odaiba
today we walked around perhaps my favorite area of Tokyo, odaiba, visited teamlab planets, bought shoes at a store that specializes in gigantic American shoes, and went out to a shabu shabu place for dinner. it was a busy day, when the plan was to take it easy.
we actually ended up walking about 2,000 more steps today than we did yesterday. so much for taking it easy…
we visited odaiba and teamlab planets, which i did last year on march 27th. though, this time we arrived much earlier and walked around koto city for a bit before our ticket time.
on the way there, i saw a spot i remember taking one of my favorite photos from last year, so i took the same photo again.
2024 image:
2025 image:
odaiba is maybe my favorite part of tokyo to visit for a day. it is a large artificial island built in the 1850s. it kinda feels like japanese portland to me for some reason. i cant really explain why, but maybe the photos will.
next stop was teamlab planets.
so, i feel i should mention something that i think people who followed this blog last year might notice - i am doing a lot of the same things this trip that i did last time. staying in hatanodai, going to tokyo skytree, senso-ji, teamlab planets, and a few more things i have planned in the future. part of this is that my mom came with me, and i wanted to show her the “greatest hits” of tokyo from my experience last time. but also, i am not doing anything a second time that i did not want to do a second time. for many of these things i have already done, there will be less photos and lengthy writeups than there were last time. but i have taken it upon myself to be more creative with the editing for photos of things i did last time, which is especially true of the photos i got at teamlab planets. i am experimenting with software based bokeh (background blur), which is something traditionally done by adjusting the diameter of the aperture on your lens. the amount the lens opens when it is taking a photo affects the depth of field of the… yeah you know what no one reading this cares about the technical details of how a camera works.
anyway, yes i am doing a lot of the same things for this tokyo section until april 2, but that will decrease dramatically for the majority of the rest of the trip. i am going to go to the same beef restaurant in kobe when i am in osaka, and will likely visit that amazing bar in kyoto i went to last time. post-tokyo, the only other thing i am doing that i also did last time will be the stay in beppu. but that isnt very photography or blog post worthy, as “doing the same thing” will mean sitting in a hot spring tub for 2 days saying “ahh” but with my soul.
anyway, teamlab planets. as i mentioned last time, this experience is a really unique thing, and i highly recommend everyone who visits japan check this out. photos cannot really capture it at all, it is so unlike anything else. teamlab makes these “art experiences” in a bunch of places all over the world, and this one in particular is really something. about half the experience happens shin deep in water, in pretty dark environments that are hard to capture on camera.
i tried last time, and was not able to do it justice. so this time, for the sections that i feel cannot be captured well with a camera, i just didnt. but there are some sections that are very good for photography, and i took many pictures of that. there is a section called “garden” where there are hundreds of live orchids suspended from the ceiling constantly moving up and down in a room where the floors, walls, and ceiling are all mirrors. its a really surreal experience. last year, you had to enter this room by laying on the ground and sliding on your back underneath a wall of orchids. they seem to have changed this, and now it is just a room you can walk into through a door.
as i mentioned earlier, i got a lot more creative with the editing on some of these, since i already took some “normal” photos of this experience last year.
another experience here that is pretty easy to photograph is called “forest”.
y’all seen the 1971 film alien? no reason just wondering. anyway,
(edit march 26th, 2025 at 06:15 am japan standard time: i have made a grave error, and must atone for my crimes. i have been informed that alien came out in 1979. my thoughts and prayers go out to all the families that have been impacted by this terrible mistake.)
there is so so so much more to teamlab planets, including an exhibit that either wasn’t here last time or i just missed it, where you walk around a room with projected extinct animals on the wall and use a phone app to capture them and learn more about them. it was very cool.
if anyone reading this ever comes to japan, i highly encourage you to devote an entire day to odaiba, and make sure teamlab planets is a part of that. tickets can be difficult to get, often requiring you to buy them weeks in advance, so heads up. and while you are in odaiba, there is a fully automated monorail called the yurikakmome line that runs through the whole thing, and i would encourage you to just ride the entire train from one end to the other. it is a gorgeous view that i think anyone would enjoy seeing. this is a map of that monorail line:
the yurikamome line is the blue one
once we finished up there, we stopped on the way home at a store that specializes in shoes of abormally large size (for japan). It turns out i wear a size 32 in japanese shoe sizes. their shoe sizes are just the distance in centimeters from the back of your heel to the front of your big toe. i never thought it would be possible to find any kind of clothing in my size in japan, as i am more than a head taller than over 90% of the people in this country. but we were able to find shoes that fit me here, and they are great!
we went home and crashed for a few hours, and then met up with our host shinobu-san for dinner. she took us to a shabu shabu restaurant close by. shabu shabu is a hot pot dish, where you have a hot plate with a pot of soup broth(s) in the center of the table and everyone adds ingredients to it and then takes it out to eat. it was legendary, and i never would have plucked up the courage to go to a restaurant like this without a native japanese speaker present.
i took one more picture on the way home, and it didnt fit anywhere else in the post, but
anyway, thats the post!
じゃあまたね!
