Back to Tokyo - Museum of Science and Emerging Technology

After a long drive back from Morioka, we arrived in Tokyo a bit early - at 6:30 AM. While this normally isn't a huge problem, our hostel's reception doesn't open until 8 AM, so we looked for a place at the station where we could have a cup of coffee and relax until it was late enough to go to the hostel.

Unfortunately for us, the early hour meant that nothing was open at the time. Nothing, that is, except Starbucks. This was probably our second time at a Starbucks during the entire trip: We don't care for the brand and it's inflated prices, but this was the only place with comfortable chairs and a place to sit, for that matter.

Now that Valentine's Day was finally over, Japanese advertising went back to normal. Or, actually, now was officially the opening of the cherry blossom season. Not that it felt like any type of spring outside (you have seen our pictures from Japan), but the cherry blossoms (which we are, unfortunately, missing) are one of the most famous Japanese tourism attractions, and a big part of national pride (which we found out when, at every town we went to, people said, "Oh, if you were only here during cherry blossom it would be so beautiful!" Whatever.)

So Starbucks actually has a huge cherry blossom-themed display, much like during Christmas season, complete with gorgeous mugs, glasses, thermoses, and other price-inflated items. They also had a special cherry blossom frappacino (frozen drink), which Talia ordered since it looked so great. It comes with whipped cream (but Talia asked not to have any), and pink-colored chocolate sprinkles on top. it was DELICIOUS! They also had a few cherry blossom cakes, but Talia forgot to take pictures of them (full of cream, not her type of cake at all).

cherry blossom frappacino

Finally, it was late enough for us to head home. We mean, back to the hostel we were at when we first arrived in Tokyo (Khaosan Tokyo Samurai). It was so awesome - we were really happy to be going back and to see our friends from reception again. We loved it so much the second time, and, in retrospect, it's good that we came back for the end of the trip, too.

When we walked in, we were greeted with smiles and happiness from our friends who were happy to see us (and Talia's strawberry hat) again. Once again, we were greeted by an Israeli flag prominently displayed at the reception desk. Our room wasn't ready yet, since it was so early, so we went upstairs to the common room to update our blog for you and gather a bit of strength before heading out to Odaiba, an island in Tokyo that we missed the first time around.

View of Odaiba from the subway

We went straight to the Museum of Science and Emerging Technology, which we both wanted to go to (*cough* geeks *cough*). It was totally awesome! We are very happy that we had a chance to stay as long as we wanted this time and didn't have to leave early.

First of all, we had discount tickets. We mentioned when we just arrived in Japan that there was a map (the orange one) that has a bunch of coupons and discounts in it, and this was one of them. Again, not a huge discount (a Dollar), but they add up, which they did for us, when you go to a few places.

Anyway, the ticket you get is a printed electronic ticket with a bar code that you scan to get in and out of the exhibitions. Included in out ticket was also a free movie, if we were interested, and one of them looked cool to us, so we got the tickets for it for later.

The nifty ticket

The first exhibition hall we walked into was about emerging technology - new things, to be clear. :-) The moment we walked in, there was a young lady there giving a hands-on presentation about super conductors. Ordinarily, a presentation might have been boring, but she had PROPS. More importantly, there were already 3 Westerners sitting there, so she was explaining everything in both Japanese and English, which we really appreciated. Even the signs showing the laws that she was showing were in both Japanese and English!

Science experience - semiconductors

This was an awesome introduction to the museum as far as we were concerned. We continued to walk around this hall and there were all kinds of displays about how to create energy (e.g. by stepping on the ground at the subway!) and lots of displays where you click buttons to see how things work - it is a very hands-on museum.

One of the informational displays

We then saw that there was a huge area that was sealed off, which is where their star robot, Asimo, was going to come out a give a show - exactly at the same time that we were supposed to be in the movie theatre. So we decided to forego the movie so we can see the robot, because - hello! - it's a ROBOT.

And we're happy we did. The robot was SO cute, and spoke and danced and pointed and walked REALLY funny. There were a zillion kids there, all talking to the robot and having a great time - it was really fun.


When the robot left us, we continued on to a display explaining how the Internet works in very easy terms - it was actually really interesting. In theory, that is, since it was only in Japanese. But the display was very interesting and we could understand what they were doing.

Asimo the robot (who also plays soccer!)

Upward and onward we went to the last 2 exhibition halls, which were about earth. Rony loved these halls, and Talia less, but still enjoyed herself, don't worry. Here there was a lot of information that we knew from high school (even Talia who could have paid more attention in class...), and, yet again, interactive displays, such as a deep-sea submarine that you can get into and touch all the buttons (that's what the guide says). The guide also instructed us to give him our cameras so he could take pictures of us inside the submarine. That was cool. :-)

Our favorite display was, most definitely, the high-energy accelerator. Rony would like to point at that the largest one in the world is in France. Done. :-)

High energy accelerator

When we first came across this display, there were about 5 or 6 teenage girls around the machine, and the one who was making the machine work was rolling the ball so hard that she couldn't stop laughing because it was so difficult. After Rony made fun of them for being weak (to Talia, not to them), he decided to do it himself. Ha! It was really hard! You need to make the ball go as fast as you can for it to go around a circle on the screen, and it shows your "strength," which really makes you try to go faster.

At one point, Talia had to take over for Rony so he could rest, but it was too much for her, too, and he took over again. Eventually, after beating the game (we think? Who remembers), he collapsed on the floor for a few minutes before we continued through the rest of the exhibitions.

We ended our visit by ordering a hot dog (guess who ordered it) and a green tea and chocolate muffin (guess who ordered that!)

After literally a few hours at the museum, we headed back to the hostel - it was already late afternoon and we hadn't slept at all the night before, so our eyes were like ping pong balls on acid.

In the evening, one of the girls who works at the hostel, the one who gives the free origami lessons, invited us to join her for dinner at a place that serves eel. Of course we accepted. :-) Along the way, we made friends with a really cute Australian couple from our hostel and they ended up joining us as well.

The food was SO delicious, and ridiculously cheap - seriously. It cost about $6. Isn't that what a small (Tall?) coffee costs at Starbucks? :-)

And that was it for that day.

Pics from our last days in Tokyo:

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