荒川車庫 Arakawa Streetcar Yard

As we have a young train enthusiast in our midst, we took a trip down to the Arakawa Streetcar yard. This is a small but neat little attraction along the Toden Arakawa line. Bonus- it's free! The yard has it's own streetcar stop, which is near Kajiwara.

 

At the yard, one can check out all of the streetcar controls and board two cars from now defunct lines. Both of the cars had small exhibits on Tokyo streetcar history, as well as some books to peruse, and a stamp station to get a souvenir stamped paper.

 

 You can't enter the actual yard, but you can easily view it, and see how the workers do maintenance above and below the cars. At certain times during the day trains will pull in and out of the yard for regular checks. We saw the pink car being checked.

Our budding photographer documenting his adventures.

One of the exhibit cars.

 

Back by Kajiwara, one can visit the Meibi sweets shop and try a monaka shaped like a streetcar. Monaka is a sweet bean paste filled wafer. These come in a variety of boxes that are customized to look like the Toden Arakawasen.

The sweets shop also sells streetcar pins, and the local toy store sells old-school metal streetcar wind-up toys. A perfect retro afternoon excursion.

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Gundam, and Odaiba 東京都写真美術館とガンダムとお台場

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We had some time off this week to relax and catch up on errands, so we took advantage of having a weekday free and adventured around Tokyo on Wednesday. Our first stop was the Tokyo Municipal Museum of Photography, pictured above. We saw an exhibition of photographs from the permanent collection related to the theme of Travel, as well as the special exhibition on Georges Bigot, a French artist of the late 19th century who lived and worked in Japan for many years.
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After the museum we stopped to relax in lovely afternoon weather and grab smoothies for a snack. While walking back to the train station we spotted the above sign on the sidewalk. Smoking on sidewalks or non-designated areas isn't allowed here, so one frequently sees humorous signs like this one with the giant cigarette posted to the sidewalk.
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We next headed out to Odaiba, an island in Tokyo Bay. Above is me with the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo behind me, you can see Tokyo Tower at the right.
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The purpose for our visit to Odaiba was to see the 1-1 scale Mobile Suit Gundam that was recently built there.
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I think this was for Joe what the Kamakura Daibutsu was for me, he was really excited and took lots and lots of photos, as well as purchasing some of the licenced merchandise at the official shop on site.
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Honestly, I know very little about Gundam, other than it is from Japanese anime and is about huge robots.
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The detail of the Gundam was pretty amazing, it is about 60 feet tall and has lots of lights on it. About every half hour the head moved and a soundtrack would play. Also, right around sunset it emitted steam from its jet pack, which was pretty cool.
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The Gundam is only scheduled to be open though the end of August, I really wonder what they will do with it at the end of the summer, it seems that too much work was put into it to just take it down.
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Gundam at dusk.
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A final shot...
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We headed out of the park and over to a large shopping and dining complex near the station, from which we had a great view of the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo Tower.
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The entertainment area of Odaiba had a summer promotion of Mameshiba, a popular mascot that is part bean (mame), part dog (shiba, as in the dog breed shiba inu).
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We had a quick dinner of Japanese food. I had veggie tempura and Joe tried unagi, or eel, for the first time. Traditionally, unagi is eaten during the hottest part of the summer and is believed to give one stamina. For the environmental impact it's not something I indulge in often, but once or twice a year it is super tasty, especially grilled and with the sauce it is accompanied by.
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Odaiba is known for a Statue of Liberty replica, here represented as Mameshiba with Matcha Ice Cream. Before heading back home on the crowded Tokyo trains we each had a small cup of ice cream to finish off our day.