Odaiba
The beginning of the week was boring--or, at least, not great material for a travel journal. I went to work, I met with people from the US office who came to visit, and I met with people out here. I got some multi-threaded, multi-host, network queue code stuff working, so that was nice. I also did laundry, slept, ate, and did all the usual things. Excitement about the local rail system is so last week.
Thursday!
On Thursday, after spending a delightful half hour gathering death rate data for a Facebook post that would serve to change the nature of the gun control debate in this country--or not--and after a lot of pushing and pulling and complaining, we got the kids out of the house and set off for an afternoon in Odaiba. Odaiba is an artificial island in Tokyo Bay with a whole bunch of malls and attractions on it. As such things normally transpire, we got a later start than I'd like.
The last leg of the trip did include a relatively new section of rail track, up in the air with decent views of the city. The train went over the Rainbow Bridge, which gave us delightful views of the bay. Water, out to the horizon. Not buildings!
We ended up at the south end of the island, and started heading northwards. Our first stop was, of course, The Statue of Liberty. It seemed much smaller than I'd thought, but perspective is tricky.
Then we entered the first mall and searched for lunch. We ate at a restaurant with Brooklyn in the name. The food was okay. Chris and I shared a barbeque platter that was smaller than the pictures and tasted okay.
We then traveled to the other end of the mall and our main attraction for the day, the Sony ExploraScience museum. It was sort of a smaller Exploratorium sort of thing. In fact, a couple of the exhibits even had credits to the Exploratorium. It had the usual sort of computer stuff--tricks with sound and light, and a few games where you could wave your hands to make stuff happen. The highlight to me and the kids was the Dance Dance Revolution Animal Sound Wave exhibit. There was also a polarized stereo 3-D movie theater with a bunch of movies, entirely in Japanese, of course. There was an animation about the Big Bang and very early universe, a cute animation of a poor polar bear family whose lives were ripped apart by climate change, and some beautiful shots of marine life seen while diving off Okinawa.
After an hour or two, Chris graciously agreed to stay with the girls and I wandered off for a stroll around the mall to see what I could buy. I now have a Coca-Cola pocket hand towel from the Coca-Cola store. I returned and we headed north to the next shopping center. Chris was very hungry, but it wasn't really time for dinner yet, so we stopped at her insistence at a McDonald's for a snack. One Big Mac, one hamburger, and some fries later, and it was off for our second tourist destination, the Trick Art Museum.
The Trick Art Museum is in the back corner of a rather cheesy midway, with cheap toys and old fashioned arcade games. I wasn't expecting much, but it was actually pretty fun. It's basically a sequence of rooms with paintings on the wall (and floor, and ceiling) that are designed so that you can stand in the right place and take pictures that look tricky. Like, say, you can have a picture of yourself trapped in an upside down wine glass by a vampire. Or hiding from ninjas by holding on to the doorframe of a building. Stuff like that. Chris will post some pictures at some point. Cheesy and silly, but a lot of fun.
It was quite late by the time we were heading back, so we grabbed some food from the 7 Eleven and Lawson, and heated it up at home. A tiring day with a slow start, but good fun overall.
Friday was another work day. Mostly it went well, although there's some code that wasn't behaving. I'll probably fix it tomorrow. First thing in the morning, staring out the window, I saw a mountainous cone in the distance that may have been Mt. Fuji. What I saw sort of looked like the picture in the link, so maybe that was it. I'll have to get a closer view sometime.
Which was part of what we tried to do on Saturday...
Thursday!
On Thursday, after spending a delightful half hour gathering death rate data for a Facebook post that would serve to change the nature of the gun control debate in this country--or not--and after a lot of pushing and pulling and complaining, we got the kids out of the house and set off for an afternoon in Odaiba. Odaiba is an artificial island in Tokyo Bay with a whole bunch of malls and attractions on it. As such things normally transpire, we got a later start than I'd like.
The last leg of the trip did include a relatively new section of rail track, up in the air with decent views of the city. The train went over the Rainbow Bridge, which gave us delightful views of the bay. Water, out to the horizon. Not buildings!
We ended up at the south end of the island, and started heading northwards. Our first stop was, of course, The Statue of Liberty. It seemed much smaller than I'd thought, but perspective is tricky.
Then we entered the first mall and searched for lunch. We ate at a restaurant with Brooklyn in the name. The food was okay. Chris and I shared a barbeque platter that was smaller than the pictures and tasted okay.
We then traveled to the other end of the mall and our main attraction for the day, the Sony ExploraScience museum. It was sort of a smaller Exploratorium sort of thing. In fact, a couple of the exhibits even had credits to the Exploratorium. It had the usual sort of computer stuff--tricks with sound and light, and a few games where you could wave your hands to make stuff happen. The highlight to me and the kids was the Dance Dance Revolution Animal Sound Wave exhibit. There was also a polarized stereo 3-D movie theater with a bunch of movies, entirely in Japanese, of course. There was an animation about the Big Bang and very early universe, a cute animation of a poor polar bear family whose lives were ripped apart by climate change, and some beautiful shots of marine life seen while diving off Okinawa.
After an hour or two, Chris graciously agreed to stay with the girls and I wandered off for a stroll around the mall to see what I could buy. I now have a Coca-Cola pocket hand towel from the Coca-Cola store. I returned and we headed north to the next shopping center. Chris was very hungry, but it wasn't really time for dinner yet, so we stopped at her insistence at a McDonald's for a snack. One Big Mac, one hamburger, and some fries later, and it was off for our second tourist destination, the Trick Art Museum.
The Trick Art Museum is in the back corner of a rather cheesy midway, with cheap toys and old fashioned arcade games. I wasn't expecting much, but it was actually pretty fun. It's basically a sequence of rooms with paintings on the wall (and floor, and ceiling) that are designed so that you can stand in the right place and take pictures that look tricky. Like, say, you can have a picture of yourself trapped in an upside down wine glass by a vampire. Or hiding from ninjas by holding on to the doorframe of a building. Stuff like that. Chris will post some pictures at some point. Cheesy and silly, but a lot of fun.
It was quite late by the time we were heading back, so we grabbed some food from the 7 Eleven and Lawson, and heated it up at home. A tiring day with a slow start, but good fun overall.
Friday was another work day. Mostly it went well, although there's some code that wasn't behaving. I'll probably fix it tomorrow. First thing in the morning, staring out the window, I saw a mountainous cone in the distance that may have been Mt. Fuji. What I saw sort of looked like the picture in the link, so maybe that was it. I'll have to get a closer view sometime.
Which was part of what we tried to do on Saturday...