remember when nina wanted to go to some beach? well, today we went to odaiba beach. and to get there one has to ride a non-person train. so the train runs fully automatically, from driving to opening and closing doors - really nice. and when we got there, guess what... another anniversary celebration was going on there. this time the fifth anniversary of "united states of odaiba", whatever that means. for sure it meant tons of people and crowds all over the place. so, for starters we decided to take a nice walk to and on the beach, since there were not many people. to get to the beach one can walk down a wooden pathway that is right next to a small replica of the "statue of liberty"[007-009]. also the nearby bridge[011-013,028-029,054,058,093,108-111] somehow resembles brooklyn bridge. almost felt like NY. at the beach[011-033] we also saw a cool baywatch boy[030] for nina, and a cool baywatch girl[032] for me. let me tell you, cool as ice - both of them. with our feet in sea water, and nina's skin peeling off from her sole[031] (as she had some treatment a few days ago with a japanese product to remove callus, we spent some time at the beach. and as you can see, it seems it worked pretty good. to cool down a little again after the long walk on the beach we entered the shopping mall close by the beach. cool stuff they had there, like an automatic baby swing[035]. after some cold drinks and a hotto cohi we were finally ready to join the crowd, and headed to the fuji tv building[042-079] to go into the big sphere[040,045-046,051,069] which i had not done at my last stay. to get there, of course a little queuing was obligatory. inside the "hachitama", that's what they call the 1200 tons titanium sphere, there were more of the family attractions shown at this anniversary festivity. first of all, there were some of the minions[043-044,053,061] from "despicable me 2", a professor's lab[060] from a japanese tv series that seems to be very popular, as there's even a professor hello kitty[062], and loads of professor merchandise. then there was this penguin[067-068], loads of merchandise for another japanese series[065], and much more stuff like noodle advertisement[071-073], original props[074] from another series, etc, etc, etc, etc... so yeah, if it says anniversary celebrations, you really get a lot to see. but by now we already had a crowd overflow, and thus decided to get something to eat. we found a pirate restaurant[080-088] in one of the many food courts in one of the many shopping malls on this little island. the staff was dressed as pirates, the menu cards[085] were really stylish, and the food was delicious, and also the table was nice, as it was with a nice view[086] to the brooklyn bridge. also this was the most expensive dinner so far, as one also has to pay a little extra for the pirate stuff, like the staff shouting and singing each time a customer enters or leaves the restaurant. but hey, it was fun, and good, and we enjoyed it - arrrrigato. yeah, speaking of joy... as it was already late (meaning that it got darker, and most of the stuff was already close to closing), we decided to spend the rest of the day at "joypolis", a huge indoor amusement park from sega with all kind of attractions. actually the plan was to store our cameras in a locker, ride/see/do/enjoy all the stuff that one can rise/see/do/enjoy there, and then take pictures of it afterward. but we totally lost track of time in there, as there are no clocks or windows at all, like in pachinko halls or casinos, and so all the stuff had already closed when we got to our cameras again before getting thrown out because they were closing. too bad. but here's a little textual overview of what we did. we started with "storm-g", a futuristic bobsleigh video game with a cockpit that can turn 360 degrees. while in theory one could use a brake, nina and i did not do that, and also the two persons riding need to perform actions synchronously when shown so on the monitor. this means the team members of each bob have to press buttons or turn the control levers. and guess who won the race and got a "best team"-nomination? yeah, it was us - yippieh, we rock. next were "wild river", "wild jungle brothers", and "wild wing", all simulator rides through a jungle with a jeep, through a canyon with a speedboat, and a flight with a plane. all with moveable seat-rows, air blowing, and water splashing at the people. all the stuff was btw pronounced as "wildoh" by the japanese staff or speaker during the rides. so cute, and really fun, but pretty shaky, and our stomachs did not like the three rides in a row either. we felt a little sick. to recover we chose to do something romantic, called the "fortune forest", where you answer questions as a couple, and some mystical forest calculates your level of matching, and in the end you get a printout with all the collected facts about you. according to the mystical forest, my favourite colours should be either black or white, while nina's favourite colour should be black, and nina and i were not a good match. ownoez, too sad. and if you're sad, what's better than to shoot some zombies? nothing came to my mind, so that's just what we did (although it would have not been nina's first choice). so we entered the zombie shooter "the house of the dead 4", which was similar to "dark escape 4d" we played in taito game station in hiroshima. only this shooter was not only 3d, but also had a rotating row of seats and two screens, so whenever zombies were attacking from behind, you got rotated to face the according screen. har, that was a lot of fun (at least for me, nina though was still not so convinced of the fun in that). "dark chapel" was our next attraction. it's a 3d show where you sit in a room that looks like an old chapel. the language is japanese only, but it's basically the old fight good versus evil, and of course good wins (uhm... spoiler alert, sorry, i forgot to mention that beforehand). again shaking seats and warm air blowing into your face whenever there's fire involved in the story. cute and fun. the next thing i did alone, as nina was too scared to join me. it was called "another" but i totally failed to get the plot. basically it starts in a very small classroom, then some guy guides you around, you get scared here and there by other guys suddenly appearing behind curtains or behind glass windows that suddenly get lit. then you're brought to a room where there are several booths. you go in, get the order to fasten a seatbelt, hold on to the two handles, and the door gets closed. then you are in that coffin, it gets dark, and you get rotated to horizontally lie in there for a short while, and hear the sound of earth hitting your coffin cover. that was it. afterwards a japanese guy who could speak a tiny little english said he could not explain to me what it was, but it was somehow related to some japanese series or movie. or so i think. ah well, that was weird and strange... and if you're confused, what's better than to shoot some zombies? yeah, right, shooting zombies... in a roller coaster. that is what "veil of dark" is about. fun part is actually that the rails go through the big hall in the building[100-105]. unfortunately there were not many zombies to shoot, and the ride was rather short. but still, total fun. last thing, as we were already running out of time, was the "tokyo halfpipe"[096-099], where you get strapped to something that could be a snowboard, and you get a simulation of a half pipe. there's also a pad under your feet which you can press. by synchronising the push of the pad one can determine the amount of degrees one gets rotated. a few times we got the maximum rotation of 1080 degrees. but in the end we were third of four. too bad. yeah, that was our day at odaiba. pretty much to do, to see, and to play. really enjoyable. but after some night shots[108-111], we really wanted to get to our hostel and go to bed. so we took the automated train, crossed over to the mainland via the rainbow bridge, and changed to the metro to get home. what a wildoh day!