Odaiba

The land was dramatically expanded during the late 20th century as a seaport district, and was redeveloped in the 1990s into a major commercial, residential and leisure area.

Odaiba, along with Minato Mirai 21 in Yokohama, is one of the few manmade seashores in Tokyo Bay where the waterfront is accessible and not blocked by industry and harbor areas.

They were constructed in 1853 by Egawa Hidetatsu for the Tokugawa shogunate in order to protect Edo from attack by sea, the primary threat being Commodore Matthew Perry's Black Ships, which had arrived in the same year.

Suzuki's successor Yukio Aoshima halted the plan in 1995, by which point over JPY 1 trillion had been spent on the project, and Odaiba was still underpopulated and full of vacant lots.

The collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble was a major factor, as it frustrated commercial development in Tokyo generally.

The area was also viewed as inconvenient for business, as its physical connections to Tokyo—the Rainbow Bridge and the Yurikamome rapid transit line—made travel to and from central Tokyo relatively time-consuming and costly.

The area started coming back to life in the late 1990s as a tourist and leisure zone, with several large hotels and shopping malls.

Several large companies including Fuji Television moved their headquarters to the island, and transportation links improved with the connection of the Rinkai Line into the JR East railway network in 2002 and the eastward extension of the Yurikamome to Toyosu in 2006.

The privately operated Rinkai Line runs between Shin-kiba and Osaki, but many trains connect directly to Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Ikebukuro.

Ferries connect Odaiba with Asakusa running along the Sumida River and the Kasai Rinkai Park in eastern Tokyo.

Odaiba, the Rainbow Bridge, and other parts of the surrounding area are a major setting of the Digimon Adventure franchise.

The plot takes place in a city called Shinkoumi, referenced to previously being part of the Tokyo Waterfront.