TacoCat’s Travels #70 (Japan 2.0): TV Stars for a Day! 📺

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.

So last week,
we continued on with the program by having a couple of discussions and
debates about broad topics like censorship or whatever. Then, we spent
the rest of the day chilling and shopping at Harajuku, and got to visit
one of our favourite stores - the LINE Friends store! And we also got to
meet the birthday boy - Brown!

8 August 2016. Sunday.

I'm not too sure if we had any programs in the morning that day.
There might've been some discussions and stuff or something. I don't
remember.

But anyway, the real fun was in the afternoon when they brought us to Odaiba!

So if you recall, we actually came here briefly and explored the mall for a bit on our day to Disneyland! But one building we didn't visit was this huge one you can see from the station:

I never knew what that building was until now! Turns out it's the Fuji TV Headquarters! Here's a better picture:

Source: Tokyo Cheapo

On the way there we passed by a couple of booths, including this one for Playstation VR!

Sorry for the slight blur, I was taking this while walking so it didn't focus properly unfortunately.

I guess there were some events going on, because there were smoothie stands and a bounce house and stuff:

It seemed pretty festive, but we had to go to the TV HQ first since
we had tickets to a guided tour. We also managed to snap this
cool-looking photo near the entrance!

Just past the entrance, there was a pop-up store with merch for the
Monster Hunter Stories anime! I don't know anything about Monster
Hunter, but it looked really cool!

After waiting around for a little bit, we got our passes!

The staff guide then brought us upstairs to the observatory (called the HACHITAMA Spherical Observation Room) which features an impressive 270-degree panorama view of the Odaiba area and Tokyo Bay!

The observatory is actually the ball in the middle of the building! And offers such an amazing view! It must look even better at night with all the lights on!

After enjoying the view, the guide brought us to some of the actual TV sets!

This was where they did the nightly news (I think):

And there was such an elaborate lighting rig on the ceiling:

It was so cool seeing a TV set up close, with the huge cameras and everything:

The guide was probably explaining what everything was, and what
people do here. I think he was mostly speaking in Japanese so I couldn't
understand much and just took a lot of photos.

I remember he brought us to the inside of the booth where the control panel for the audio and visual equipment were, and where the directors/producers would be. But it was quite dark to take any photos. It was really cool though, seeing all the different buttons and controls. It was like the spaceships in Star Trek or something.

He also told us about the daily schedule of working on a TV show, and that they start work at like 4am or something, prepping for the daily morning news. Every minute there was something to do and everyone would be so busy. It sounded so stressful.

We were then led to this colourful looking set that I assume is for a variety show:

I'm not sure what show this is from exactly, but the set looked so
cool and fun! It was a world of difference compared to the serious and
boring newsroom.

It was so cool seeing all the props and stuff on set. And we even got to sit on them!

I especially liked that everything was so colourful. I guess that's
kind of important for a variety show to keep it light and entertaining.

I think the staff were explaining how the shows worked, the
behind-the-scenes of broadcasting, what the producers do and stuff. The
whole process was so complicated and had so many moving parts. Working
for a TV station is definitely a very hectic job for sure, especially on
a daily show.

While they were talking on the other side of the set in Japanese, we mostly just hung around and took lots of photos.

And after that, we took a group photo!

It was really cool seeing what the inside of a TV broadcasting
station looked like, and exploring the sets was definitely a unique
experience you wouldn't normally get, so I really enjoyed this
excursion!

After grabbing a few more quick photos, we had to leave. It was cool, but there wasn't much else to see here anyway.

After that, we promptly exited the building, but not before one last group photo!

We pretty much had free time to do whatever after that. I think the
rest of them left to go have lunch or something. But we weren't too
hungry and I wanted to explore the carnival or whatever they were having
outside so Sean and I went to have a look around.

I'm not sure what event they were haing or who organised it exactly, but there were quite a lot of booths out.

But as usual, it was all expensive and crowded so after a quick lookaround, we decided to head to elsewhere.

But
I think that's gonna be all for now! I still have quite a lot of photos
from the rest of this day and if I add them the post will be way too
long.

So tune in next week for the exciting conclusion where we explore more of Odaiba and visit Joypolis!

Thanks 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 #69: Celebrating Birthdays with Brown! 🐻

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