Aqua City, Venus Fort, and Rainbow Bridge. While they may sound like the settings for the next big battle of 21st century superheroes, they are in actuality just three of the attractions which have made Tokyos Odaiba one of the citys most frequented destinations.
Odaiba stands on two of six islands which the Togukawa shogunate built and fortified to protect Tokyo Harbor from Western intrusion, which arrived in the person of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. It received its name from the Japanese word daiba, for fort. When Japan experienced its enormous economic boom in the early 1980s, the third and sixth of the fortified islands were extended, and named Tokyo Teleport Town for the ultramodern business city which was to be constructed on them.
The economic boom went bust, however, and in the 1990s, new plans permitting Odaiba to be commercially developed saw it quickly inhabited by the entertainment and commercial enterprises which make it such a huge draw today. Among Odiabas most impressive attractions are the replica of Frances Statue of Liberty wtching over its Aqua City shopping center; Venus Fort, another shopping mall designed to resemble...