| June 13, 2001
Wednesday (I forgot the weather....)
Today is pretty much the
last day of our trip. We got back to Tokyo, or maybe it was last
night, memory is fading fading fading....... Andy and my bro
had to take care of some stuff so I went to adventuring a bit by
myself. I decided to go to Odaiba, which is like an off part of
Tokyo (it's a landfill I believe) All the buildings there looked
really high tech, including the train station itself.
The first place I
visited was the Tokyo display center. They have cars from the past,
present, and even future models. There were also numerous car
simulators including several virtual reality machines. I got on this
race car simulator but I accidentally started the thing b4 I was fully
strapped in..... Don't' worry, it's just a simulator! So I
basically missed like the first part of video clip. If you like
cars, it's definitely a great place to visit. However, I think the
best part of the tour is taking a ride in the automatic car. It was
free too =P This automatic car actually drives by itself on paved
roads with no tracks whatsoever. Not only does it do actual
steering, it also controls the break as well as you approach another car
in front of you. Now that's a car I want =) You just sit back
and the car handle the rest.
I then went to
this huge gaming center next door. Yea, I know, I spend way too much
time in those places. Nevertheless, that places went bankrupt or
something and was closed. It seemed like they had a thing that's
like Drop Zone too. I did go on the Ferris wheel. It was kinda
lonely though since I was all by myself. <sniff sniff> It had
a beautiful view of the bay though.
I then proceeded
to the shopping mall. Now now, it's not just a shopping mall, it's
decorated in the style of 17th century Europe. There were soft music
floating in the background. The ceilings were filled w/ animated
moving clouds that change color from time to time. You just lose
yourself in the entire atmosphere. Ah, it was so pretty. The
mall contained many different shops. I bought some boxed sushi cuz I
was hungry. There were also several food courts inside, the smell of
the food was really good too (unlike the fast food, fake Chinese
food we have here at American food courts)
My next stop is Joypolis.
Unlike the one in Osaka, this one seemed to be all rides and you have to
pay an entrance fee or something. In any case, I was under heavy
constraint of time to meet my bro and Andy so I decided to leave for the
Fuji TV station.
Fuji TV station has a
very unique structure. It has a globe thing in the center at the
very top. As soon as I got in, I saw people getting this envelope
thing and putting stamps on it. It's like a tour thing which makes
you follow the tour route and getting a stamp at each specified
stop. I thought it was pretty interesting at first. Then I
realized that only girls are holding those..... But that's ok, I'm a
foreigner!!! I have the right to be silly =) The TV station
was quite huge. I didn't spend too much time looking at everything
though since I couldn't read most of the stuff and I didn't know the
actors/actresses or the TV programs there so..... I was also in a
hurry to get back. So I basically went through the tour route and
collected all the stamp marks.
 |
The front of the envelope |
 |
The back of the envelope. It has all the stamp
marks I collected =] |
And guess what I got at the end, a nice folder
 |
Ah, the reward for my running
around collecting stamp marks. |
I then hurried back to meet my bro and
Andy. For our last night here, we went to Ginza for a nice
dinner. We ate at this Japanese restaurant right across from the
Sony building. The waiter happened to be a big fan of the Lakers and
has studied at America for a year. So he actually could converse in
English a bit. (I don't really like Lakers though) Anywayz, he
was really excited to know that we were from America. We had lots of
really yummy food. The only bad thing was that the people next to us
were all smoking =[ (but then agn, we've pretty privileged to be in
California where smoking is prohibited in public places)
We also went to the Sony building and it was
still open this time. We waited in line to see this exhibit just cuz
everyone was standing in that line..... (grouping nature of human I
guess) Turned out it was to look at some fireflies (or some other
glowing insects..... me fail biology) Didn't really understand much
(or any) of the explanations though = / I bought some Japanese
cd in the Sony building. Japanese cds are really expensive, they are
like $30 for a full city and $15 for a single. Thus, under the
constraint of budget, I decided to just get some used cd, which is as good
I guess =] Of course, these cds are like a dollar a piece in
HK..... In any case, we put a nice end to our trip in Japan.
Andy and I stayed up pretty late telling jokes but I eventually fell
asleep.
[ Back ] [ Up ] [ Next ]
|
