Day 3 - If we wanted weather we'd have stayed in the Shire...

This morning we awoke (eventually Master Jackson) to the tail end of some monsoon or tropical storm and the Skytree Tower had disappeared. So we haven't just lost Mt Fuji (still no sign) but the great big towers are disappearing now.  Thick wet rain, clouds at our level and really like one of those days that you wish you could just hibernate. But no, dear reader, we are English and steadfast. Well sort of. After breakfast - remembered to try the eggs benedict with crabmeat which really was delicious, and fighting, literally fighting, to get any of the dim sum before the salarymen woofed the lot, we footled around before deciding to make a taxi dash for Odaiba Island.  Now, you might wonder, what the...is Odaiba Island? Well, geographically, it's an exercise in how to make more city. Several small islands on the end of Tokyo were joined together with landfill to make a big one called Odaiba Island. No idea why (apart from the obvious - they are desperately short of space!) and they've kind of made it a shrine to nutsness.  Because of the weather being so disgusting, we didn't intend to walk around the whole thing (besides having no idea what that might entail) and headed for Sega Joypolis. Luckily sharp eyed Carlos saw the sign and mentioned it, because Odaiba is deeply weird and a massive conurbation of sorts.  Plus the taxi driver didn't have a single word of English and was just driving around.  Got out, dived out of the rain and entered Joypolis... And I won't tell you about it because largely it involved lots of really really weird Japaneseness. And I let myself be a teenager again and even had a go on some of the rides (all indoor, all really deeply strange) and had probably the WORST EVER MEAL SOLUTION I have ever had. It was a 'chilli dog with cheese' that had obviously been assembled in the late Edo period and left. To its credit it hadn't decomposed during this time, but there is that doctor somewhere in the US who bought a McD in something like 2007 and subsequently, and has left them on the front desk of the practice. They still look edible apparently. You get my drift.  Anyway, we had some fun, we had our runes read (and we will share the fortune tellings with you if you ask nicely - it was done by the mystery forest computer program so it MUST be true) and I went on a mini rollercoaster that went upside down. As did the bobsleigh thingy. And if you know how much of a control freak I am about motion that I am not in control of you'll know that this was a Very Big Deal.  So here are some nutzoid photos and let's just put it down to the weather...

Clearly Japan's answer to One Direction. Now what's the question?

These are those grabby machines - the things they have on offer are insane

Yep, totally insane. This box is about a foot long

And these are just the weirdest characters I've seen I think

Charlie just fascinated by this weird.....game?

Anyway, tonight, our last in Tokyo on this 'outward' leg, sees us gracing the sushi restaurant in the hotel. I'm feeling rather skinned already but I just KNOW that AJ wants us to enjoy ourselves.  And then, early tomorrow morning after breakfast, we head south west to our ryokan for the night (thank god it's just ONE night, I have visions of tatami matting and futons. And snakes ears on toast...) before then going down to Hiroshima for a couple of days. And it'll be our first ride on the Shikansen. At least one that moves, unlike the carriage in the National Railway Museum in York.  I'm heading off for a chocolate martini now to get the evening's proceedings off to a good start, and have just had a fabulous massage after having sat in the jacuzzi looking out from the 37th floor over a very very damp and grey Tokyo. Let's hope there's a little more sun in the south. No breath being held here though, to be brutally honest.