Day 11 – A Borderless Experience

15 263 Steps – 8.34kms – By Drew

The blockout blinds in the new hotel room means that we got to sleep in a little bit this morning. Which was great because we had a lazy start planned for today. It has been a holiday of go, go, go so it was a nice chance to just take our time.

The main event for today was an exhibition by TeamLabs called Borderless. I went in knowing next to nothing about this exhibition other than Dani and Karen being super excited, and Jed’s mate telling him that if he could, he needed to go.

A few quick train trips and we were there. It was an unanimous decision to stop for lunch and we had our first experience with Wendy’s. It was really tasty and the burgers were pretty great. With our bellies full it was time to start playing everyone’s favourite game, Line Simulator 2019. Even though we booked our tickets the lines were pretty sizeable, it took us about 40 minutes to get into the exhibition. The wait in the line was immediately forgotten once we entered one of the most awe-inspiring rooms I have ever witnessed. The initial room was filled with projected butterflies and flowers and fish and birds of a variety of beautiful colours and varying sizes. Through the very clever use of mirrors it felt like you had entered into a room that just went as far as the eye could see. This was just the first room! With a bit more exploring we made our way to the centre of the exhibition where the scenery projected on the walls shifted between seasons, weather conditions, flowers, frogs, some creepy rabbits, a bunch of old guys celebrating… There were so many things to keep looking at. We continued through to the next room, which was again filled with mirrors and mirrored floors (they offered modesty cloths for anyone wearing dresses or skirts) and thousands of hanging lights. The illusion made it seem once again that there were lights as far as the eye could see and in every direction. They flashed different colours, and changed with the beat of the music. There was even a small section where you could make your own environmental changes to the room, so I asked it to play the river effect and the room turned blue as the sound of water rushing though changed the lights and how they looked and flashed.

The next sections both required lining up again, which is not fun when there are so many things you want to see and interact with. The Floating Nest was a net suspended in a room filled with mirrors and you got to lay back and watch the show as if you were in a planetarium. The music, lights, colours and sounds were amazing. We then headed to the Lantern Forrest and bumped into Mum and Jed in the line. This was great! You entered into a room filled once again with mirrors and hanging lanterns that changed colours and glowed with different intensities. It was such a surreal experience. One of the mirrors was a two-way mirror so you got to see what everyone was doing while you were in line to enter the room. Jed and I decided to pull some dumb faces knowing that people could see exactly what we were doing! We laughed at the very least. Dani and I then went to the athletic forrest upstairs and just marvelled at the displays. The whole experience was up there with some of the greatest things I have done in my life! It was well worth (most of) the wait.

Eventually everyone regrouped at Wendy’s again and headed into Tokyo to Character Street. This is a place where you can find a huge amount of iconic character memorabilia. We picked up a few things from the Studio Ghibli store, Dani got some new luggage to replace some of the things that are starting to wear out, and I got an Electabuzz plushie. We said farewell to Mum and Jed here and headed back to our hotel to collect Tim and Lobada for dinner.

Following our fearless leader for the evening (Tim) we made out way to the closest Ichiran and had ramen for dinner. It was so good this time because we all had experienced it before and knew what sort of changes we wanted to add to our meals. This one also had a table option so we got to sit on small tables of 3 and 4 and actually be a little social while eating! They had options for the original private settings but it was nice to be social. It was another short walk to Sensoji Temple where we took a few photos and discovered that the infamous Lobada Vending Machine had been relocated. We all said our goodbyes and decided that as of 12:00 am on Tuesday the 1st of October, the Lobending Machine inside joke will officially be retired. You will be missed.

Returning to the hotel via the 24hr Don Quijote was amazing and the amount of things you can find in that store blows you away. Simple things like lucky charms, more interesting things like clothes and luggage, a whole section for costumes (maybe it’s just because Halloween is coming up) and a small grocery store were just some of the things you can find at that place. A few minutes later and we left everyone as they headed to 7-11 and went back to the hotel.

Tomorrow will be a big day. We have to get up at 6:00 am to be there by 8:00 am. The place doesn’t even close until 10:00 pm. That is a whole 14 hours. 14 hours at that place… 14 hours at Disney Sea!