macbook and palace

So I went ahead and got a macbook. go me. I can now upload pictures as I want, which is handy. I can also do some editing on them. And I got a whole bunch of storage space so I can shoot away as much as I want.

Apart from that today was Imperial palace, the third try at it... First time round I didn't find the entrances. Second time round it was closed. Third time round all went well and I got in there and the weather was pretty good too. Awesome. It seem that while everything else is built small, like roads, houses that are abou 4 meters wide but 10 stories high, cars that are really tiny etc... the palace and its gardens have to be absolutely huge. Just check the size out on google earth. It's like insane... You walk and walk and walk and then you realise that you're not even close to where you thought you'd already be. My plan was to go through the palace, past the gardens, north towards Yasukuni shrine, where the cabinet and prime minister go yearly to pay tribute to all the people who have died in the wars Japan's been involved in. Including obviously certain A-class war criminals. Then China and others get all fuzzy about the visit and lots of talk ensues..

Anyhow, after a whole bunch of walking I finally get out from the actual imperial gardens and realise theres prolly about 2-3 km more of walking to get to the shrine itself, not including the 500 or so meter long walkway up to the shrine from its eastern entrance. I did walk past the budokan, the judo arena of the 1964 olympics. So my guidebook says. Obviously I only know it cause all those weird artists I listen to tend to make liveDVDs from their gigs at the budokan. So past that, and then another km or so to the train to get away. Oh, the place was like any other shinto shrine I've visited here, apart from a larger than normal amount of small tiny school children in uniform who aparently are being indoctrinated into the latest generation of yasukuni visitors...

But enough with sarcasm over some stupid temple, yesterday was a visit to another sort of temple, one made for and with money...

From Asakusa, indeed, from about 50 meters north from the guesthouse, on the northern side of the bridge right across from the Asahi Beer HQ, sumida river water busses depart for various places along the river and Tokyo bay. For a whooping 1220 yen you can go to Odaiba. As seen in my mobile phone picture from yesterday Odaiba is also at the other end of a huge huge bridge, and there's also a tunnel for cars that runs from the mainland to Odaiba. The whole place is a manmade island, with a ton of new houses, and shopping centers. And it's like almost deserted, which is quite weird after visiting almost every other large area of Tokyo and always running into amazing amounts of people. It's also been designed and built in a way that's prolly more US than Japan, with large roads and open spaces, so it all feels rather deserted when you compare it to Mori's Roppongi Hills, or Shinjuku etc...I tried some japanese curry there, which is not to be mistaken with indian food. It was decent but you can beat the 660 yen cost by atleast half if you go to a gjuudon place like Yoshinoka which have their 24 hour open places all around town, no guarantees you'll like the taste of that though after a week...I'm diverting from Odaiba in general though, apologies. After some windowshopping in the almost empty shopping mall I headed towards the MeSci, Tokyo's museum for science and innovation, the place where you can watch all sorts of hightech gear and ideas and often also play around with most of them. There's some robots, maglev trains, space stuff and a gigantic ball full of leds which can be used to see what the weather is like on the whole planet, how warm it is etc... They also have some really nice multimedia libraries that are free to use, and contain both japanese and english stuff, including interviews and documentaries and so forth. Nothing like ending a museum visit with a 45 minute explanation of how and why Challenger exploded killing 7 astronauts, as explained by NASAs research and investigations team in a really really matter of fact voice.

Almost next to the MeSci museum there's a gigantic manmade house that's made to look like a big cruise ship. It's the maritime museum, but sadly it was already late so I took the monorail over the bridge back into Tokyo...