ODAIBA TOKYO GUIDE - RTW Day 6 - 2 Minute Travel

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• published: 05 Nov 2014
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Before getting into the blog, the TV show in the hotel room is determining how fast something must go past a schoolgirl for her skirt to flash. A guy running at 30 km/h wasn’t enough, a scooter at 60 km/h wasn’t enough, but a Ferrari at 120kmh was enough. So another hard hitting news report from Japan. Anyways, I use kayak.com as my online trip organiser. In Kayak it said that we were departing Sapporo at 6.36am, and therefore, we decided to get up a couple of hours earlier at 4.30am, so we could have a shower, do all our packing, and be prepared for our travel. Turns out, the train tickets I actually reserved were for 7.30, so that was a bit of difference. Sapporo was a scorcher today at 18 degrees and sunny, so I was happy that when we arrived yesterday it was cold and snowing, because warm is a bit clichéd for Japan at the moment. Warmth really is our enemy in Japan. We're not designed for hot weather, and our clothing system really goes from warm, to super warm, so when it’s anything higher than 15 degrees, we start sweating, and getting angry at each other. Faces all red and flushed, and not in a good way. Today, all the trains were painless, on time, and pleasurable. No dramas to report. We did decide to stay in a different but familiar part of Tokyo, Odaiba. After Khaosan Tokyo Ninja provided us a tiny room with a damp towel smell for about $60 a night, we decided to spend $75 and stay in a hotel instead. We ended up staying at the Tokyo Bay Ariake Washington Hotel. Apparently I had ordered a smoking room, but after asking the person at the front counter nicely, we were upgraded to a massive four person non-smoking family room for no extra cost. I can still flirt with the best of them. As did Kathryn, throwing out the old “your English is awesome” compliment. Odaiba is an artificial island, which means there’s lots of space to walk around, and for massive crazy architecture. The Tokyo Big Sight, or conference centre, looks like four upside down pyramids, and is a favourite building of mine. Before heading out, we had dinner at McDonald’s. As a person who loves novelty food, this place will be the death of me. Now they have fries which you squirt some sort of cheese liquid over. It looks as appealing as how I described it. Add that to the Cheese powder you shake over a Chicken Fillet, and the Japanese obsession with Cheese flavour aligns perfectly with my delight in enjoying it. We headed towards Venus Fort, which is a shopping mall for women. Designed to replicate Venice, it’s super cheesy. We've been here a few times before, and the feeling of walking around and seeing all these familiar sights is quite nice. I spend all my time at work thinking about the future, so it’s nice to do some reminiscing for a change. We came into Venus Fort so Kathryn could once again find some Crocs. I say once again, because like a three-yearly ritual, we come to Tokyo, Kathryn tries to find these leather sandal Crocs, they don't have them (since they're only sold in America), and then we move on. I’m not sure why she’s so obsessed by Crocs. Finally, we walked a bit further to another shopping mall, Diver City. This is famous for having the only life sized replica of a space robot, Mobile Suit Gundam. It’s a big robot about 18 metres tall. It’s cheesy and awesome.