Senso-Ji, Sumida River cruise and Odaiba Island

We had a bit of a late start today after a rather bad night's sleep - our room air conditioner decided to pump out hot air all night even though it was set to 16C - we started our day with breakfast at a different nearby Café.

We got the Metro on the Ginza line up to Asakusa from where we walked up a very busy street with lots of tourist-tat stalls to the Senso-Ji temple.  It's the most sacred and spectacular temple in Tokyo and was indeed impressive.  We greatly enjoyed the Temple, the surrounding buildings and the very pretty Denbo-in Garden.

As the weather was nice, after a basic lunch in a basic Café (with no English spoken!) we decided to take a river cruise along the Sumida to Hidone Pier.  We joined the cruise just opposite the famous Asahi Building, pictured below.  I think it looks a bit like it has a golden tadpole on top of it.  The views from the river where great.

From Hidone Pier where we got a stunning monorail service that goes right on to Odaiba Island, a reclaimed piece of land that was largely developed in the 1990s but is still being developed today.  The monorail loops round a huge curve so it can get the height needed to cross the rainbow bridge to the island.  We had a good explore, including going up to the viewing dome on the 25th floor of the Fuji TV Building, looking at the MegaWeb exhibition of historic cars, seeing the mock 18th century shopping mall and going to the Oedo Onsen Monogatari - a spa that pumps warm thermal water up from hundreds of metres below the ground to deliver it to the bathing pools at the spa.  The spa had all sorts of other facilities including a restaurant so we enjoyed dinner there and then got the monorail back to Shinbashi and then the Ginza line back to Kyobashi, the stop nearest our hotel.