travelling allrite

We've arrived home and it's hotter than a Japanese hotel room. The scary thing is that it's not even that hot for Sydney this summer and is forecast to be 38 degrees Celsius in a couple of days. It was a typical final day in Japan, which is to say a bit miserable and a bit boring. We checked out of the hotel right on the 11 AM limit, returned to Sakura Sushi across the road for "breakfast". I wasn't hungry for seafood, but the others continued last night's sushi feeding frenzy. The Marunouchi subway line carried us to Ginza where Sony's showroom is, or rather was. The Sony Building is about to be redeveloped and all that remained was a showcase of old products. The shop, where I hoped to get parts for my Xperia Z4 tablet, was now above the Nissan showroom up the street. And naturally nothing for my older system, but at least Alex got to see some cool concept cars. There was hunting for snacks from the basement of Ginza's Mits...

Our last morning in Japan for this trip and I'm feeling anxious about the flight back. I hate these final days, again wishing that yesterday's Tokyo Teleport station was true to its name. If the flight home is less bumpy than yesterday's visit to Odaiba then I will be happy indeed. We were early to the Toyota Mega Web building and had to wait an hour for them to open at 11am. Alex was very proud to achieve his "licence" learning to drive an electric Pius car around the indoor track of the Drive Studio. Afterwards, in the Mega Theatre, we strapped ourselves in for a bumpy ride as the screen showed first person perspectives of Toyota cars racing around test and dirt tracks. There were also various simulators and other computer based competitions. Alex won his round of the Global Discovery Tour. We have visited various science museums across the world but Odaiba's Miraikan's Museum of Emerging Science and Technology would have to be one of m...

Ah, the fresh mountain air! It smells so, well, smelly. Alright, who farted? Even in the little mountain train ride up we could smell the scent of hydrogen sulphide, aka rotten egg gas. But here we were on the high slopes of Mount Iwakudani where great clouds of steam and gas rose out of the yellow sulphur encrusted ground. We had purchased Fuji Hakone Free Passes from the Shinjuku Odakyu counter as we planned on visiting the Hakone Open Air Museum. Sadly, the rope playground was under renovation but I figured there was enough to amuse us there. I was extremely excited to be catching a Odakyu RomanceCar VSE 50000 train, one of the best looking trains around. Many years ago an ex-colleague had brought back a model of one as a gift, but I had yet to go on one. We were in the rear carriage, but sadly not in the end seats looking out the panoramic rear window. It was a quite a scenic ride, especially as we left Greater Tokyo, and the peak of Mount Fuji was clearly visi...