vacation Sunday1: back to Tokyo, teamLab borderless

Travis and Scarlet went back to Tokyo super, super early!  I think they chose the 6am train because Scarlet wanted to do some of the Tokyo things that we did earlier.  We stuck around a bit more.  The hotel breakfast was delicious and staying for that was totally worth it.  And then we took the 4.5hr train ride back to Tokyo.  

We had a lot of luggage, but it was workable - everyone had a backpack and a carry-on sized suitcase.  I had an additional blue backpack that fit well on the carry-on handles to carry some of our extra souvenirs.

The train ride was...fine.  At one point Joshua told me he wasn't feeling well and that's always scary in public places, but he rested a bit and started to feel better.  For a snack we had these triangle things that were all over the place; Ben said they were a dallop of flavored red bean paste in a square of dough folded over into a triangle.  The red bean paste was good, but it was a lot of dough that didn't have a yummy part with it.  Mount Fuji was clear again!

Getting to our hotel was a bit of an adventure; we were definitely out of the main area.  We needed to carry our luggage up and down steps at the train station and the hotel room was small with three beds.  This is what I was expecting most of the hotel rooms to be like.  There wasn't really even enough room to lay out our suitcases and walk around.  However, we didn't really need it to be much bigger either, so it worked well.

There didn't seem to be a ton of restaurant options nearby, so we went to a 7-11.  This is a normal thing to do, so it is definitely a cultural experience.  Everyone was a bit hangry by this time, but we survived.  There were a bunch of microwaves so that Ben and I could heat up our food; Isaac and Joshua got food from the food warmer.  It was good.  It wasn't great, but it filled us up and we were happy again.

We went over to the other teamLab installation next.  Our taxi driver dropped us off in a fine spot, but it was in the basement off a shopping plaza and we had a bit of a hard time finding it.  The picture below only works on a phone.  When you're just walking through the hallway the words are stretched out and 3D.  This one, as a whole, as a lot more artsy and less focused on movement.  I think I liked the other one a bit better, but this one still had some really cool moments.

We started off with a ball run where the balls and surrounding lights all changed color over time.

All of the walls were interactive and regularly changed.  This added to the feeling of not really knowing where you are and if you've hit all the mini installations...borderless.  It was nice and not so nice at the same time.  Below there were groups of butterflies that if you touched them they fell to the ground.

We made our own ocean creatures.  Scarlet's escaped a half hour later and we saw it in a different hallway.

I made the green, blue, and orange fish, all filled with circles.

Joshua made a smiley-face jellyfish.

Isaac made a submarine shark.  It was a cool idea, but the shark outline still showed up and he was disappointed about that.

Ben made the stripped shark in the middle.

This was a peaceful room.  A place to sit.  Water when we were there, but it changed over time.

This is the same room as above, but the cool part is that we had a color version and the outside hallway had the black and white version.

On our way out of this we walked by a wall.  EXCEPT THERE WAS A HOLE!  Ben took a video of it and it was just clever projection, although it doesn't show up well in the video.  We were all amazed at how much it messed with our minds.

We were at the Tea Room, which was billed as a must-do experience.  However, everything was Macha flavored and I'm the only person in the family who enjoys tea and Macha.  (Honestly though, Macha is a weird flavor.  I put it in my mouth and don't like it, but then a second later I decide that I do like it.  Every time.)  I enjoyed two servings of macha ice cream and my tea while everyone else enjoyed the cool things that happened to the food.

When you set down your ice cream, a branch grows from it.  When you set down your tea, a flower grows in it and then when you move your tea the petals all come off.

They had the same light rope installation as the previous teamLab.  This was a really, really cool installation, but a bit disappointing to see it again.  However, Scarlet found the app that controlled the lights and so we were able to add some "trees" and "light fields" and "fires" to the lights.

There was a really cool room with globes of lights.  The lights changed color slightly, but not enough to change the overall white look

This is in front of a one-way mirror.  As we were entering the exhibit it was funny to watch the people near the wall pose very un-self-consciously.   They had forgotten there were people behind the mirror.

There were a few other smaller rooms - one included people displayed on walls of 'smoke'.  So you could walk right through them!  The people were traditional Japanese images, which was interesting but I didn't understand any of the history.

Then a lilypad field.  I guess not lily pads, but white plates on sticks and the projection changed as you walked through the field.  

We were getting towards the end when we ran into a large room.  It had blue lines on the floor and I won't tell you how long it took me to figure them out.  They followed movement patterns of the people walking around.  So Joshua made a really tight circle, and then Isaac and Scarlet joined to make a few other patterns.