Tokyo Teleport Layover: Odaiba and the Bay

Tokyo Teleport station sits on Odaiba, a reclaimed island across Tokyo Bay from the city centre, ten minutes’ walk from Odaiba Seaside Park’s sand beach and the start of the Rainbow Bridge’s free walkway back over the water.

Tokyo Joypolis, the indoor theme park on Odaiba’s waterfront

Tokyo Joypolis fills several floors of the DECKS Tokyo Beach mall, a few minutes’ walk north of Tokyo Teleport station: Sega’s indoor theme park, with motion simulators, VR rides and floors of arcade machines, all under one roof. It is the place to go when the rest of Odaiba, which is mostly open waterfront, is being rained or blown on.

Entry alone is ¥1,500 for an adult, with rides charged separately, or ¥5,800 for an all-day Passport that covers them; cheaper evening tickets start at 3pm and 5pm. It opens 11am to 7pm on weekdays and 10am to 8pm at weekends, last entry 45 minutes before close. Joypolis tickets are sold ahead through a tours and activities platform.

Outside DiverCity Tokyo Plaza, the mall on the other side of the station, a full-size robot statue from the Gundam anime stands about 20 metres tall on the plaza, free to look at.

Odaiba Seaside Park and the 1853 cannon battery

Odaiba Seaside Park curves around a sheltered inlet on the north side of the island, about ten minutes’ walk from Tokyo Teleport station: an 800-metre artificial sand beach with a boardwalk behind it, looking straight across the water at the Rainbow Bridge and the towers of Shibaura and Shinagawa. Swimming is not allowed, but windsurfers and paddleboarders use the inlet, and the beach fills at sunset when the bridge lights come on. At the western end stands a 12-metre replica of the Statue of Liberty, put up after the copy from Paris that was lent for a year in 1998 went home.

At the eastern end, the path runs out onto Daiba Park, which is where the island’s name comes from. In 1853, after Commodore Perry’s warships arrived in the bay, the shogunate began building a line of island cannon batteries, daiba, to defend Edo from the sea. Six were finished; this one, the Third Battery, survives as a square of grass inside its original stone walls and earth banks, with the gun positions and the foundations of the powder magazine still laid out on the ground. It is free and usually quiet.

The beach, the promenade and the bridge walkway are open ground over the water with nothing to shelter under, and when the weather turns there is nowhere close by to wait it out with a suitcase except the malls.

Narita is 90 minutes from Odaiba, Haneda about 30

For Narita International Airport (NRT), Airport Limousine buses leave from the large Odaiba hotels a handful of times a day and take about 70 to 75 minutes for ¥2,700, with luggage in the hold; by train, the Rinkai line and a JR change reach Tokyo Station, where the Narita Express takes about another hour, so allow an hour and a half. Haneda is much closer: three minutes on the Rinkai line to Tennozu Isle, then about 15 on the monorail, as the Haneda airport guide describes.

The Rainbow Bridge walkway, 1.7 kilometres over the bay

The Rainbow Bridge was finished in 1993, a 798-metre suspension bridge from Odaiba to Shibaura carrying an expressway on its upper deck and, on the lower, the automated Yurikamome line, a road and a footpath on each side. The walkways run about 1.7 kilometres with the approach ramps, 20 to 30 minutes on foot, and cost nothing. The north side looks up the harbour to Tokyo Tower and the city; the south side faces the open bay and, on a clear day, Mount Fuji. The Odaiba end is about ten minutes’ walk from Odaiba-kaihinkoen station.

The walkways open 9am to 9pm from April to October and 10am to 6pm from November to March, with last entry 30 minutes before close, and close on the third Monday of every month and in strong wind. Walking across and riding the Yurikamome back over the same bridge makes a loop. For a longer stop, the Ueno and Asakusa route covers the national museum and Senso-ji on the other side of the city.