It's hard to describe what Odaiba, a large human-made recreational island on the southern edge of Tokyo harbor, actually is. It's as if Las Vegas were combined with Epcot Center and the largest shopping mall on earth--the place is full of themed giant malls (VenusFort with an Ancient Roman theme; AquaPark with an underwater theme; The Decks with a boardwalk theme, and so on) not to mention commercial center (the head of Fuji Film, Television and Camera; the big Tokyo Toyota showroom) and a bunch of other oddities (multi-story themed arcades, a small replica of the Statue of Liberty, and so on). Thousands of people head there on their days off, mostly young couples decked out to shop around.
One of the major architectural wonders there is the Fuji building, which has a 24th floor observation deck that looks out on the harbor and the Tokyo skyline (top picture). The view must be particularly impressive for the window washers, like this man who posed as he was winding up his ropes for the day.
Here's a straight on shot of the building, the scale of which is hard to detect. On the bottom left of this picture (above) is a large stairway that is almost the width of the building, and which goes up about ten floors out in the open. The observation deck was near the floating globe.
Moving around the building one sees amazing views of its structure. The thin one-story-tall connectors here actually contain offices.
I'll post more Odaiba pictures (including the ferris wheel we rode) later today.
It's hard to describe what Odaiba, a large human-made recreational island on the southern edge of Tokyo harbor, actually is. It's as if Las Vegas were combined with Epcot Center and the largest shopping mall on earth--the place is full of themed giant malls (VenusFort with an Ancient Roman theme; AquaPark with an underwater theme; The Decks with a boardwalk theme, and so on) not to mention commercial center (the head of Fuji Film, Television and Camera; the big Tokyo Toyota showroom) and a bunch of other oddities (multi-story themed arcades, a small replica of the Statue of Liberty, and so on). Thousands of people head there on their days off, mostly young couples decked out to shop around. 
One of the major architectural wonders there is the Fuji building, which has a 24th floor observation deck that looks out on the harbor and the Tokyo skyline (top picture). The view must be particularly impressive for the window washers, like this man who posed as he was winding up his ropes for the day.
Here's a straight on shot of the building, the scale of which is hard to detect. On the bottom left of this picture (above) is a large stairway that is almost the width of the building, and which goes up about ten floors out in the open. The observation deck was near the floating globe.
Moving around the building one sees amazing views of its structure. The thin one-story-tall connectors here actually contain offices.
I'll post more Odaiba pictures (including the ferris wheel we rode) later today.
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