March 2, 2012

Odaiba

Today's adventure was to finally explore the little artificial island of Odaiba across from Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo. We have passed by this place a dozen times driving out of Tokyo and we always make the same comment..."We should go there someday." No more excuses. We went, we saw, we explored, we ate, and we had fun. We first went up to the top of the Fuji Television Studio building and enjoyed the great views from the lookout on the 25th floor. We splurged and let each of the kids flatten a coin. We never do this so it was a real treat. We also got to enjoy seeing a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty. That was kind of odd but cool in a way too. We walked to this outlet mall called Venus Fort but it was nothing like the typical outlets we are used to in the US. It was neatly arranged inside like the Venetian hotel in Vegas with the sky as the ceiling and lots of overly priced shops. Nevertheless, we had fun exploring the car garage museum there and even stopped by the little go cart track but wasn't able to ride the go carts because it was all full for the day. We did stop by the Toyota Auto Expo and looked inside all of the new Japanese Toyota models. We sure love the Japanese version of the mini van...THE ALPHARD. It has the coolest captain chairs that look like little spaceships. They recline all the way and have a foot rest. The driver and passenger seats have both heated and cooling seats. So many cool features are on this car but I'm not sure it is worth a price of $60,000. We even saw a car that had no bar between the front seat and the middle seats. How easy that would be to get kids in that car!

Back outside we let the kids do one ride each. They all choose the trampoline jump. Strapped in they were able to jump up to 50 ft or so. We didn't think that Abby would do it but she was so excited to be doing something that the big kids were doing. After a few jumps and realizing that she could go pretty high she got a little nervous and instead of crying she just let out the most hilarous nervous laugh. The girls and the boys were able to jump at the same time on different trampolines. What a blast.
 
The day just wouldn't have been complete without some time at night to take pictures of Rainbow Bridge. Afterall, that was one of the reasons I wanted to stay until dark. There were a ton of boats on the water and it was just beautiful. A sunset would have been nice but I opted to be ok with the dark sky and the lights from the city.

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