Tokyo Trip Day 3 (Odaiba)

Whenever we make our way to the Shinjuku JR station, we'll see this fast food place that sell pasta, therefore we decided to try having our brunch there before making our way to Odaiba. This fast food outlet is First Kitchen and it has a very prominent storefront, a giant clock sitting at the junction of the South exit of Shinjuku.

For a busy place like Shinjuku, the server lacking in command of English made it quite difficult for us to order our food but the young lad was definitely very polite and trying his best. I ordered a pasta with olive oil as base but it turned out to be too salty, P's choice of carbonara with egg seemed to taste better. It's awfully quiet in the fast restaurant even though its crowded, everyone was looking at their phones or doing their stuff quietly, nobody is talking even though its a fast food place. We felt obliged to keep our voices down, the Japanese culture is all about civic-mindedness and they dont cause disturbance or inconvenience to others. After the meal, everyone cleared their trays and we also did the same.

I've read several reviews that there's a lot of see in Odaiba and we need one whole day for that. It's a place like Sentosa in SG, but it's more filled with shopping malls than attractions. We took the longer way when we went, changing from JR train to the Yurikamome (I don't know what the name means, but it sounded really cute) at Shimbashi. It's a longer way but we enjoyed the scenic view of the harbor and across the rainbow bridge.

The Yurikamome was just like a monorail or LRT and it made a big round across the sea to Odaiba. We stopped at the Daiba station which is just next to the park and there was a mini statue of liberty there. The weather is nice with a cool breeze blowing on our faces, so we stopped for some selfies and photographs. This is also one of the few places when we met tourists from all over the world (other than our hotel), but there was only a small number of them as it was a weekday. When we were taking pictures of the mini statue of liberty, the rainbow bridge was the backdrop so it was really awesome.

Even though the park is just next to Aqua City, P was more excited to see the giant Gundam figure outside Diver City, so we walked to Diver City first to take more photographs. On our way, we passed the Fuji TV building, it was said that the view is really nice from the observation deck but I also read that it's closed on Mondays, therefore we did not attempt to go up at all. There were also some locals and tourists gathered around this giant Gumdam figure taking photographs. Although I do not really know what Gumdam is all about, I was still in awe when I saw the sheer size of this giant figurine. After taking photographs, we made our way into Diver City to look around. Some tourists really love shopping there, as the mall had some big brands like Burberry blue labels, Daiso etc. We were not really interested in shopping so we merely walked around. I was craving for crepe after our previous day out at Harajuku, so we stopped for some crepes at Baskin Robbins. I think crepe eating is really quite addictive!


Once again, I was too excited at tasting the crepe, therefore did not manage to take a picture of it.

At Baskin Robbins, I saw this self-service machine at the side but I did not know what it was meant for since the instructions were all in Japanese. Some locals came along and one of them pressed the blue button. Guess what? A piece of warm wet tissue dropped out, cool! The Japanese really have an eye for details and they even provide warm wet tissues at such places for people to refresh themselves. Of course I was delighted to solve the mystery and tried using the machine on my own.

I liked the futuristic design of this Fuji TV building, especially the sphere in the middle. 

After the crepe, we walked back to Aqua City to explore. There was not much to see at this mall, except the nice restaurants lining the side nearer to the park, I guess with a such nice view of the sea and the park, it will be a popular spot for dinner in the evening. This place reminded me a little of Asiatique in Bangkok. We happened to go to the basement of Aqua City and saw this mega pet shop with dogs and cats, they even had a cafe meant for pets. P was immediately attracted to this cat area where people paid to play with cats. Even though I'm not a cat lover, the fluffy cats also bought me over, so we spent half an hour at this cat haven.

Cats, cats and more cats! 

After the nice experience playing with cats there, I made a mental note to visit the cats cafe in SG someday. 

When we walked out from Aqua City, the sun was setting and we stopped outside to take some pictures of the nice sunset. 

After we were done with Aqua City, we walked to the Decks next door, where things got more interesting. They had a Madame Tussauds Museum and Trick Eye museum there, but we did not explore those. We went to this street which was decorated with stuff of the Japanese in the older days (Edo period?) and the Takoyaki museum with rows of stalls selling Takoyaki. This stretch was said to be quite crowded on weekends but we went on a Monday, thus it was quite deserted.

It was the first and only time I bought food tickets at the vending machine! They are selling it in mostly 8s, 12s or even more, but we just wanted to try it as snacks so found one stall which sell it in 6s. 

Personally, I felt that the takoyaki tasted normal, like those we buy from the stalls here in SG. 

We were walking around the Decks, still feeling quite full from the Takoyaki, and our stomachs were not ready for dinner yet. We walked past the Joypolis theme park a few times and P suggested that we should go into Joypolis to try some of the rides. Moreover, it was almost 8pm and we can get the late night entry tickets that only cost 2100Y for tourists. We are both not very into theme parks so I was reluctant at first as I only wanted to try one ride and see if we like it. However, I was coaxed into it as there was not much left to do at Odaiba except to explore Palette Town and the day had been quite uneventful so far.

The first thing we tried was the Sadoko tour. Other than feeling spooked, I was amused as the whole setup was in Japanese, therefore we did not even understand the storyline. We were given cameras to take 'ghostly evidence', and everyone just ran and crowd around in groups getting spooked. It was quite fun actually, I guessed we will be really freaked out if we could understand the story. 

I read from reviews that all these rides have hours of queue on weekends but we just walked straight in as its Monday evening, just a few minutes of wait for all the rides. After the Sadako tour, we went to 'Wild Jungle' ride which was a simulation ride that throw us around on the car. 

This is quite similar to 'Wild Jungle' but instead of a jungle setting, we were thrown around a river on a simulator. 

These are actually quite fun, rooms that can accommodate two people and we went on a shooting spree. The chair could turn 180 degree so that we can 'shoot down' people who are behind us. We would have go for more rounds but the previous two rides already made us queasy. 

We could have went on many rounds as there was no queues for the 2 hours we were in Joypolis, but P really regretted the decision to go there as he was really feeling unwell after the two consecutive simulator rides. We did not go on any rides after that and only walked around the place, we saw this cute aquarium thing which can capture our pictures and turn us into funny dugongs.

To get some fresh air, we walked all the way to Diver City and sat down near the giant gundam which was all lighted up at night. I thought that there will be some light shows but after awhile, I searched online and found out that the last show was at 8pm. We decided to head back Shinjuku area for dinner as we were still feeling too queasy to eat anything. 

We found the Tokyo Teleport Station near Diver City and took the direct Rinkai line back to Shinjuku, its a much faster way compared to the Yurikamome route we took earlier. We walked around a little around the area near our hotel and found this place, P loves steak so much that we were having steaks every single day when we were in Tokyo. 

This steakhouse turned out so good (in his opinion) that we visited three more times after this. Well, I must admit that its cheap and good, but I was protesting as we should not be ONLY having steaks in Tokyo! Anyway, the steak is medium rare by default which is how I liked it to be and this steak+burger steak upsize combo was only 1580Y with unlimited rice and soup. They did not mind that we ordered only one set and allowed us to eat as much rice as we liked, the good service was what bought us over.