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On one idle Monday evening, I went with my host family's older brother Kei and his lady-friend Shell to Odaiba. Odaiba is an interesting waterfront shopping area, with views of Tokyo's famous Rainbow Bridge and Jiyuu no Megami, a small-scale version of the Statue of Liberty. It's also home to Sega's Joypolis, an enormous arcade and VR theme park not entirely unlike Disney's DisneyQuest.
Our eventual destination was Pallette Town (not the first town in "Pokémon"; that's Pallet Town), which includes the "Giant Sky Wheel," the second-largest ferris wheel in the world. The ferris wheel lights up the sky with brilliant patterns and animation. It takes visitors 115 meters high, but thankfully I wasn't one of them.
Sadly, most of the attractions were closed on a Monday at about 1:00 AM, but not Leisure Land. Leisure Land is a 24-hour arcade and amusement center located right underneath the Giant Sky Wheel. While there, we played a lot of video games from the bleeding-edge to the boring.
Odaiba is also one of the two places where I visited a Starbucks. In both cases, it was my Japanese friends who made the suggestion to go there. Too bad a Matcha Cream Frappuccino (about $3.50 for a "short," smaller than any U.S. size) isn't available closer to me in the States.
