We left the hotel just before 9 AM, walked a few blocks to the subway, and took the Yurakucho line out to Toyosu. It's one of the "reclaimed land" islands, sort of by where we were on the bus tour.
On the walk from the subway station to our destination, we passed the Gas Science Museum. There wasn't time for it in the itinerary, and also we'd just learned that it exists. It wasn't open yet, anyway.
Our destination for this morning's activity was teamLab Planets, an immersive art experience.
After waiting in line for maybe 60 seconds (yay, timed-entry tickets), we were funneled into a room for a very brief overview video.
The first exhibit was a moss garden full of mirror-finish... giant bean... things. They're officially referred to as "eggs" in the app, I believe, but they look more like beans to me.
Apparently they glow different colors at night, but for a daytime visit we had to settle with shoving them around a bit to hear what noises they made. The iPhone app mentioned something about nearby beans responding as well, but I couldn't tell if that was happening.
Next, we entered the Forest exhibit area. The Catching and Collecting Forest had interactive walls, done via clever sensors and many, many projectors. Moving around or touching the walls caused the displays to react.
The Athletics Forest had a bunch of participatory exhibits, where we could climb around or performs feats of balance.
Michael demonstrates how it's done. It was harder than it looked, as the ropes had some stretch to them, and only four or five bars were tied together in each group.
We wandered back and forth between the two Forest areas. Some sections had stations where visitors could draw or color in animals on paper, and they would somehow be scanned and end up swimming around on the walls, like this whale.
This area had two long trampolines; jumping across them, slowly, projected an ever-growing planet under one's feet. Michael got to the end, and it created a black hole. In each of these physical challenges, successful completion resulted in some applause from the staff member at the end.
In this one, the black/colorful sections of the posts were squishy, turning the walk across into a balance game. I opted for the larger posts.
Here's another room with the self-color stations. Some of the displays were also interactive via the smartphone app, although I didn't try it.
This room was lined on all the walls, plus the floor, with inflatable exercise balls, like the kind that people sit on to help build core strength and improve balance. Making it across while only stepping on a single color produced sort of a song, and was rewarded with applause. The visuals were constantly moving, although the core colors of the balls stayed the same.
Sabrina and I both used the longest path.
After wandering around the Forest area for about 20 or 30 minutes, we continued on to the Water portion of the building.
First, we took off our socks and shoes, and left them in lockers. Then we climbed up this ramp that was an indoor waterfall.
After drying our feet, there was a black room where the floor was squishy, like someone had stuffed a bunch of beanbags under a thick layer of felt, but it was impossible to photograph.
The next area was mirrored on all six sides, and full of a maze of multicolor rope lights, hanging from the ceiling. Abstract, constantly changing music played in there, too, as in all of the rooms.
It was incredibly disorienting to navigate the maze, even though we could sort of see other visitors ahead of us at times.
Trying to peer through the thicket of lights was impossible, because the mirrors reflected everything, from all directions.
We weren't quite sure why we were still barefoot, until we saw this human-sign in the hallway.
As we walked down this ramp into the warm, cloudy water, it kept getting deeper and deeper.
It's a very odd sensation to walk around indoors in a foot of warm water.
Again, all the walls are mirrors. The projectors on the ceiling painted the surface of the water with colorful koi fish that appears to swim around our feet.
Off in one corner, there was an adjoining, smaller room where the water was colder. At one end, there was an interactive display of many columns of water dripping, where the lights responding to our hands when we interrupted the flows.
The next room was full of enormous, inflated rubber balls. Some of them were tethered together in clumps, some attached the walls with stretchy cords, some suspended from the ceiling, and some were free to roam around. Everyone in there barely succeeded at resisting the urge to play bumper balls. The lights slowly cycled through different primary colors.
The final section of the Water exhibit was a hemispherical room with mirrored floors where the entire ceiling was a rotating stream of flowers falling from the sky. It was incredibly disorienting, and the sign on the way in suggested sitting down on the floor to enjoy it.
It was also impossible to photograph, because the camera has no fixed reference point for doing a long exposure. We all laid down on the floor to watch the ceiling until we couldn't stomach it any longer.
The final exhibit, Garden, was essentially a huge greenhouse, again with mirrored floors, full of orchids on long wires that slowly oscillated up and down.
It was a surreal effect to get lost in a maze of flowers that all hung from the ceiling. The pollen was strong, though, so I don't think any of us lasted very long.
On the walk back to the subway station, we rued this lost opportunity for a tourist attraction: the collection of model homes in various styles, which was only available to be inspiration for residents. They're really failing to monetize that one; it's definitely more interesting than some of the temples we skipped.
We had enough time before our afternoon activity to stop and grab a quick lunch somewhere. As we had to change trains at Ikebukuro Station anyway, Sarah suggested that it would be a good spot to be that "somewhere". The larger train stations here are all attached to nearby buildings, and blur the line between "shopping mall" and "transit center", so we assumed there would be plenty of food choices.
There was essentially a food court directly outside the transit turnstiles, so we didn't have far to go. I don't think anyone tried the beef tongue curry donuts from the boulangerie, but several of us got sandwiches and such. Among other things, I had a small bean paste and butter sandwich, about the size of a dinner roll.
We ate our light lunch sitting on some steps, outside by a square/park (did not expect to find that Wikipedia article), enjoying the perfect weather. After we finished we shopped around the corner and then dove back into the station.
We jumped on the next train on the Seibu Line, heading for the Belluna Dome to meet Eva and Mike at 1:30 PM for a baseball game.
One of the displays on the train was cycling through news, weather, advertisements, etc., and I noticed that the weather portion included a Laundry Index (many/most people here do not have dryers).
We had to change trains halfway to the baseball stadium, because the Seibu line forks in the middle. Google had been suggesting conflicting locations to change, so I asked some locals who were wearing baseball jerseys, and we cobbled together enough common language to arrive at "just follow us".
Eva and Mike happened to be on the same train, so it was easy for them to find us on the platform. Mike explained that this whole trip was a perfect example of vertical integration; the team we were there to see, the Saitama Lions, is owned by Seibu... who also owns the stadium we were going to, the railway we arrived on, the station where we ate lunch, and probably the entire shopping mall around it,
The dome is hard to miss, as it's visible from the train platform and reflects the sun like a giant mirror.
Inside the dome, it was somewhat loud but refreshingly cool; the sun was hot, but a nice breeze blew through the gap around the perimeter.
One of the highlights of Japanese baseball games is apparently the mobile draft beer service, courtesy of women who carry around backpacks of mini kegs.
The game was preceded by some flag maneuvering by the cheerleaders.
We didn't really have six seats all together, but there were enough open areas that we were able to all sit together, near the home team's official cheering section. The organized cheers (with band) were very serious business, on both sides. The story behind how this became customary is quite interesting, and worth the read. It reminded us of attending college football games (apparently for obvious reasons).
The outer ring concourse is full of food vendors, as one would expect at a sports venue, but it couldn't be more different from what's at our games. This selection of smothered fries was the closest to our typical stadium food. It seemed like nearly all types of Japanese food was represented, from noodles to fried dough/octopus balls to yakitori of all chicken parts.
There were beer servicewomen offering four or five varieties, in addition to other, non-beer options.
It looked like it was probably a very good workout, marching around the stadium, up and down stairs, carrying that pack.
As we approached the seventh inning, the sun poked through the gap around the dome, reminding the backs of our necks that we probably should've used sunscreen.
Perhaps the most unusual part of the event was when people around us, particularly in the cheering section, stared inflating long, blue balloons, to be released in the "Lucky Seven" (what we might call the Seventh Inning Stretch).
There was some sort of countdown we couldn't quite understand (although much of the announcing and graphics had been in English, enough was in Japanese that we all took turns asking each other "what is happening?" throughout the afternoon), and then the balloons were set free in unison.
The Lions were up 4 to 2 after the 8th inning, and we decided to bail early to beat the rush back to the trains. We waited a bit longer for a semi-express that wouldn't require switching tracks mid-journey, and all rode back to Ikebukuro together.
Once there, we fought through throngs of people to change to the Yamanote Line, the subway that operates in a ring in both directions. Eva and Mike were going home, while the rest of us continued on to Shinjuku ("busiest railway station in the world" according to Wikipedia).
While we tried to figure out which exit to use, we noticed a crowd of people recording what appeared to be an advertisement that was being shown all over the station. Some brief Googling suggests there's a new "season" of Disney's Twisted-Wonderland mobile game coming out, and this teaser/trailer was just released today or yesterday.
Outside the station, a boy band performed in front of some blossoming trees.
We wandered around the neighborhood for a bit, feeling that it resembled Times Square in New York, at every turn that we took.
After a bit of a walk, we stumbled upon this glass pyramid near the edge of Shibuya (of the infamous Shibuya Crossing).
We were really there to visit these art deco public restrooms that Sarah wanted to find. Who are we to judge? There's just no accounting for taste. I enjoyed the easy water-bottle-refill spot, though.
What we were really looking for was this metropolitan government building...
It took us a few minutes to walk around the block and find the way into the plaza, as the (government) buildings around the perimeter were closed, so we could not go through them, but we eventually found the right spot a few minute before the 7:30 show started.
The show is called TOKYO Night & Light, and I'm not really sure how to summarize it.
From context, it's (roughly) the 70th anniversary of Godzilla, so it started with a review of the various versions of the titular character from the movies. The older Japanese gentleman on the bench next to me was very excited to see Shin Godzilla, judging by his exclamation and excited pointing; his wife seemed less interested.
After that, it was an assault on the senses of sound and sight for the next ten minutes, in the form of a several-hundred-foot tall movie that progressed through various Tokyo-themed abstract art, projected on the façade of the building.
I'm not sure why the ending scene was vertical stripes of red, green, and black. The whole thing struck me as very (stereotypically) Japanese.
After the show ended, we retreated to the nearby subway station and rode the Toei Ōedo Line to.. somewhere, and then transferred to the Ginza Line, which took us almost directly back to the hotel. I think we hit half of Tokyo's 10 subway lines, today alone.
It was about 8:30 PM by the time we returned, and we still hadn't eaten dinner. (Options were evaluated near the government building, but between "fancy/expensive" and "closed on Sunday night", we gave up.)
Not wanting to extend the evening any further, we hit the nearby Gyudon establishment (Yoshinoya for some chicken/curry bowls.
Tomorrow, Sabrina and I are going on an adventure with Eva (and possibly Mike?) while Sarah and Michael venture out on their own.
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