A Weekend in Odaiba and Yokohama

こんばんは！ Recently Paul and I went to Odaiba and Yokohama (both just on the southern fringes of Tokyo) for a couple of days.

On our first day, Friday, we got up bright and early and set out on the two-hour train ride from Tatebayashi to Odaiba. Unfortunately, we were just early enough to catch the last wave of people commuting into Tokyo for work, so those videos of Japan you always see of conductors shoving people into the train cars like sardines? We were on one of those trains. -_-

However, we had a reason to go in early: we wanted to see teamLab Borderless at the Mori Building Digital Art Museum with as few crowds as possible!

And boy, was it worth it.

We were instructed to visit all of the installations several times, because it was constantly changing.

As we wandered the dark hallways between the rooms, the walls were sometimes patterned with bamboo forests, sometimes with prowling exotic animals covered in flowers.

A video from teamLab’s Youtube channel:

Here, kanji slowly slides down the walls. If you put your hand on the wall below it, it suddenly rushes down and vanishes into your hand!

If you step on one of them (like the poor alligator!), it disappears in a splatter of paint.

There was another room where you can colour sea creatures. When you finish, they put it through a scanner and it’s projected on the walls!

A different Paul; but he, too, loves croissants.

Perhaps the most beautiful room: the Forest of Lamps.

I highly recommend visiting this exhibit if you’re in the Tokyo area (it’s permanent!) Since it’s such a beautiful and popular exhibit, I also recommend visiting during the weekday, preferably right when it opens — we arrived when it opened at 10 and left just before noon, and it was getting pretty busy. Earlier we’d looked into buying tickets for a Sunday a week in advance, but it was already sold out! So be sure to reserve tickets early! (Map & info at the bottom of this page.)

Oh wow, but wait! That was only the first morning of our trip!

That afternoon we shopped around at Diver City. For dinner we’d planned to find an izakaya in Asakusa, but on our way out of Diver City we saw people setting up for the Odaiba Oktoberfest! Luckily, our hotel was just one train stop down, so we deposited our bags and returned for some beer.

Odaiba’s famous Gundam statue.

The next day we headed down to Yokohama for the beer festival we’d actually come for, the Yokohama Oktoberfest. It was raining (a typhoon was incoming the next day — we lucked out on the timing!), so there was a mad rush to get seats inside. Luckily, we were just on the tail end, so we got ourselves a spot on the end.

Everyone was very cheerful. They had some professional yodellers performing!

The system is you pay for the beer (around 1,000-1,500円 or around $10-15) plus 1,000円 (~$10) for the glass. You can return the glass and get your money back, or you can keep it! We chose to keep these two.

Katie bravely tried some matcha beer. It wasn’t bad!

Sampled some fruity ales

Lemon beer!

After a few hours we headed to Landmark Tower to recover, and then hit up Baird’s Bashamichi Taproom for some barbecue. They serve tiny (tiiiiny!) portions compared to what we’re used to in KC, but it sure is a delicious taste of home!

And that was our weekend in Odaiba and Yokohama! While it was not so fun to be driven indoors by the rain, it definitely kept things cool, which I’m grateful for. And nothing can beat a weekend of good friends and beer!

Til next time, あたね！

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Links and maps:

teamLab Borderless

Odaiba Oktoberfest (until October 8th)

Yokohama Oktoberfest (until October 14th)

Baird’s Bashamichi Taproom