Odaiba

photo by Maarten Heerlien from Voorschoten, The Netherlands · CC BY 2.0

photo by Candida.Performa · CC BY 2.0

Of the eleven batteries ordered in 1853 against Perry's ships, only six were completed.

The Rainbow Bridge leads to an artificial island ordered in 1853 by the Tokugawa shogunate against Commodore Perry's ‘black ships’: of the eleven defensive batteries planned, only six were completed, and the third became a public park in 1928. The boom of the ’90s turned it into a shopping and leisure hub (Aqua City, DiverCity with the 19.7-metre Gundam, Tokyo Big Sight), served by the Yurikamome monorail, which crosses the bridge.

Odaiba began in 1853 as a system of defensive batteries ordered by the Tokugawa shogunate against the ‘black ships’ of Commodore Matthew Perry: six of the eleven planned were completed. In the early ’90s Governor Shunichi Suzuki set out to make it a futuristic ‘Tokyo Teleport Town’, a plan that his successor Yukio Aoshima halted in 1995 after more than a thousand billion yen had been spent, leaving the island half empty. Its revival as a shopping and entertainment hub came at the end of the ’90s, with the Rinkai line (2002) and the extension of the Yurikamome to Toyosu (2006).

ℹ️ You get there on the Yurikamome monorail, which crosses the Rainbow Bridge, or on the water buses from Hinode Pier; from Shinjuku the journey takes about 45 minutes. Opening hours are those of the individual museums and shops, not of the island; the seaside park and the beach are always open.

🚉 Odaiba-kaihinkoen · 4 min walk

Sources: gotokyo.org · en.wikipedia.org · sognandoilgiappone.com

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