Odaiba

The monorail self driving train going up the "Rainbow bridge"

Our guest is a very busy researcher, so after having had dinner in Asakusa he needed to go back to his hotel and e-mail important people about important stuff. This meant I had some time to do non-work things before it was even midnight. I got on the monorail Yurikamome (some people call this a monorail (because it looks similar to one) but apparently technically it is not a monorail; it is a "new transportation system" in Japanese) to Odaiba.

Someone bought something pretty big (a pillow?), which looked like a lot of work to get home.

Odaiba is a district in Tokyo built entirely on "reclaimed land". Artificial islands were built by dumping landfill into the Tokyo harbor. The airport is also build on such an island.

I also wanted to go to Madam Tussaud's, but there was not enough time (they close at nine). 

Odaiba is known mainly as an entertainment district for young people, if I understand correctly. I was there to see the "Tokyo Trick Art Museum", though.

Cute cakes

This cake is actually the dress of Minnie the Mouse

As luck would have it, a woman I know from Sapporo was also in Tokyo this Monday. She posted a photo on Facebook complaining about the heat in Tokyo and I mentioned that I was in Tokyo too. So she ended up coming to the Trick Art Museum 20 minutes after me, and we took lots of photos together.

As a form of thank you for staying around taking photos for two hours, I bought her some ice cream.

In Odaiba, they had something that looked like Christmas decorations blinking and flashing during the night. But August is a little bit too early for Christmas, right?