First stop of the day was at the Studio Ghibli Museum which lies on the outskirts of Tokyo and took us about an hour to reach. The place was interesting though a bit disappointing. It was rather small and the shop selling related material was tiny, and crowded. The museum restricts the number of people it allows through the door each day so you'd expect the crowds to be thin. They were but they all seemed to congregate in the one place. Will bought a book about the art of the Miyazaki film Spirited Away, but that was about all we found of interest.
Back in Tokyo for lunch and Rob did a bit more shopping before we decided that heading back to the Shinagawa Station was the best approach.
Robyn waiting for a pancake
[It was about this time that I said to Will that I thought I'd figured out Japanese pronunciation, namely that their syllables were all three letters or less. That meant that our version of "Shinagawa" - "shin-a-gawa" - was completely wrong and that it really should have been "shi-nag-a-wa", or "shi-na-ga-wa". Will said he'd had it worked out for some time. Lots of help he was.]
We had already had an evening meal at the station once before and Will didn't want to return there (day 2 dinner) as he thought it was too small. So we decided to take another exit from the station and suddenly found ourselves in a large busy area, with a number of restaurants, department stores and hotels.
Attached to one of the hotels was an Aquarium and as we didn't have anything to do for a few hours we decided to wander in and have a look around. The aquarium was okay but the penguin feeding (!) and the dolphin display (!!) were both great. Rob thought the dolphins were the best she'd seen. On the way out Will and I saw a sign stating "Only guests speak Japanese" by the dolphin display entrance. Another example of the tortured English we have come across from time to time. We figured the dolphins weren't saying much so it must have been referring to the display compere who spoke Japanese faster than anyone I'd encountered before.
A dolphin flies
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