Jan. 4, 2012 - Our last day of vacation

Today is our last day before we move into our apartment, the last day before we have to rejoin the real world and really begin the business of settling in.

We decided to go to Odaiba, which is a district on a man-made island in Tokyo Bay.  This involved a trip on the monorail.  Since we were aboveground, we got to see a lot more.  I had heard that many Japanese don't have clothes dryers but instead air dry their clothes.  On the monorail trip, we saw lots of apartment balconies full of drying clothes.  We crossed Rainbow Bridge (though Cooper objected to the name - he argued it should be called the White Bridge) to get to Odaiba, and we had a great view of the Tokyo waterfront.  The bridge looks especially nice at night, and you can see Tokyo Tower (though my night shot is a little blurry).

After leaving the station, we headed to Decks Toyko Beach to look for a good lunch location.  While wandering around, we spotted this:

Anybody want to guess who kept bugging us to go there once we'd seen it (it's an indoor amusement park with arcade games - kind of iT'Z on steroids)?  We told Cooper we'd stop by there at the end of the day, and so he kept asking us when that would be.  For lunch, we decided on a Japanese restaurant that served shabu shabu.  Shabu shabu is a Japanese variation of hot pot.  The first couple of courses were not big hits (to put it mildly), but everybody liked the main course.  We were brought thinly sliced meat and vegetables, as well as rice and dipping sauces.  Then we cooked the meat and vegetables ourselves at the table.  It was very good!  Our chopsticks ability, though, is still quite low.

We then headed toward the Miraikan (the National Museum of Emerging Science), enjoying the stroll, despite the cold and windy weather.  I'm sure that area is quite crowded in pleasant weather.  On our walk, we thought perhaps we'd ended up in New York City:

The museum was interesting - there were exhibits about robots, environmental issues, space exploration, and more.  Greer wanted to make sure this photo was included:

For those worried about Cooper, yes, we did go to Sega Joypolis after the museum.

Thanks to Aunt Jen and to Lori for finding a place online where Greer can read the first few chapters of her book online!  Maybe we won't be on the "bad parent" list now!

Japanese word of the day:  go  (click to hear pronunciation) means "five"