Graduating Japan

She needs a down-day, she says, to prepare for her graduation and speech tomorrow. Acceptable, I suppose. Laura nonetheless made all the arrangments for the rest of us to take the train to see the teamLab Planets exhibit near Toyusu Station.

Toyosu Park

We had a little trepidation about navigating the train system without Laura but all goes well. Hunter takes the lead watching the map and suggesting our next move.

The teamLab art installations are expansive and multi-sensory, including wading through water up an incline in the dark. Our shoes and socks are in a locker near the entrance. Everyone is barefoot.

Jungle

Glare

Pod person

Several large, adjoining spaces have animations across the floor, walls and ceiling in a kind of black light style. It’s pretty crazy. Not only that, but the animations are somehow responsive. Creatures moving across the floor can be caught like Pokémon.

Power up

Foot bath

There is a place to sit and dry our feet after wading through water filled rooms and hallways.

Interstellar

I have an idea that all the wading, neat as it is, is really about having us all wash our feet before a series of glass floored spaces.

Hi mom

We exit to an outdoor cafe where we enjoy a few snacks before an announcement tells us our time at teamLab is ending.

We walk back toward the train station then wander in search of lunch, settling on another sushi-by-conveyer place. The stooped, older lady running the place is a bit of a marvel.

There is a dinner demand for Chinese soup buns, xiao long bao, after Laura rejoins us in the evening. We find our way to a nearby restaurant but it it’s full. We are loitering a moment, considering our options, when a staff person emerges and offers to set up a private table by the street. Yay.

These are the options

Maybe enthusiasm

Laura is some kind of karaoke champion and has drummed up enthusiasm among her siblings. After soup buns, we squeeze into a broom closet elevator for the ride up a few floors to our private singing room.