TacoCat’s Travels #66 (Japan 2.0): Exploring the Future! 🌍

Hey Hive/Steemit!

If you didn't catch the last couple of posts, this series is about our trip to Tokyo (again) way back in August 2016, when we went there for a short international exchange program called Promoting Asian Leadership (PAL) with Keio University! The program was a week long, but we went there a few days ahead of time to explore and revisit our favourite places.

Last week, we finally started the program at Keio by exploring the campus and engaging in some (very disorganised) orientation activities. We also had a not-so-welcoming dinner in a dark and crowded corner of a hotel restaurant, and were shocked at our accommodation arrangements; which basically had the 8 of us international students bunking together with some of the Keio students in one "big" house with only 2 bedrooms.

It was quite a ranty, complainy post and I apologise for that. Today's will be definitely be better because it was Sean's birthday!

4 August 2016. Thursday.

We were awoken pretty early (for our standards anw) because we were going on an excursion to Miraikan today!

Created by Japan's Science and Technology Agency in 2001, The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, simply known as the Miraikan (未来館, literally "Future Museum"), features real-time displays of data from a huge array of seismometers across Japan and a prominent Geo-Cosmos high resolution globe which displays near real-time events of global weather patterns.

Miraikan is located at Odaiba which thankfully wasn't too far away from the house we were staying in. By the time we arrived it was just past 10am.

Unfortunately we were not the only ones going on an excursion at that time. An elementary school class arrived at the exact same time as us. Thankfully, they were pretty well behaved but still.

I think the Keio students had arranged a tour or something for us that was to begin at 10:30am so we had some downtime to walk around and take pictures first.

And the first thing we saw upon entering the main part of the museum (other than the giant globe) was this creepy as hecc android:

[Sidenote but this is actually quite ironic because we're currently watching a playthrough of Detroit: Become Human and I was just thinking that we were far off irl from the game's predictions of androids becoming human slaves in 2038 but I totally forgot I actually saw these already in Tokyo. Welp.]

This is definitely some nightmare fuel tho:

We didn't want to go too far into the exhibits since the tour was gonna start soon so we just hung around the atrium.

After walking around for a bit, they handed us these glasses for a 3D show we would be watching:

After waiting around for everyone to arrive (and taking some badass photos),

we finally entered the auditorium and sat down.

I don't remember what the show was about exactly, but I'm pretty sure it had an android talking at some point. At least it was in English, or had English subtitles.

After the show, we left the theater and walked around. And we found another android project:

Sure looks like Japan is gonna be the first to develop human-like androids like those in Detroit.

We arrived in an inner section of the museum, and were led to a seating area where a guy was talking.

Unfortunately, he was only speaking Japanese, and his slides were in Japanese too. I guess he just assumed that all of us were Japanese since the Keio students were with us. But yea I couldn't understand anything he was talking about. From the icons on his slides I think it had something to do with global warming and greenhouse gases or something. The guy talked for quite some time, and I was so relieved when he finally finished.

We then moved on to their space exhibits, which included an actual space habitation module!

It was really cramped in there with so many people in at once, but it was actually really cool that they recreated it with all the control panels and stuff. I don't think it was exactly like the modules they use in space, but it was cool nonetheless.

They even had some astronaut equipment on display in the module:

Since I'm pretty sure I'm never going to space, this was as close as I'm ever gonna get to an actual space shuttle.

We walked around looking at the other space-themed exhibits, which also included a satellite:

It was really cool seeing all these up close since average people would never actually get to see it.

The museum isn't actually that big, and we found ourselves back at the globe once again.

On the first floor, we were led to an area with seats and were given this Google Cardboard VR headset thing to build and wear.

We then used our phones and went on a VR adventure for a bit; flying through some fields and stuff. It was pretty cool, but I wouldn't recommend it for people with motion sickness because it can get pretty disorienting.

After that, we hung around for a bit for everyone to wrap up their VR adventure. And then we promptly left Miraikan into the sweltering high noon heat.

The only good thing was it made for great pictures!

We were pretty hungry so we walked to DiverCity (the mall near Odaiba that we briefly visited before heading to Disneyland) to get some much-needed lunch.

I think the Keio students asked if we wanted to have a group lunch, but Sean and I declined since we wanted to have some alone time on his birthday. And we were also very skeptical of their food choices after last night's dinner.

We didn't have any preference so we headed to one of our favourite places - Osaka Osho! They have some really tasty dishes and their gyoza is so good! I think this was my order:

And this was Sean's; since he likes udon more than me.

What a satisfying meal that was! Both in terms of being full and being free from the others. After that scrumptious meal, we just chilled and walked around the mall. After which, we made our way back to Tokyo station.

I don't really remember what else we did but I guess we met up with some of the Keio people or the other exchange students for sushi at some random place.

It was a conveyor belt sushi place so it's definitely not a place we chose. But it was alright. Nothing can beat Sushi Zanmai to me tho, no matter how fancy the plates are.

This was Sean's favourite - anago sushi (saltwater eel):

And this was my favourite - salmon sushi!

Obviously, it wasn't as good as Sushi Zanmai, and I hate waiting for the conveyor belt to get my order, but what else did I expect from a place that they chose anyway.

After that, we just chilled and headed back to the house. I think there was a mini celebration for Sean because they found out it was his birthday, but I was really fed up with the Keio people at that point and just stayed in my room. I think I just got too overwhelmed with so many people around all the damn time. And some of the guys were really annoying with how rowdy they were being. It just got too much.

But whatever, we push on. They were going on an excursion to some hot spring place tomorrow and I said I didn't feel well enough to go so Sean and I would at least be alone for a couple of days. So thank goodness for that.

Look forward to next week where it's just me and Sean on a solo adventure! Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

Check out my previous post in this series!

TacoCat’s Travels #65 (Japan 2.0): A Series of Unfortunate (and Unexpected) Events

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