It's Tuesday morning, rain splatters onto the pavement. After a few false forecasts on CNN.com/weather perdiction thunderstorms, it's finally here, and I'm writing this while I wait downstairs in the lobby for the courier carrying our tickets for the
a-nation festivals on August 10 and 17.
He's late.
As for the rain, a communal umbrella bin sits in that very same lobby from which people can pick one to keep themselves dry.
Fun thing is; this bin fills itself through people returning home and sticking their umbrella's into that bin. It is estimated that the average Japanese owns at least 20 umbrella's scattered throughout the area he or she frequents, although a lot of those umbrellas are thrown away as soon as they break down. The cause of this lies in thefact that you can get one for 105 yen and up, most people don't really bother taking one with them unles they go out and about, they just buy a new one during shopping when the need arises.
The street outside is resembling a small river; I guess the sewer system has some difficulty in processing the current downpour.
Yesterday, Matijs and I went to visit the Miraikan museum in Odaiba.
As you may remember, I've been there before, and enjoyed it very much. Since it's a museum for future science, Miraikan keeps on improving, putting up new displays and props, while improving others.
The giant LED-globe they have hanging has been made interactive; displays have been put up along the walkway around it, displaying various information in both Japanese and English, all at the touch of a button on the screen.
The globe itself displays various information regarding ocean temperature in a year, cloud movements from the past month and so on.
A terminal with a giant track ball has been hooked up to it as well, controlled by a Miraikan employee.
He can display various things, like the moon, Mars, the Sun and the various displays regarding the spec of space dust we live on.
The guy was considerate enough to ask me where I was from, so when I said it, he pulled up the Earth display and swung the track ball to the point where the Netherlands lie, perfect for us to photograph.
It's a really interesting museum, and the fact that they keep improving makes it really worth it to visit again.
The guy with the tickets still isn't here, so I called the JTB-office in Nagoya. They told me that they would check and call again.
Because of the rain, the small windows in the apartment needed to be closed, so I decided to help them a little. As a thank you, I got a glass of ice coffee; how sweet of them!
I also got word of the ticket office, apparently the tickets were delivered just before 10:00, so I have them!
However, it's still pouring outside, with thunder and lightning. I believe lightning hit just now.
Anyway, after Miraikan, we had a small peek into the Fuji TV-building and went to the Daiba shopping mall afterwards, where we had a sushi dinner (my second in Japan since 2006; sushi can be rather expensive here. we dropped about 7000 yen on dinner for two) and we shot some pictures of Tokyo Bay, of which this one is the best:
Shot from hand without a tripod, shutter priority, 1/20, f/2.8 at 70mm. Not bad.
Today, we try to do more stuff inside because of the rain, which means another museum, near Ueno this time.
Time for me to go.
Cheers, K.