關東 - 東京都: Odaiba Aquacity

Date: Monday, 14th April 2008 (Evening)

Weather: 17˚C~19˚C (daytime) / ~14˚C (night time)

Next, in our itinerary is -> Tokyo City - it is not far from Mt Fuji (through 神奈川 Highway), about 2.5 hours driving. As usual, this city is filled with tall structures, luxurious apartments, office buildings, shopping malls, subway stations and overhead bridges that linked with many busy traffics. 盈盈 introduced us Akibara 秋叶原, Roppongi 六本木, Ginza 銀座 and Nihonbashi 日本橋 along the way to Ameyoko shopping mall in Ueno 上野. We shopped there for 1 hour or so.

Then, the coach dropped us at Tokyo cruise centre - this cruise ride will bring us to Odaiba Aquacity 台場水色之城....

Wow, we sat on this cruise boat which overlooking the ocean and sceneries of Odaiba - the Rainbow Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and Fuji TV Studio - they are so beautiful during day time and also at night, so magnificent !! Mom took many photos here....

[ Odaiba was born on the reclaimed land in the Tokyo Bay in the southeast of Tokyo. It is attracting mostly young people as the newest amusement spot in Tokyo. The name Odaiba means a platform site. ]



Let me elaborate more about Odaiba - the center of Odaiba is called "Aquacity Odaiba". There is a shopping mall with a 300-meter long boutique street, a multi-flex cinema that employs the latest acoustic and screen technologies, a gourmet zone that stretches over 15,000 m2 which is obviously the largest in Japan, and Fuji TV studio where visitors can see the settings of popular TV programs.

Of course, we will not let go of this opportunity to snap beautiful photos of Odaiba 台場水色之城 and it's night life!!

Tonight, we stayed @ The Grand Pacific Meridien (Le-Meridien) Hotel (picture below). There are 2 large hotels conglomerate here, another one is Hotel Nikko. 盈盈 told us Japan hotels as well as restaurants are very selective and particular about the origin of tourist - where they are from? are they polite? are they affordable customers? Lately, these 2 hotels began to receive Australia-America and Singapore groups except tourists from China due to their bad experiences with them in the past.



After checked in into the hotel, get changed, we went for our dinner around this area. Dinner started slightly late at about 8'ish.... we had something different from previous meal (see picture below). There are many other Japanese & Sushi Restaurant nearby. I took some of the pictures....

Picture below (which I took from my hotel room) showed vehicles passing through tunnel, from point A to point B through 1 km underground highway. If you look at it carefully, you will see that this is not an ordinary highway - how did the japanese carry out such contruction works when the sea is at the surface? This is really stunning!!! .... we were shocked when 盈盈 explained it to us. Then, 3rd picture below is Museum of Maritime Science and JR Subway Station (Daiba Station, on Yurikamome Line).

Though it is a tuff project but Japanese took many many years (10, 20 or 30 years) to master it from Caucasian countries. They do not hurry! They made record of each mistake they encountered along the way and improved from it (this is their habits, also their culture). They started by building underground tunnels and bridges to get experiences. When they are fully confident then only they start to build other kind of infrastructure projects. Well, Japan is going to start another project, a 20 km tunnel highway from rural area linked through to Tokyo city - it has 2 levels of railways and 2 levels of underground shopping mall. This was on their mind now!

盈盈 told us that Japan has developed a better, faster and speedier bullet train. It was too fast that she could only felt the momentum when it drove passed her. But, because it hasn't proof to be safe, the Japanese hasn't decide to launch it yet. They will continue to do experiments. To ensure safety of their peoples, such testing was normally carried out in the mountanious area.... eehhmm....