Venus Fort - designed to resemble a 17th - 18th century European city, the place opened back in 1999 inside Palette Town and the original concept was that it was to be a theme park for ladies.
These days however, Venus Fort is filled with not only stuff for the ladies but also for Men and Hideyoshi's too.
Venus Fort is located in the Odaiba area and you can get there by getting off at the Tokyo Teleport station on the Rinkai line which you can get from JR Yamanote Osaki.
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Venus Fort has an artificial sky which changes to an evening tone as the night draws closer.
There are a load of restaurants, fashion retailers and an outlet mall too.
At the moment there is some sort of car exhibition going on - am presuming its to coincide with the Tokyo Motor Show.
The Chinese food over here is not really Chinese food as the taste is heavily adapted to local tastebuds. Not saying that it does not taste good (some of it is very good!) but its just different.
How does Chinese food taste like in your neck of the woods?
Venus Fort currently has a load of Christmas illuminations up. Many places around Japan will invest in illuminations to draw in the families and couples at this time of year.
Apart from the Kiddy Land in the background, there is not much for the otaku to be found here though ^^;
Many shopping facilities and train stations provide lockers for you to dump your stuff while you shop so that you dont need to lug heavy stuff around with you - most convenient.
All photos taken on the NEX-5N.
This is Palette Town where Venus Fort is located. This whole area including Venus Fort was due to be dismantled in 2010 because the lease for the land was up.
Back in 1990 after the bubble burst and economic depression set in, the government found it difficult to lease the land to anyone until they dropped the lease price of 1 square meter to about 840yen! The condition was that the land had to be returned 10 years later.
Mori Building and Sumitomo Bussan together leased the land at that price knowing that they would have to return it 10 years later and built Palette Town on it. But 10 years on, Palette Town turned out to be successful - but a contract is a contract and in 2010, the Tokyo governing body announced that Palettte Town was to be dismantled - the end result was that Mori Building and Toyota Motors teamed up and bought back the land.
Mori Building and Toyota have plans to build a convention hall and other facilities so the future for Venus Fort is uncertain - so if you are in town then you may want to pay a visit before its gone forever.
Heading back to the station.
Other places to visit in Japan listed up below.
