Miraikan, The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation

Wow, blogging while traveling is hard to keep up with. So here are some quick highlights of what we did on Monday.

• Went to the Tsujiki Fish Market. We got there about 10:30am, which is pretty much the end of their business day, so everyone was packing up. But a little bit of fish market goes a long way, so that was fine.
• Popped over to Ginza for some food (we’ll get fresh sushi at the fish market another day). We peeped in at Jiro’s restaurant, just to see it. We’re not even going to try to eat there. It’s a nice idea, but way too difficult.Then we went to the Ginza Food Garden on the basement floor of Mitsukoshi department store. We got a bunch of little dishes, onigiri, and other snacks, and then ate them outside in a grey, drizzling afternoon.
• My coworker, Sashsa, met us back inside the Food Garden, and we looked around at the sweets counters together. I got a couple mochi stuffed with fresh strawerries, because the day before Jason had described that as one of the few sweets that he wouldn’t e able to resist (I surprised him with them later).
  

  Strawberry-filled mochi

• Sasha joined us on a visit to Miraikan, The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. We also met up with Jason’s friends Gio & James there. Today was the last day of an exhibit about why we like video games, so we wanted to check it out. Since it was the last day, and much of the exhibit was basically an arcade, it was super crowded.

Jason, capturing some footage at the video game exhibit. Note the ladybug that tagged along on his new rain parka.

• The permanent exhibits at the museum were also interesting, though they were mostly geared towards kids. The had a few androids that were rather creepy, a huge digital globe in the middle of the room (see the photo at the beginning of this post), and a compact but fascinating exhibit on the International Space Station.
• We had all been walking a lot the past few days, so when we finished at the  museum, most of us went to nearby Oedo Onsen Monogtari for a nice soak (Sasha had other plans). This place is hard to describe. It’s part baths/spa, and part amusement center. You change into a robe when you get there, you get a bracelet which you use to charge things, and then you wander around and eat food, play games (like, fairway games), relax, go in the indoor and outdoor baths (separate areas for men and women), soak your feet in a foot bath, and probably lots of other things I didn’t even notice. It’s very touristy, but not in an entirely bad way, as long as you’re up for a little kitsch with your relaxation. It’s open really late, and we were there for 5 hours.

Gio & James, playing my favorite arcade game

Walking tally: Fitbit says I walked nearly 16k steps today, which is almost 7 miles. That’s a total of over 24 miles of walking for the trip so far.

Photos:

• Check out the photos I posted to Instagram this day.
• And there are a lot more photos from this day in this set on flickr (with photos from May 31st also)