Day 1 - Team Lab Borderless

This morning we had our first taste of a Japanese breakfast at our ryokan. As a non breakfast eater, it was actually delicious. I tried a tiny bit of a lot of things and was surprised just how much I ate and enjoyed. Miso, salmon, eggs, rice, noodles, pickles, meatbslls, corn soup and more. Ella was very happy too!


We then had time to ourselves before meeting again as a group. Some of us wandered the local area and discovered a shrine, a beautiful lake and park and the crazy vending machines. My first Japanese coffee in a can was interesting to say the least!


After that we all went to the train station to organise passes and tickets and then had a free afternoon.  A group of us went to the awesome Team Lab Borderless,  a digital art museum/gallery.

There are no maps, no path to follow, it's completely  dark inside, other than the lighting from the displays. It's quite disorienting and hard to know of you've actually  seen everything. The images in each space keep changing too, which makes it even harder to keep track.

We made the mistake of not having lunch before we went in. No food is allowed and there are only drink vending machines in the rest areas. No pass outs are allowed either, so by 2.30pm we had to give up and leave to get food. After 2 hours, we'd  probably had enough anyway.

Being a Sunday, the place was packed and some key exhibits had waits of up to an hour. We gave up on lining up for one because we were too hungry!

Lunch was at a shopping centre near by, where I'd hoped there would be a cheap food court. Unfortunately the only restaurants were quite expensive,  but we didn't really have much choice. Food was good though.

The shopping centre reminded me of the Moreland Hotel!


On our way back to the hotel, we walked past the lake again, hoping to hire a paddle boat. Unfortunately they were already closed by 5pm, so we'll go back another time. It's dark here soon after that


Dinner of gyoza and pork with black fungus with a few of the other kids and parents and an early night.


A fun first day of exploring!

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