Day: June 28, 2019

After Shimokitazawa and Shibuya we took the metro over to the Skytree, then after that took the water bus over to Odaiba (from Hinode station). This only cost ¥520, takes 20 minutes and you get an awesome view of the Rainbow bridge. Walked from the water bus terminal over to team labs (about 20 minute walk) and checked out the Toyota display. This was free.

Not really a great day, but the view was still ok

On the water bus to Odaiba

Toyota display

Inside Team Labs

We had planned to spend the morning, get some coffee etc in a hip and trendy area of Tokyo called Shimo-Kitazawa, which is a little bit off the main tourist track, it’s supposedly a bit like Harajuku designed more for Gen-X. It’s not on a JR line so we purchased a SUICA card to use the metro. You get there by going to Shibuya and taking the Inokashira line. Took us a while and a few wrong directions to find it.

We made one fatal mistake though, we got there way to early. At 9am almost nothing opened till 10 or 11 so all the hip and happening places were closed and not happening right now. So we headed back to Shibuya, did a bit of shopping and found a place that did more fluffy pancakes.

Luckily we grabbed a coffee when we left the hotel at 8!

Last night we had dinner in Shinagawa again near the hotel. Didn’t feel like venturing too far as we had walked 19km during the day and it had started to rain. We picked a restaurant on the 6th floor of a building close by.

As soon as we walked in they warned us there was no English menu, but they had pictures so we were not too fazed. We had our own private booth which was a little weird but at least it kept a bit of the smoke and noise out, which I assume is the purpose.

Food was sensational. On the more expensive side, at A$50 each for the night. We had a lamb based dish, that was amazing.

No blog about a trip to Japan could possibly ignore the toilets here. They have quite a few high tech enhancements. The seats are electrically heated which does take a bit of getting used to, although I’m sure in the depth of a Japanese winter it would be much appreciated.

Most toilets have a built in bidet function, where if you push a button a little arm extends from its hiding place and squirts a jet of warm water right into “the spot” you could say.

I was a bit worried it might squirt water everywhere but they must have some amazing sphincter detection technology as it never misses. Who ever does the user acceptance testing at Toto Industries (makers of the toilets here) must have the cleanest bottom in all of Japan.

I’ve nicknamed our toilet Captain Kirk, as just like the TV show he eliminates Klingons hiding around Uranus.

A zoom in on the controls for the enterprise. Warp factor 9 !

Whilst on the subject of toilets, the ones at Nikko had a display on how not to use them