22 Days in Japan, Day 5: Maybe I Should’ve Gone in April

Rain, rain, and more rain. It’s Day 5, and it’s just sopping wet outside.

The plan is to check out the man-made island Odaiba (I made a brief stop there on the cycling tour), which includes the Miraikan (National Museum of Emerging Science), MegaWeb (some Toyota car museum), and Venus Fort (a big mall). I’d end the day with a side trip to Oedo Onsen, one of the few spa/fake hot springs in Tokyo.

Most of that goes right out the window.

I step off the train at the first Odaiba stop, and quickly realize that I’d stopped wayyyyyyy too early. At least two stops too early. But hey, it’s only a short walk to the Science Museum anyway, right?

Hah!

On a normal day, the walk from the first stop to the museum would probably have been fifteen, maybe twenty minutes at most. In the pouring rain, it probably takes me half an hour to get there. And by the time I do get there, my feet are thoroughly soaked (casual leather shoes are definitely not optimal for rainy days, walking, and/or this trip). I’m pretty sure that my feet, at that point, are extremely nasty and smelly. But I’m too far annoyed to even care about that.

The museum is closed. Closed on Tuesdays. And today is Tuesday!

It’s always a crap feeling when you screw up, you know you screwed up, and you could have prevented said screwup by taking two minutes to check the website. This is what I did not do, and I’m not happy about it. The rain plopping all around me and my feet doesn’t help much either.

So I start my trek back. I take a different route and walk past Venus Fort, which I incorrectly assume is some kind of Women’s Mall (like there was ever such a thing). I find MegaWeb, go in to check out the “universal design showcase” (a decent amount of stuff was in English but I really have to use the bathroom), and pass by one of the largest Ferris Wheels that I’ve ever seen. Of course, this being around noon, and wet, the area’s deserted.

MegaWeb is actually a kind-of-cool place. You can test drive a whole bunch of different Toyotas (but only SUVs, minivans, and commuter cars) and you don’t even need a Japanese license. There’s an automated ride in an electric car (which I believe costs money, but I could have read the sign wrong) and a couple of driving simulators. And also lots of cars. You can get a nice big whiff of New Car Smell when you walk in.

I have lunch at a McDonalds just outside the mall, where I buy a Juicy Chicken and a McPork. Both are pretty good.

Venus Fort is your typical high-class mall with lots of typical high-class shopping. There’s a really large arcade right when you enter the mall called Color World that has some lots of interesting crane games (instead of grabbing, you use the machine to push items off a shelf – knock one off and you win!). The mall seems to be modeled after Venice, but in reality it looks just like those casino malls and nothing like actual Venice.

Down the road and across a large street is yet another mall, Decks. It’s mainly a number of small boutiques geared toward the younger crowd, culminating in a gigantic indoor arcade and amusement center known as Sega Joypolis. I’d love to check it out, but it’s fairly pricey, and anyway, who wants to play arcade games or go on amusement rides by themselves?

At this point I’m thoroughly bored with Odaiba, and resolve to come back on a nicer day/night. I even skip the onsen. Whatever.

And so ends the first part of my day. I spend the afternoon at Asakusa, visiting the foreigner-ridden (forridden?) Senso-ji temple. There I pick up a fortune that basically sums up my day:

“Happiness and trouble comes one after another fortune and damage visit you one by one.”

Today was definitely damage.