Tokyo Day 3 – Odaiba, Toyota Mega Web showroom and Akihabara

This is a continuation of the Japan Trip Report. You can read more here:
Booking Lufthansa First Class Using United Miles
Lufthansa First Class Denver to Frankfurt
Lufthansa First Class Terminal Frankfurt
Lufthansa First Class Frankfurt to Osaka
Japan Day 1: Nijo Castle and Kinkaku-ji
Westin Osaka Review
Japan Day 2 (Part 1) – Fushimi Inari and Nara
Japan Day 2 (Part 2) – Bullet Train/Nabana no Sato Illumination
Conrad Tokyo Review
Tokyo Day 1 – Tokyo Free Guide, Geisha Show and Meiji Shrine
Tokyo Day 2 – Imperial Palace Bike Ride, Yoyogi Park, Harajuku, Cat Cafe!

Let me start this one by stating an obvious fact. My boyfriend and I are geeks. Tokyo has several attractions for geeks and that’s what we focused on during day 3. We took the Yurikamome line from Shiodome station to Odaiba and headed to Gundam Front Tokyo. Gundam Front Tokyo is an entire area dedicated to the Gundam anime series. We didn’t go inside – we came entirely for the GIANT Gundam replica outside.

Odaiba Gundam

It did not disappoint! It was huge and complete with flashing lights, smoke and theme music. We’re not huge Gundam fans, but it was still really neat to see. We also wanted to see the Mega Web Toyota showroom and the Panasonic showroom while we were in Odaiba.

We weren’t entirely sure where we were headed, so we wandered around a little trying to get into the Toyota showroom. We made some very good wrong turns and wound up walking through a shopping area with several Ferraris and Lamborghinis on display!

Cars on Display

When we finally found the Toyota showroom it was fun to walk around. It was free to get in and they had some neat displays. There were the typical vehicles we’re used to, as well as robots and “cute” vehicles.

Mega Web Toyota Showroom

There was also a line to try out Toyota’s Winglet (similar to a Segway). I’ve ridden a Segway in the past and almost threw myself off turning too quickly (graceful would not be the word of choice in describing me) so we didn’t attempt that. The robot demonstrations in the showroom were interesting as well – there were some areas where you could interact with the displays.

After the Toyota showroom, we headed over to the Panasonic showroom. Unfortunately we didn’t plan well and wound up there on a Monday. Did you know the Panasonic showroom is closed on Monday? Neither did we. We had originally planned a day trip for Monday but since it was cloudy out and we were tired we swapped it with Odaiba. So we did not get to see the Panasonic show room.

After Odaiba we headed straight to Akihabara. To be honest, Akihabara was one of the things we were most excited about seeing in Tokyo. It’s a geek’s paradise. Tons of electronics, video games, anime, collectible card games – almost anything geeky you could want! It was incredible. We spent hours wandering store to store – even climbing twisty stairways to the 6th or 7th floor to get to what looked like a store we were interested in.

Akihabara

I don’t even think we wound up buying much there – just one or two little souvenirs. But we walked around browsing for hours. We liked it enough that we even went back another day to see more.

We headed back to the Conrad and since at this point in our trip we were on the Executive level we went to the happy hour in the lounge and we able to sample some wonderful food from the restaurants in the Conrad.

Executive Lounge Cocktail Hour

We called it an early night since we knew our next day would be action-packed. We were headed on a day trip to Lake Ashi in Hakone to see Mount Fuji!