Robot Claw

Bullet train back to Tokyo yesterday. Once again, first class, and once again a super comfy and enjoyable trip. As usual we got up with the Sun and were on the train when lesser people still slept. Here was my breakfast:

After dropping our so-heavy-even-Hercules-would-struggle suitcases off at the hotel, it was time for Odaiba! Now we’ve been before, and I’ve even posted photos of the giant Gundam on this blog, so today I’ll show a dramatic one taken from the back:

You can’t see the (new) head in that pic, which features a single prominent horn. As you can see the weather was beautiful, and the Gundam shone even more beautifully than Himeji castle 🙂

After lunch we headed to the main attraction of the day, Teamlab Planets. Three years back I went to the now-closed Teamlab Borderless installation also in Odaiba and it was breathtaking. We had high hopes for this one as well.

Much like Borderless it is a series of art installations utilizing light and projections, and the viewer walks through them to experience them. Most are in large spaces, and the use of darkness and mirrors makes it difficult to gauge exactly how big the rooms are. Where borderless was almost exclusively light projections (albeit creative ones) Planets has a few more tricks up its sleeve.

Such as this room full of large inflated ‘bubbles’, many of which can be freely moved around.

Or this room which includes hundreds of strings of real orchids that dangle from the (mirrored) ceiling. You crawl under them to get into the middle area, after which you feel like you’re in a cave of orchids. It’s quite special, especially since it’s currently winter here and the orchids all seem healthy and as you can see are flowering.

The two highlight parts of Planets for us were difficult to photograph due to them being mostly dark and involving projections. The first is a gigantic domed space with a mirrored floor. Intricate and super high resolution animations of flowers are continuously projectors onto the dome in such a way you feel you’re floating. Imagine a planetarium, only the show is gigantic flowers floating through space. It was a dazzling display, and because it’s constantly spinning and moving around the optical illusion of movement in the viewer was astounding. We sat on the floor for a while in this room, and it really felt we were spinning around and not just the flowers.

The other amazing exhibit was this room of shin-deep warm milky water on which were projected colorful koi fish. They were extremely realistic, and the opacity of the water made them seem an inch or two underneath the surface. When you touched them they left flowers in their wake, the petals of which would drift away in the ‘current’. Both this and the previous room were random projections, so you could spend all day in them and not see the same thing twice. We were both extremely impressed by these fish 🙂

Needless to say Planets was incredible, and although (perhaps?) a bit smaller than Borderless I’d say equally worth visiting. Unfortunately Borderless is gone now and Planets will be gone in six months or so, so don’t delay if you’re interested!

The other day we tried to visit a sushi train restaurant but were put off by long lines, so we were waiting at the door when it opened yesterday at 11!

This is a famous chain restaurant, known for low prices and automated service. Diners can complete the entire experience without ever speaking with an employee: everything from arriving and being seated through to ordering, food delivery and paying is automated.

That’s our booth. You order using the tablet, and food is delivered using the track on the top. The lower track on which you can see food is the traditional sushi train and you can take plates as you like from it. Every special order – including drinks – arrives on the top track.

The prices are very low and we ate a lot. I personally had 6 shrimp tempura, a bowl of udon, fries, onion rings and a mandarin drink. Kristin had about half a dozen plates of sushi as well as a drink and dessert and the entire order came to under US$20! The food was excellent too, which is probably why this place is always busy!

Another gimmick they have is a gacha machine at every table! Every five plates you return in the special slot gives a chance at a gacha roll. Unfortunately, despite 10 plates returned, both of our attempts at a free roll were fails (as evidence by cute animations in the table), so we never learned what’s in the gacha bubbles!

Animal ‘cafes’ are rooms where you can spend time with animals for a small fee. They’re popular in Japan and we’ve been to cat and owl ones before. The main shopping arcades in Kyoto have many but one in particular caught Kristins eye:

She spent an hour in ‘Mipig’ the micro pig cafe yesterday and said it was fantastic.

At first the pigs were all over a couple already inside and she only got attention from a few, but when the other people left this happened:

That’s at least sixteen porkers! She was the best thing in the world for these pigs for a while, who slept in her lap and grunted as she petted them. Her one sentence comment on this photo is: “It was as mad and chaotic as it looked!”

While she was there I went retro game shopping (and spent an hour in one store alone) and on my way discovered a shrine specializing in marriage. To my astonishment the prayer boards:

Were all hand-painted with an astonishing degree of skill! Was this the same artist doing them all? A shrine priest perhaps? I’ll never know:

Meanwhile Kristin had left the pigs and moved over to a cat cafe! ‘Mocha’ is a well-known chain with many branches, and she wanted to visit their kitties:

Incidentally these cafes aren’t too expensive. The pigs cost about $20 for the hour, and the cats less. The cat cafe made most of its money from the extras they sell, including frozen iceblocks for the cats:

As with most cats she said they lost interest in her once she ran out of food. Apparently the cat cafe cats are professional moochers!

Later in the day we went up Kyoto Tower for a look at the night lights, and we did some shopping. It was a Herculean task packing all our stuff for the return trip to Tokyo, and we’ll absolutely need to buy an additional suitcase, but we managed.

Kristin visited her robot companion again in a large electronics store, and they even let her hug it! These things are dangerously cute!

There’s a lot more to tell from yesterday but I’m saving some for dedicated arcade posts. For a day in which we had no specific events planned we managed to do a lot!

I’ve heard postcards have begun to arrive. Watch your mailboxes; there will be more!

Yesterday we took a day trip to Himeji, about an hour west of Kyoto via bullet train.

This was our first time riding a Hikari series train, which is slightly slower than the Nozomi we usually ride, and the (first class) cabin felt a little more modern.

The seats even had a heating option! Once again there were very few people in the reserved-class car, probably because the comfort level of normal seats is already very high.

We went to Himeji to visit the very famous castle, considered the best and most beautiful in Japan! It’s known as the ‘white heron castle’ so it was very appropriate that a white heron flew in and posed for the above photo!

Visitors can enter and climb the main keep to the very top and there’s a lot of historical info to read on the way. There are apparently 198 (steep!) steps between the six floors and the handrails are very important since the wood is slippery and you’re only wearing socks since shoes are prohibited.

That’s a view of Himeji city from the second highest floor. As with European castles the location was chosen to be easily defendable and the garrison (the main keep was mainly a fort) would have been able to see for miles in every direction.

There are other buildings to visit, including the residence of a princess built up on the battlements, and everything is presented very well and kept in immaculate condition. About every fifty years the castle undergoes extensive restoration, and we were both amazed to read that in the 1950’s it was entirely dismantled and rebuilt to repair the wooden internal structure. At that time they found inscriptions on some of the wooden beams made by the original builders over 350 years prior!

I’ve been to many castles over the years and Himeji was one of the best. The train trip was fun, the weather great and the castle both impressive and very pretty. It was a great day trip 🙂