April 20th, Tokyo and then going home

This was our last day in Tokyo before leaving for home. We left our luggage in storage at the hotel in order to go explore a part of town. We took the Asakusa line subway for 2 station and transferred to the Yurikamome monorail to Daiba station. The island looks very Western with many chain stores, US chain restaurants and movie theaters.

The first thing we saw was a replica of the Statue of Liberty. The nearby Fuji TV building has a large sphere up on the 25th floor with viewing platform. After a few 100 meters we arrived at the Gundam Statue, a giant transformer that stands in front of the shopping mall.

We then walked 1.5Km to the Tsunami Evacuation Experience Corner. After getting in an elevator where an earthquake is simulated we got out at the other side where we had to walk through a few corridors to an mock-up of a street with heavy earthquake damage. At a few point we had to answer questions on a tablet in order to learn how to act in case of such a disaster. The next exhibit showed how after an earthquake people survive in parks and sport venues in tents and makeshift cardboard “rooms”. We saw lots of smart tools to make sure closets can fall over and how to organize so falling objects can’t damage gas stoves or furniture doesn’t block exits or falls onto beds.

We took the monorail and subway back to town and walked, mainly underground, towards the Imperial palace and Nijubashi Bridge.
Then we had to make our way back to our hotel to pick up our luggage and go to the Asakusa line again, this time via an entrance with an elevator instead of stairs. About 30 minutes later the overcrowded subway arrived at Terminal 3 of Haneda airport. We dropped off our luggage, bought some snacks, followed the long line to pass immigration and got to the gate. With some delay we boarded the Finnair A350 to Helsinki, a 13 hour 15 minute and 11000 Kilometer flight via Alaska, the North Pole and Svalbard.

On Friday morning we had a little over 2 hours time to transfer to the 2 hour 8 minute flight to Brussels, again on an A350. There was plenty of room on this 330 seat airplane that was only filled for about 1/3.