Todays task was to find out about train times to Handea airport to figure out whether I can take trains or need to get a taxi. It looks unlikely I could make it before 6am, so as long as I don’t have too long a checkin it should be OK – whose idea was it to get a 7:50 flight? I wouldn’t mind so much but its only a little internal flight to Osaka where the real long haul goes to Helsinki. Then we’re on another little strut and wire thing up to Tampere, I think I might have been a little overenthusiastic about driving and they decided it’d be better for all concerned to go by plane. Oops.
While I was in the area I thought I’d pop by as check out the new transit system over there – its another rollercoaster DLR style train in the sky system heading out toward Palettetown from Shimbashi, a fun little ride looping around and across the rainbow bridge (lower deck with too many suicide fences to get a good view over the bay, unfortunately, but I did spot that there are paths on both sides by the road so I might walk it sometime, if I get that bored. The train itself loops around the island with Palettetown on (not sure what the island is called), ending up within easy walking distance of where it lands from the bridge. I took a quick walk at the end of the line, though I kinda wish I hadn’t because I got all thoughtful looking out over the industrial wasteland turning into commercial hell.
Back onto the transit, I was trying to work out how it rolled since it doesn’t appear to have tracks in a conventional sense and there didn’t seem to be any maglev or anything, I think its just tyred wheels onto a concrete runway, but I could have missed some vital clue, I’m hardly the worlds foremost traction expert. I hopped off at Palettetown, an incredible place which seemed to be a shopping mall built around a car showroom.
The showroom itself is impressive, a trialling ground for new and exciting ways to sell cars. There really is a vending machine for cars – its not quite like putting money in and a car drops out the bottom, but you press the button for the car you want to see and the robot goes and gets it from the tower full of cars it has, puts it onto a display shelf and presents it to you all lit up and with information about it on the computer screens. Of course I was more interested in watching the robot than the cars it was trying to display.
Then there was the little track running all around the inside of the showroom, with little cars on. Wandering around a little more I found a ‘station’ where you could board one of these cars – it seems they were self-driving cars programmed (or somehow guided) to drive around the track without human intervention, so they provided a kind of bizarre bus service to different parts of the showroom – I presume they must be at least partly electrically driven or that their air conditioning is really good at getting rid of petrol fumes.
A quick dash through the shopping mall and I landed in an race themed cafe, which surrounded a square with a loop of road in, which after a little watching I figured was probably a part of a test track where you could actually drive a real car.
Darting up an anonymous looking staircase from there I found myself in the middle of a museum of old cars. There were various sorts of cars on display from all over the world, though there did seem to be a bit of a bias toward Japanese cars. Among the highlights they had a Delorian, one of the first Honda cars (complete with chain drive, since they were until 1960-something a motorcycle company) and a ladybug (one of the first Subarus, which looked almost exactly like one of the old beetles but smaller, and with a 360cc engine, I’m surprised it even moved…). I didn’t find an entrance to the museum on my tour around it so I don’t even know if I was supposed to pay to get in, I presume not but the collection was such that it had the feel of a paid-for museum rather than an add on to the showroom. Never mind, noone chased me away so I can’t have done anything too noticably wrong.
Then I wandered back toward the bridge, and discovered another vast shopping area, this one on the waterfront of the bay. Theres something magical about looking across a bay toward a modern city skyline all lit up – it must be marvelous to arrive from the ocean to such a scene. Have to get a cruise organised soon…who is up for it?
There were, though, a couple of things that disturbed me somewhat – a little statue of liberty (why? The symbolism is lost, it just seems a little copycat) and Gaps advertising campaign “for fall pants” (by which I assume they mean trousers, it seems everyone here learns American, not English – on a related note, why are Americans and Australians so surprised to meet a genuine English person here?).
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