Team-Lab Planets

Team-Lab Planets is an interactive art museum which had come up in all the trip advisor searches of things to do in Tokyo. We had a very early start as I had bought morning tickets and it was one hour away with several train changes – although we got to ride on the monorail and Tom & Izzy had front row window seats.

^{Riding the monorail}

We arrived with plenty of time to spare so joined the queue to enter – unfortunately the sun was shining and it was already really hot despite being only 9am in the morning – we were relieved when we were allowed in.

I had forgotten that the instructions said that we should wear shorts as we would walk through water so thought nothing of the fact Izzy was wearing long trousers. Luckily they had shorts she could borrow – unfortunately she did not like them so we had a bit of convincing to do in order for her to wear them – she covered them up with my red rain coat!

We set off around the exhibits and the first room was full of dangling crystals, lights and mirrors so we were able to take lots of really cool ‘Instagram worthy’ photos!

^{Lights and crystals}

The next room we entered involved us walking in shallow water and there were lots of interact ‘light’ fish swimming around.

^{Computer generated fish swimming through the water.}

The next room was full of massive blowup balls! When we walked in I wasn’t that impressed but I think we spent the most time in this room as you could move the balls and almost push them at each other!

^{The giant ball room!}

The final room we visited was the one which always appears on all the online photos – it is full of flowers and mirrors. It was probably the busiest as lots of people were trying to get the ‘perfect’ Instagram shot. We took a few photos and then quickly moved on.

^{The flower room.}

We really enjoyed Team-lab Planets. We were probably there for only an hour but we were glad we visited.

Aquatic Art

Our next stop of the day was Aquatic Art but we decided to try and find somewhere for lunch first. We headed to the art gallery which was in a shopping mall so assumed there would also be some restaurants inside. On the top floor there were about 7 or 8 and we really liked the look of the Katsu restaurant so went inside. At this point it was only 11.30 am so everywhere was really quiet but by the time we had ordered and were eating our meal the restaurant was full. We all said it was the best katsu we had ever had but were surprised the meat was pork and not chicken – which is what we always have in England. We especially enjoyed making our own dipping sauces with the ingredients on the table.

^{Katsu for lunch}

We then went around the art gallery which was full of aquariums lit up in different colours.

^{Exhibits at the Aquarium Museum}

^{More aquariums!}

Akihabara – Electric Town

We headed back to the hotel to relax for a couple of hours as in the evening we were visiting Akihabara. We had read that it was full of anime and retro gaming shops so thought Tom & Izzy would enjoy it. They enjoyed the gaming machines and we picked up some dinner at 7/11 as we wanted an early night as were travelling to Hiroshima the next day on the bullet train.

^{Retro gaming}