Odaiba, Tokyo Bay

Finally we had the whole weekend off together for the first time since we started working here in Japan! Only problem was... I had an awful cold and cough. I think I caught one last week, then just as I was feeling a bit better I caught a different one! Typical hey! So yeah, we didn't want to do anything too strenuous, so we decided to jump on a train and go to Odaiba. Odaiba is just south of Tokyo and is a man made island just off Tokyo Bay with the Rainbow Bridge connecting it to the mainland. Going over the Rainbow Bridge was a sight in itself!!! When we got off the train we saw lots of people wearing festival wear... yukata and other japanese formal/matsuri clothes... there was a Dance festival going on. :-D Gotta love a Japanese festival :-) and it was Fran's first one!!!!!!

It seemed to be a dance contest, each performance would start and last pretty much the same length as each others! It was great fun to watch, seeing Japanese traditional dancing mixed with hip-hop and jazz!!!!

After watching the dancing for a little while, we went to see the view of Tokyo Skyline and the Rainbow bridge, and had our picture taken with the smaller version of The Statue of Liberty.

The view was great, the air was clear, we felt a few spots of rain, but all in all it was a great day for visiting Odaiba! We walked along the right side (on the photo above) in a park until we came to the artificial beach! It didn't look any different to a normal beach! except I guess the sand was white and in the Kanto prefecture the sand is a dark brown/black colour!

It was just so nice to actually do some sight seeing together!!! I appreciated it more having Fran there to share it with! :-)

There is so much to see and do in Odaiba but because the Dance Festival had totally taken our interest, we didn't really want to venture too far away from it! On our way back to watch the festival we came across a HUGE shopping area for young people and along the main road one side of the building on the ground floor was taken up by this...

Now we knew that Japan was "dog crazy"... but we just weren't prepared for this... Puppy The World... there was a dog hairdressers, a dog accessorize and clothes shop and a dog café/restaurant where you could take your dog and buy them something nice to eat... I imagine! We saw a lot of dogs... one that we saw was just silly! A couple pushing a pushchair with a poodle inside, who had 2 bows in her hair, and top and a short skirt on... utterly ridiculous (and a little bit cute too) - hehe! We had a wander around the shops and found this floor that was like an endurance theme park/Japanese game shows! There is also an indoor theme park there called "Joyopolis" we are definitely going to go back there - the rides look great!

We headed back to the festival and just chilled out... ahhhhhhhhhhh sooooooo niiiiiiiiiiice

We had to take some photos of the Rainbow Bridge at night time so we hung around til it was dark, it was soooooo worth it!! The view was fantastic! Loved it!