We spent many entertaining evenings in Shibuya, which has become one of the most exciting areas in Tokyo. There are so many bars, shops and things to do here, that it would be hopeless to attempt listing them all. But here were a few of our personal favorites.
There's so much to do on Odaiba, you could never hope to see it all in a single day. Even if the attractions aren't always impressive on an individual basis (and many are simply malls), the very fact that such a large section of Tokyo has been given over to leisure and shopping is amazing. We've written quite a bit about Odaiba already, but here are some other sights which warrant mention.
Mom always said that it's best to be prepared. "Hope for the best, darling, but plan for the worst." And in earthquake-prone Tokyo, the worst can be very bad indeed. Since we always listen to our moms, Jürgen and I dutifully visited the Disaster Preparation Park, on Odaiba Island.
It's best to take Sunshine City's name at face value. And I don't mean that it's filled with sunshine, but that it's truly a city of its own. This enormous complex spreads across four buildings, including the Sunshine 60, which became the tallest building in Asia upon its completion in 1978.
Apart from the Hie Shrine, the business district of Akasaka doesn't have much in the way of historic sights for tourists. But the streets which surround the metro station are fun and packed with good, cheap places to eat, and the neighborhood is so central that we visited rather frequently.
It's hard to imagine an experience more perfectly suited to Tokyo, and one less likely to exist anywhere else, than Shinjuku's Robot Restaurant. With a stage show that stretches the definition of terms like "elaborate" and "bizarre," the restaurant has quickly become one of the city's most popular venues.
The world's third-largest stock exchange is found in Tokyo, headquartered in the financial district of Nihonbashi. Guests are welcome to visit the complex, and watch the high-stakes action from a platform above the main trading floor.
We had a feeling that our visit to Odaiba Island's Miraikan Future Science Museum was going to be awesome, and we were right. The only disappointment came when it closed, and we had to leave. Officially named the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, this is the most cutting-edge science museum we've ever visited.
You've been to a casino, right? The ringing sounds, the stale stench of tobacco, the confusion, the sad people so desperate to be happy? All that is familiar. But a pachinko hall takes the wholesome goodness of a casino and condenses it down to its most vile. It exaggerates the sensory overload beyond belief. ¡¡MAXIMIZES THE SOUND!! Multiplies the confusion. Doubles down on the hopelessness. And achieves the impossible, by creating a place of gambling in which I have absolutely no interest.
Kaiseki is Japan's haute cuisine, a traditional meal of several individually-crafted dishes. It's as expensive as it sounds, and since our budget won't allow us to repeatedly indulge in kaiseki, we wanted to be careful about the restaurant in which we'd experience it. After considerable research, we decided upon Tofuya-Ukai. I doubt we could have made a better choice.
