Since being back to Japan, and having a few days before returning to work (which was much needed due to a seemingly unending jetlag), I went with a friend to national park called Hamarikyu which is along the Northern part of Tokyo bay. It's a very big park, and although apparently funding has decreased, still very clean. There are some cool things like a 300 year-old pine and a tea house where you can have some maccha (foamy, somewhat bitter green tea for ceremonies - very good!) and enjoy the view of the lake.
Since it is so close to this park, we also went to Odaiba, which is an entertainment island built in the 90s. Odaiba had amusement parks, exhibits, and has a general feel of a sea-side resort area. They also built some large offices there in hopes that it would become an economic catalyst (you can see the Fuji TV building in the pics below, the one with the 'orb' thing), however its feels more like a ghost town today. Also in the images below you can see the Rainbow Bridge (which is about 1,870 feet (570 m) long) and also a mini-replica of the Statue of Liberty (why I don't know). My favorite part was the Sony Emerging Technologies exhibit where all the cutting edge and future technologies developed by Sony are accessible in an interactive environment. There was some pretty cool stuff to play with over there if you like science.
