Cycling to Odaiba

Last weekend we decided to challenge the heat (and it's veeeery hot here in Tokyo!) and make a cycle tour to Odaiba. We thought it would be nice to see a lot of the city and get a nice sea breeze at the Tokyo Bay area. So, armed with our city map and lots and lots of drinks to stay hydrated during our bike ride, we set off!

During our trip, close to Odaiba

During the 16 kilometre-trip from our house to Odaiba, we passed many highlights of Tokyo. It's really surprising to see how close everything actually lies together! From our house, we first passed Tokyo Dome City, the shopping and entertainment district (including an amusement park and onsen!) around the Tokyo Dome baseball stadium.
From there it was only a little further to pass the Yasukuni Shrine, the Nippon Budokan and finally the Imperial Palace. It was very surprisingly how many festivals or events were happening in Tokyo on a random Sunday in July. A music festival in the park close to the Imperial Palace, a festival at the Yasukuni shrine, a big Gosplay-gathering with lots of people beautifully dressed up as their favourite characters and small events in the smaller neighbourhoods we passed through!
The streets around the imperial palace were actually closed for car-traffic, so we could ride our city-bicycles over the big streets of Tokyo. An experience we shared with many professional cyclists who chose this day the train on the road without being bothered by traffic lights or other traffic.
After the Imperial Park we cycled through Ginza, the famous shopping street were it was veeerrry busy this Sunday (probably because of the big Sale a lot of the shops were having) For us this meant having to navigate through big crowds of people, cars and taxi's. Not really the street designed the leisurely cycle through.
After that we finally reached the Tokyo Bay area, and we travelled passed Tsukishima and crossed lots of bridges (the view on Tokyo kept getting better and better!) until we finally arrived at Odaiba.

View on Tokyo from on of the bridges in Tokyo Bay area

We spend the day seeing around Odaiba, doing some shopping (also Sale here!), taking pictures at the big Gundam statue in front of the new shopping mall,  enjoying the light sea breeze, and viewing the beautiful scenery on Tokyo. On the small beach at the shore of Odaiba there was a big event advertising Tokyo as candidate for the Olympics of 2020. Lots of lights on the beach showed pictures of different Olympic Sports.

Posing for the big Gundam

Odaiba

Light for the Tokyo candidate-ship for the Olympics 2012 (picturing the legs of a horse)

The Olympic rings on the beach, with Tokyo in the background

The view from Tokyo Bay area on Tokyo was absolutely stunning. But  after a long day, we had to cycle the 16 kilometre back home. But cycling through dark Tokyo, lit up with lights was actually very beautiful. A little tired we finally arrived back home safely, after a fun - but definitely also very athletic - day.

Beautiful night view on Tokyo from Odaiba