Relaxing in Odaiba



After an incredibly long break of a few days, another post is here! While traveling in Nikko, a post that will say the light of day a lot later, I managed to pick up a nasty cold before heading back to Tokyo so I haven't been able to crank out posts like I used to.

But I finally got around to sharing what is one of the best days during our Japan trip so far: our trip to Odaiba! I had no idea what to expect when we were heading over because I'd never been there before, but it totally blew us away. 

Here is our video!



After our hour-long train ride to Tokyo Teleport station, we arrived at Venus Fort, which is a multilevel shopping center that's right outside the station. I had planned for us to get some lunch there, and I will admit that we got lost trying to find the food court. While walking around looking for food, we noticed that Venus Fort was scarily similar to a regular mall you could find in New York, all the stores were foreign imported goods and they even had a Pinkberry! 

 

Venus Fort did have some lovely art displays, like the huge beachball collection with lights and the color changing fountain. These were huge and stunning!

Since Vincent isn't a big shopper and I wasn't too keen on anything I saw, we managed to locate the food court and decided to get some ramen. They had a few flavors, but I decided on the black garlic ramen because I love garlic! 



Sad to say, this ramen did not love me back. Vincent followed suit and got the same thing but we were both left dissatisfied by it. The flavor was more 'liquid smoke' than garlic and overall was pretty weak. This started a string of unsatisfactory meals that carried on for a few days, but you'll hear more about that later.

Feeling meh, we decided to head straight for the onsen and began following the path there. Google estimated it would take about 20 minutes, and in those 20 minutes, we saw maybe 2 or 3 people. It was DEAD. It was dead to a point where we felt kind of creeped out, asking ourselves 'Where is everyone?'.

When we made it to the hot spring we came across a small group of people and breathed a sigh of relief. The hot spring we decided to go to is called Oedo Onsen Monogatari, and it includes indoor and outdoor baths, a sauna, spa services, and a full array of games and food. They tried to recreate an Edo  (?) style feeling throughout, and what resulted was an amazing and immersive hot spring experience that Vincent and I really enjoyed.

They gave us both yukata to wear and Vincent looked so handsome in his! I had some trouble tying mine because I'd never put one on before, but a nice woman in the changing room showed me how. Vincent said on his side there was a diagram, lucky!


I didn't get to film actually going into the hot spring (of course) but the outdoor ones were incredible. It was a bit chilly, being that Odaiba is very close to the water, and sitting in the hot water on the rocks was incredible. The onsen was busy, but not crowded, so I sat in an outdoor bath by myself. The baths are separated by gender, so Vincent got his own onsen experience he details in the video.

Perhaps most surprising of all was Vincent's eagerness to try 'Doctor Fish', which are tiny fish that eat the dead skin off of your feet. We sat in the fish infested water for 15 minutes, and Vincent's reaction is priceless. His feet are VERY sensitive, to the point where he won't even let me touch them, so I knew I had to record the fish nibbling on him!


Before we headed home for the night we decided to ride what once was (in 1999) the world's largest Ferris wheel. I want to preface this saying that I had a bad experience on a Ferris wheel once, so I am not a big fan of them. This one goes especially high up, and Vincent wonderfully documented my gradual freakout as we were getting to the peak. 

Quote: 'Whoo! We're at the highest point right now. If we die we will definitely not feel any pain :)'

Hope you enjoyed the video! Stay tuned for more ~

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