Hands On Model of Email
View From Front of the Train
Day 12 in Tokyo: I don’t know…but the kids are really acting badly. Despite that challenge, we decide to brave the potential weekend crowds at Miraikan, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Odaiba.
From Roppongi, it isn’t hard to get to but it isn’t cheap to get to Odaiba. If you take the Oedo Line (which is expensive to begin with) you can get off at Shiodome and take the Yurikakome Line (which is very expensive). You see why as soon as you step onto the Yurikakome train. It must have taken billions to construct the train infrastructure (to a man made reclaimed land with lots of huge buildings with wasted space) but it is a cool ride and the view is quite nice. Get off at Fune-no-kakagukan stop (by the way, the Museum of Maritime Science is a really nice museum) and walk about 5 minutes to Miraikan.
(A side note on differences in culture perhaps. I asked when we got off how to get to Miraikan and the station agent told me the way. However when we got outside and started walking, we saw a street which looked like could be a cut through. I asked another family walking the same way if we could get to Miraikan this way… I do speak Japanese and the father understood my question but his response in Japanese was “It is our first time..” He did not say yes or no. He did not say that they were headed to the same place but that they weren’t sure they were going the right way, he just said it was their first time. Totally unhelpful. We decide to continue on our way anyway and of course we see the same family entering Miraikan just a little ahead of us. Strange…)
We ended up spending a little more than 3 hours at Miraikan. It has so many interesting exhibits. One of our girls’ favorites – a physical, hands on model of how an email is sent through the internet. Black and white balls represent the binary code used and you can decide which address to send it to, the message and run to the address and receive the message. Cool!!
Another exhibit they liked was the full scale mock up of the Japanese deep water sub, only one of four in the world that can dive 6500m! We also loved the mock up of the International Space Station. The girls were very interested in the sleeping quarters (the astronauts sleep standing up) and the toilet (you need to strap yourself in!). We also enjoyed a show of a full size robot called Asimo. The most impressive thing that Asimo can do, in our opinion, was run. Very strange!
After a quick change back at our place, we headed for dinner. Tonight we were celebrating our older girl’s birthday with a nice dinner and it also happened to be July 4. We were splurging and I booked us a table at the Imperial Hotel’s Viking Sal. I thought a buffet would be more festive and fun for the girls. No wait for food and if the girls kept moving around, no one at the restaurant would think that strange. The downside to a buffet, besides overeating, is that the girls get to choose what they eat. Our younger can be counted on to eat veggies, smoke salmon, fruit and pasta. Our older one does eat pasta but kept coming back to the table with white bread and dinner rolls and sliced cheese. Ughh!! Not only in terms of nutrition but expense! This being the Imperial, we were not getting much of a break for the kids. Kids are charged $50+ for 4 and above. Bread and 2 sliced cheese definitely do not cost $50!!
The atmosphere was nice and the service wonderful. We had a table with a view but I was disappointed by the food. It was fine not amazing and for how much you pay, I expected a little more. I had toyed with the idea of teppanyaki but I decided that the food would be good but the atmosphere at a teppanyaki establishment too adultish in the evenings and so, Viking Sal it was.
http://www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/en/
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