Captain Santa Golf Club - v2.0: Roppongi

On our second day in Tokes we explored Roppongi. Home to the original Gas Panic (Japan's sleeziest foreigner bar, now a chain of sllezy foreigner bars), this area is generally notorious for being, well, sleezy and full of foreigners. But during the day Roppongi actually houses some of Tokyo's best galleries – National Art Centre Tokyo (NACT), 21_21 Design Site, Mori Art Museum, Suntory Museum of Art as well as the Design Hub. Lucky for us, we also arrived in time for the start of the Design Festa, a week long festival dedicated to something the Japanese do very well. We rolled into Tokyo Midtown, an awesome and strange shopping haven with design festa winners on display throughout.

NACT

Will outside Tokyo Midtown

First stop was the Design Hub centre where we checked out some of the winners from the country's innovative design awards, that may or may not be featured in Gizmodo over the next year or so...

Robot

Flat LAN networking

Amp (for Mike)

It was pretty incredible that entries ranged from small architects to major companies like Sony, all competing on the same scale.

We spent the day traversing galleries round the traps and when half of them were closed indulging in my favourite past time gallery gift-o shoppo. We enjoyed a bit of Rippongi Hills and ended up at More where we caught the Annette Messeger temporary exhibition, complete with an overly ponderous, but complimentary English audio guide.

Entry into Mori also includes admission to the Tokyo Sky deck, where on a clear day you can see Fuji-San. It wasn't a clear day when we ventured up but twas pretty incredible anyway, to view the massiveness of the city.

Panorama that Will made

That night, being a Wednesday and all, we decided to go clubbing. Superdeluxe, recommended by the guidebook as the place to rub shoulders with Tokyo's avant garde art scene, was hosting an electro night with live art – all for only Y1000 entry (cheapest club in tokes by a long shot). Armed with an Evian bottle of cheap booze, we spent the night drinking Y500 soft drink while checking out the latest midnight presets and life art performed by girls wearing burkahs. Fun times!