lobster and a Sizzlers! I followed her around as she looked at each trying to figure out what would be the best choice. Finally after what seemed like hours of searching she decided on what she wanted.

Those are squid balls. After the long vetting process the best that this mall had to offer according to Chrissy was bits of squid in a fried dough ball that we got from the food court. They had a unique flavor that wasn't necessarily bad, but it was a bit of an odd texture so neither of us was able to finish our own. There was a soft serve ice cream place in there so we grabbed some. I got the milk and pumpkin swirl while Chrissy got a coffee mixture.

The ice cream was great as usual but we had somewhere else that we wanted to check out so we made our way out of the mall and out to the streets. This city is really very well set up for tourists. At least every few blocks there are maps that lay out where you are and all the local attractions or points of interest. We hunt these down quite regularly and if we are lucky they have English on them (most of them do but it depends on the area), otherwise we just compare it to the maps we carry and figure it out ourselves. So we consulted a map and made our way a couple of blocks down to the second major mall in Odaiba.

Did I mention how much they love Christmas here?

Cause they really love Christmas.

We came to this second mall for one specific thing and luckily we were there in time to get a video of it (it's a bit long so feel free to skip ahead at parts):















Pictures below: