Tokyo Tower and Odaiba

I took the day off last Friday and went for a day trip with a friend to Tokyo Tower and Odaiba. Odaiba is a man made island in the middle of Tokyo Bay, with tons of shopping malls and various attractions, as well as its own mini Statue of Liberty:

It's linked to the city by subways and the Rainbow Bridge which can be seen in the picture above (you can take a monorail/train across the bridge to the island). Strange but cool stuff includes a 60-foot high Gundam transformer-like statue and the Fuji TV building:

I also visited Tokyo Tower, which is much quieter now that the Sky Tree is open, but it offers a more central city view and less crowds:

Towards Tokyo Bay

Towards Shinjuku

The look-down window is good craic:

The nearby Buddhist temple is impressive, and children are brought here for a newborn service that sounds a bit like a Christening, after which these dolls are decorated:

Odd Jap-style stuff from the day included eating raw horse meat sushi (which actually tasted great) and opting not to check out the 'mysterious art museum' which made us curious but didn't look as promising up close:

Self-cook BBQ with horse meat sushi on the left

Only the most mysterious art...

Just back from getting my hair cut in Japanese for the first time, worked out well despite my nerves - they even hoovered my hair and face (!) to make sure there were no stray hairs left...

K-pop (Korean pop music) is verry popular around my area, and there are pictures of boybands everywhere - at shops, on vans driving around playing their music, etc. It's often difficult to tell if the members are male or female, which isn't helped by bizarre ads like this:

Who is 'she'???

I've been getting involved with one of Japan's favourite pastimes lately - going to festivals. They constantly have events around the city and there's always a great buzz and loads of people. The weekend before last was 'Awa Dori' - they all dress up and dance uncontrollably in the street for a night:

The Police (on the podium above the car) constantly shout at people and narrate proceedings

Seriously traditional outfits!

The festival was on in Koenji district which has tons of tiny bars under the train tracks which are pretty cool:

Here's a video of the dancing, watch your volume it's pretty loud:

After that we headed out to Roppongi, Tokyo's hardcore sleazy nightclub district. It's normally crawling with Westerners so some good craic to be had around the place:

I also got out to Ueno Park again to check out the Science Museum - it's all very well done but very few things have English explanations so I didn't know what was going on. I did find a rocket launcher, a giant whale and a room full of animals: