Mitsui Educational Foundation Study Tour of Japan 2014: Day 18: Embassy, Head Office and Robots

With only a small number of days left, today we turned our heads towards more formal items on the itinerary. Starting with a visit to the Australian Embassy. This place is exceptionally beautiful, mixing Australia and Japanese interior design to create an exquisitely unique blend. We met with Bruce Miller, the Australian Ambassador, as well as other staff members of the embassy. During the chat we were told that it is apparently illegal for an Australia to eat whale anywhere in the world (oops) although after much googling, I'm yet to find a website that backs that claim. I also unfortunately had a coughing fit and had to leave quickly from the room till it stops so I did miss a little of the discussion. But it was a lively chat about politics, the Ambassador's life and what led him to his career and a wonderful morning tea was enjoyed by all. Before we left, we took the time to explore the gardens, which are absolutely wonderful.

Before the Ambassador arrived. I was too short for the couch - my feet didn't touch the ground

The garden - so beautiful

The past two days had had beautiful blue sky. Today, the day we were planning to climb the Tokyo Sky Tree, it clouds over and rains. Again. We went up anyway, but the view in the distance was obscured by rain clouds and it was a little disappointing. Had we gone up yesterday or the day before, I'm sure the view would have been incredible. That being said, the Sky Tree is still amazing. Firstly, the lift goes up incredibly fast and is gorgeously decorated. That was the first thing that blew me away. The second thing is the glass floor. I originally expected you to be able to see more through it - the gap between layers obscured most of it, but it was still a small thrill to walk out onto glass and look down over 300m to the ground below. Definitely a highlight of the climb.

Look how fast the lift goes!

Pretty Decorated Lift

The View

The tower was celebrating some serious Christmas

Josh and I - fearless

Pretty Lift on the way down too

After lunch we had a presentation meeting at Mitsui regarding Japan's focus in Asian markets. We discussed the challenges and behaviours within the Japan-China relationship, including noting that investment in China is actually reducing in favour of investment in other emerging markets. We also talked about ASEAN, which as a group is the 7th largest economy in the world. Interesting thing noted from these talks: Australia is the 12th largest economy in the world, but is number one on a per captia basis. We are seriously outperforming ourselves. I also learnt that the biggest challenge for Asian countries to develop is a lack of natural resources, which makes development harder to start, but easier in the long run, compared to countries in Africa with lots of natural resources which restricts their development.

After this meeting we had free time to do whatever we felt like. So I went to Shinjuku and visited the Robot Restaurant. I am so glad I went there because I had an absolutely blast. I can see why some reviews complain about no robots because a majority of the cast are men dressed as androids. However, the props are either robots or remote control and they were seriously cool. The building itself is impressive and the waiting lounge has an adorable interactive robot dinosaur and a band that looks like Daft Punk's cousins. The show itself is intense, loud and full of lights and movement, in a surprisingly family friendly way, considering Shinjuku is supposed to be the Red Light District (and some of the shops I saw certainly gave that impression.) They even had audience participation. The girl right in front of me was chosen to box against one of the "robots" and won herself a prize.