A Full Day in Tokyo

Day 15 was going to be a full one and what better way to start then to visit another palace. The Imperial Palace in Tokyo is current residence of the emperor of Japan, Akahito. The palace has been home to Japanese emperors since 1867 when the imperial residence was moved from Kyoto. See previous post.

And of course every palace needs a moat.

And every moat needs a boat.

And what's a palace without a garden.

Where even the trees stand on guard, row on row.

Needing a break from palaces and gardens, we headed off to Odaiba Island. Odaiba Island is a popular shopping and entertainment district situated on a man made island in Tokyo Bay. I needed some dressy shirts to wear to dinner on the cruise so some shopping and entertainment was in order.

To get to the island you must travel over the  Rainbow Bridge. Impressive during the day, at night, the white towers that support the bridge are illuminated in red, white and green light using solar energy obtained during the day. The picture is compliments of Wikipedia, I could never do it justice.

Besides shopping, there were two places on the island, I wanted to visit. First on the list was the National Museum of Immerging Science and Innovation or as it is known in Tokyo, the Miraikan. The Miraikan is home to Asimo, the grandfather to all bi-pedal robots in existence to day. He can walk, talk and kick a football although cannot "bend it like Beckham". He can recognize human expressions and interact with them. When asked what he thought about President Trump, he immediately shut down for maintenance.

The Geo-Cosmos is a huge globe that hangs over the museum. It has high resolution displays presenting near real-time events of global weather patterns, ocean temperatures and vegetation cover.. Very cool. We noticed that Penticton was having a particularly cloudy and cold day.

Then it was off to the Mega  Web. MW is home to all things Toyota. Here you can find all the latest and future Toyota products. You can arrange a test ride in all the latest models on their private track. Did I mention that it was a national holiday in Japan. There was a minimum 2 hour wait for even the basic models, so I had to make do with a stationary test drive. Vroom, vroom!




But, I did find a serious design flaw. The steering wheel was on the wrong side of the car.

After some shopping and dinner we went to watch the sun set over the Statue of Liberty. Yes, you heard it, an 11 metre tall replica of the real thing. Oddly, it is not the only replica in Japan as there are two others. It was put up temporarily in 1998-1999 to celebrate the French Year of Japan and after huge popular demand, it was re-installed in 2000.

In fact there are dozens of replicas all over the world.








Tomorrow we head to Yokohama and board the cruise ship and our home for the next 15 days.