Robot Claw

Today I visited teamlab Borderless, a ‘digital art museum’ in the Odaiba district of Tokyo. And it was, to say the least, incredible.

It comprises a vast maze like space with many rooms and at least two levels (it’s hard to keep track) filled with all sorts of unusual digital art.

Almost all of the artwork is based around light in some form or another, and none of it is static. The lights and projections are constantly changing and moving, and the soundtrack changes with them.

There are vast cavernous rooms where one moment the walls are covered with ink paintings and then the next butterflies and then the next a waterfall. There are tiny rooms full of flowers or falling cherry blossoms. There is a round room with waves crashing against the walls.

There’s the completely mirrored room full of hanging lanterns that change colour slowly. There’s a large sloping room filled with artificial plants that you walk through (and yes you need to push them out of the way) as ‘wind’ blows around you. There are large animals made of flowers walking along walls and geckos and whales walking and swimming underneath your feet.

Tiny rooms contain what at first seem to be traditional artworks hung on walls but on closer scrutiny reveal themselves to be animated as well, only slowly or on a minute scale. There was so much to see I’m sure I missed some of it (there’s no map or guide) and since the installations were often changing the same room could be different next time you went in.

The above photo was taken in a room with LED light strings suspended from the ceiling. As I first walked through (which wasn’t easy since the density of strings is high and the floor mirrored!) all of a sudden it ‘rained’ light down onto me in a very convincing manner. It was extraordinary. I visited the room several times and never saw rain again.

As far as attractions go this was an 11 out of 10. Easily one of – if not the best art museum I’ve ever been to. I spent over two hours inside and could have spent much more had I not been starving. I think more of these will be installed around the world and if you’re ever near one I highly recommend you go.

After a gourmet (¥630) meal, my next stop was right next to teamlab, and what do you know it was another Ferris wheel:

I’ve rode this one – called Daikanransha – twice before although not in many years. For a while it was the biggest in the world and even today it’s the second biggest I’ve ever personally ridden (after another Tokyo wheel). I can assure you that yes the wind still blows the cars a bit and yes it’s as high as it looks.

It was also incredibly sunny, as you may notice in the above photo. This has the effect of warming the cars wonderfully, and I greatly enjoyed my toasty ride. Here’s the obligatory snap from the carriage:

Such style and such handsomeness! Tokyo will miss me when I leave 🙂

After the wheel I wandered over to the new giant Gundam statue at Diver City mall. KLS and I saw the old one (an RX-78 Gundam) years back but this new one – a Unicorn Gundam – was only installed two years ago. It’s 20 meters tall, incredibly detailed and incredibly awesome. Inside the mall I visited the giant Gundam Base which not only sold a mind-boggling array of Gundam kits but also had a vast display area of prize-winning or otherwise special assembled Gundams.

The talent on display beggared belief. I don’t even paint my Gundams but today I saw some that had been resculpted, engraved, fully decked out with lights and even metallized as shown above. As someone who has assembled quite a few plastic model kits myself I was awestruck, and greatly enjoyed the exhibit.

The rest of the day was more shopping, UFO machines, buying souvenirs etc. And yes that cat armour was a real product for sale. Of course I didn’t buy it, but I very nearly did buy some of this cotton candy (fairy floss):

Yes, yes and yes. Those are both made of cotton candy!

Yet another great day in my endless vacation. However there was a strange occurrence today that made me pause. Just as I got off the Ferris wheel my shoe broke! It seems after the 507,000 steps I’ve done these past 28 days (I’ll let you calculate the average) the shoes decided to just pack it in rather than walk any more! So today I walked easily over 10k steps in a broken, uncomfortable shoe which ended up ruining my sock as well. Luckily I have a spare pair of shoes, which should see me through these last remaining days of the trip.

To finish today’s post I couldn’t help to notice that the news was a little more excited than usual today. Once I found out the reason I became a tad excited myself: they are forecasting snow in Tokyo tonight at 11 pm! Unfortunately I’m tired like the dead and will probably sleep through it if it happens, but perhaps if I wake early enough I may find traces? Let’s find out tomorrow!

Today was just shopping. That’s it. Hours and hours of it. Most of this happened at the mega-otaku destination of Nakano Broadway Mall, which I’ve blogged about many times before (on previous Japan trips). This was the first time I’d visited alone, and I spent many hours looking in all the weird and wonderful shops.

The extent of the mania in this place is hard to describe. The photo above shows a tiny (about an inch high) rubber figure listed at ¥60000 (about US$550), and this wasn’t even (close to) the most expensive in that shop. And that shop seemed to just sell tiny rubber figurines and Tamagotchis of all things. I doubt it could remain in business anywhere else on Earth.

Nakano is full of similar, highly focused and very weird shops and I spent hours looking in all of them. Often I was mystified by what I was looking at or what the stores specialized in (did one store just sell used tickets?) but I was entranced regardless. Of course there’s also many otaku shops selling anime merchandise, but they’re common in Akihabara and elsewhere so when I visit Nakano I tend to focus on the weirder shops.

I bought stuff of course. Mostly games today, but a few books and toys too. The game shop isn’t quite so astonishing as the ones in Akihabara, but does have a few gems available to those with money to burn. For instance a boxed Japanese version Vectrex for ‘only’ about $1500:

Or if you’re more interested in less electronic gaming – and your pockets are deep indeed – how about a copy of the Japanese edition of this legendary Call of Cthulhu module, a steal at over $500:

I saw so much stuff like this today. Ancient tin robot toys for over $10k, a glass case containing hundreds of (just) doll heads, a shop specializing in horror books, dozens and dozens of tiny stickers pulled from candy packs years ago and now selling for $500+, boxes with thousands of now useless ‘telephone cards’, a cabinet full of Michael Jackson merchandise from the 1980s and so on, and so on. There’s so much strange – and sometimes incredibly expensive – stuff there I sometimes wonder if the place is more museum than shop.

I love it all.

Interspersed throughout the four floors of broadway are hundreds of gashapon machines like those above. I’ve blogged these many times before but it’s interesting to see the evolution of them over the nearly 20 years I’ve been visiting Japan. Once they were just toys for boys: anime-themed stuff, robots, Ultraman and other tokasatsu merchandise, girl figurines etc. But now the gashapon can include just about anything and some of it is very weird indeed. Here’s six examples I saw today:

Little power poles! Who wants to collect those? And what about the weird diorama in the top right? If you get just the chair what do you do with it? The van in the middle is representative of a wave of vehicles now available in these machines, and the tiny Japanese room display in the bottom right is… well who wants it?!?

Now the cyborg arm is pretty cool, but alas it was sold out! As was the miniature raffle machine in the top middle. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for both again since I want to get one of each 🙂

I was at Nakano for many hours and stopped off again at Akihabara (for postcards!) on the way back to the hotel. Dinner was once again gourmet spaghetti (¥630) and it was long after dark before I finally dragged myself back to my room. A long and busy day, but a good one!

I traveled to Tokyo today on the bullet train. I was feeling a bit sick and was very tired so I took very few photos but here’s one of me enjoying the ride:

I was in the ‘green car’ which was the highest level of luxury. And it was great, with big comfy seats that electronically reclined and even were heated (although I didn’t use that). The train was quite full, although almost everyone else was a businessman in a suit that slept the whole way.

After arrival in Tokyo and checking into my hotel I grabbed a gourmet meal (for only ¥600!) and went about bought a suitcase! I know it’s common but I’d never done it before; my luggage was too full and this way I can buy more stuff 🙂

I’ve got a lot planned these next four day but I feel my body rebelling. Let’s hope I don’t crash hard before the return flight!