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I went to Odaiba on Saturday which is a man-made island south of Tokyo. It was an incredibly hot and sunny day which made all the buildings extra bright and shiny. The whole island has a really futuristic feel to it, with all the crazy buildings, a big ferris wheel, and the train that circles the island above the buildings.

Naturally, my cellphone battery died (like really died, I need to get a new one) right after getting out of the subway so I had no idea where to meet Amy and her friends. Luckily, right before the phone died, Amy had said “We’re meeting at Daiba…” so I went to Daiba station hoping to see them there. Of course, there’s many exits and even more people so I stand around trying to find them. I realize that I only have one phone number, Amy’s friend’s, which I wrote down on a piece of paper; good thing I did too or otherwise I would’ve just ended up wondering around by myself. I thought about just asking a random person to borrow their phone, but I saw two guys selling peaches under a bridge in the shade. I thought, well, maybe if I buy their peaches… So I go up to them and ask one of them if I can use his phone if I buy his peaches. I’m clutching my phone in my hand so he takes and tries to turn it on. He tells me it’s out of battery, and I need to go to a nearby convenient store to charge it (I didn’t know convenient stores did that). I ask him where the nearest one is, but it seemed pretty far so I ask him again if I can use his phone. And he’s like, okay fine so I use it, realize that my friend’s are in an Indonesian restaurant, and I give the phone back. I felt really thankful so I offered to buy some peaches. They obviously weren’t having much success, and 6 for $3 is a really good deal since they were super big and fruit is crazy expensive here. And he kept saying no, it’s okay, and I kept saying it’s okay back. When I was taking out money, he finally showed me another sign that said 2 for $10. Apparently, the really big peaches were 2 for $10 and these tiny peaches on the side were 6 for $3; it was just a deceiving advertisement, haha. So I relented and just bowed and said a really big thank you. I think he felt bad for the foreigner with the bad Japanese.

I’ve never had Indonesian food before, and according to Amy, it was unauthentic, but it was really good!

One of the biggest attractions in Odaiba is the giant full scale gundum. It even blew smoke and turned its head!

Next, I went to Miraikan, Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. It was really modernistic.

They had a “how the internet works” simulation with pingpong balls as packets; they even had a parity bit. Reminds me of 6.02…. you could send different messages and there’s a receiver end where you can well, receive them.

And there was this weird thing where people sat on a big circular table that spun and a camera took pictures through a slit in the wall and we would all appear on this big screen. And the picture of people would slowly get crushed…

Only the Japanese would have amino acids as smiley faces and and tRNA as cars…

What if humans had tails????

A model of the International Space Station and signatures of astronauts who have visited Miraikan. You see the small screen in front of the model? It’s live video feed from NASA’s control room in Houston.

And finally, the gift shop!

The huge building on the left is Fuji Television Studios. On the right is a picture I took from the train. The ship like building is the Maritime Science Museum, maybe next time…

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