Odaiba and Ariake

Venus Fort, Odaiba
After almost a week of unbroken rain, yesterday was fine, so I decided to take Mags ROTHARford out on a cycle to Odaiba, via Toyosu and Ariake. In Odaiba, I visited ‘Venus Fort’ for the first time in all my years in Japan. It’s a weird place that encapsulates how the Japanese have turned the shopping experience into some form of transcendental meditation. From the outside, the ‘Venus Fort’ shopping centre could easily pass for a parking garage: it’s a corrugated iron palette construction beside a Toyota design showroom, and the nearby go-cart track leaves a hint of burnt rubber and diesel in the air. But then you walk inside, and you’re in a replica Italian renaissance town-centre, complete with winding streets, imposing arches, and opulent fountains, as below.

On top of all this is the Sistine-esque ceiling that changes from day-time to night-time mood lighting as you pass through the shops, and the background of soothing Enya or stirring violins and drums, depending on what stage in the cycle you’re at. Seriously, I imagine that Vegas has nothing on this place. To wit, there is a mini casino conveniently located up ‘DaVinci’s back passage’, or whatever such renaissance-themed name they chose for their side-streets. The Venus bit is to indicate that the mall is designed to entice the female customer, and the shops are definitely gender-imbalanced. But no-one who goes will feel out of place as there is a fairly equal share of husbands, boyfriends and gawking tourists (ahem) to be found.

This is the photo from the terrace of the restaurant later that same night.

I've put the other photos from my day around Odaiba up on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=224993&id=858385093&l=692e4



Dinner with a view by the water in Odaiba

After all my shopping and sightseeing, I headed to one of Odaiba’s many waterfront restaurants to have a bite to eat and watch the lights come on over the city. I have to say, as the picture above shows, the view from my table could have been a lot worse. As you can see, I happened to get a place right in front of Tokyo Tower, one of the best seats in the house. One of the best seats in the house, that is, until I witnessed my third toddler meltdown of the day right about the time my dessert arrived. Resolving there and then to have my tubes tied (hehe) I went out onto the restaurant’s large terrace (a wee bit cold) and drank in the view some more in peace and quiet. I’ll put that later photo up after this one.
It was so good to have a day just to chill out and relax. The week had me exhausted, as things have gone really manic in work. Not only is regular annual recruitment at full throttle, but we’re also trying to recruit a senior executive to run our European operations. The most recent interview there last week was the first time that my boss sat back and let me and my colleague take charge a bit more. It felt so weird to be interrogating a 45-year- old, MBA-holding trilingual executive. But these days I’m just working the ‘fake it till you make it’ strategy of career development. When my boss asks me, ‘Can you...?’ I just answer, ‘Yeah , sure!’ and then worry about whether I actually can or not at a later date. Let’s see what this way of proceeding will bring me next.

Art wot I saw at Tokyo Big Site, Ariake

Okay, so the picture above...
Dumb, soulless corporate art? Or an insightful commentary on how a teeming metropolis of 26 million will forever be under construction? You decide.