{"id":1642,"date":"2013-12-20T10:51:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T17:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=1642"},"modified":"2013-12-22T15:39:40","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T22:39:40","slug":"japan-day-4-odiaba-and-gundam-front","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=1642","title":{"rendered":"Japan Day 4 – Odiaba, a giant Gundam, and the Statue of Liberty?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_1997\"<\/a> \"IMG_8234\"<\/a> \"IMG_8229\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Odiaba island is a large, artificial island in Tokyo bay.\u00a0 Starting as a military defensive base in the 1800’s, it grew dramatically as a port hub in the 1900’s. In the 90’s it got targeted during the the Japanese real estate boom as a commercial and ‘future showcase’ development area.\u00a0 The mayor of Tokyo began a major development plan for the island called Tokyo Teleport Town and was designed to showcase futuristic living.\u00a0 It had residential and commercial development for about 100,000 people.\u00a0 However, the mayor’s successor halted the plan in 1995 as the Japanese asset bubble popped<\/a> after a great number of the lots were still vacant and the area underpopulated.\u00a0 Unfortunately, over 1 trillion yen (~$10 billion USD) had been poured into it by that point.\u00a0 Many of the special companies that developed the island quickly went bankrupt as Japan went through their ‘lost decade<\/a>‘ during the late 90’s as the overvalued asset bubble unwound.\u00a0 Since then, it’s languished – and it shows.<\/p>\n

It has absolutely enormous buildings in a large-scale city-planning style.\u00a0\u00a0 Capturing the scale of this complex is very difficult due to the huge buildings and the gigantic open spaces between them. The whole place feels like a bit like those images of Chinese ghost cities <\/a>but with odd futuristic buildings that look nearly empty and few people walking around.\u00a0 It was actually kinda creepy.<\/p>\n

I could easily have spent a day walking around the humongous city\/island.\u00a0 The buildings were nearly miles apart.\u00a0 But I was looking for Diver City.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Diver City is a large and very nice modern mall.\u00a0 I found it just a short walk off the rail line.\u00a0 It’s about 5 floors of shops – and reminded me very much of any modern mall you’d see in the US.\u00a0 Almost all the same stores were there too: Old Navy, H&M, Diesel, American Eagle, etc.\u00a0 The food court also had a lot of mall-style chains like McDonalds, Starbucks along with lots of local chains I didn’t recognize.\u00a0 They had some higher-end shops and gourmet chocolate stores as well.\u00a0 So, overall, on the flashier end of mall stylings.\u00a0 But this wasn’t what I was looking for.\u00a0 I was quickly trying to find a certain recent addition before the afternoon show.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8161\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"IMG_8165\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I head out the door of the food court and – bang!\u00a0 There it is – the Giant 60 foot tall RX-78 Gundam.\u00a0 This giant robot\/statue\/installation was originally built by Bandai in Odaiba’s Shiokaze park to mark the 30th anniversary of the massively popular Mobile Suit Gundam<\/a> franchise.\u00a0 It was first constructed and unveiled in July 2009<\/a>, and made a big splash with fans.\u00a0 It was so popular that in March 2010, they rebuilt it with a light saber<\/a>.\u00a0 Since then, it found it’s more permanent home at Diver City.\u00a0 They have daily shows where lights, smoke, music, pour from the robot as it comes to life.\u00a0 The daytime shows look just like this:
\n