3:20?!
Holy crap! I'm not one of those people, who wakes up that ridiculously late! Well, I guess I am, which meant today's trip had to be majorly cut short. No walk to Yasukuni-jinja or Asakusa...just a short walk to Ikebukuro.
Ikebukuro's a pretty big area; it may not be as well known as Shinjuku or Shibuya (or maybe it is?) but it still has a ton of people walking around and shopping. In particular, the two places I visited today are Otome Road and Sunshine City. Otome Road is a street with anime and manga stores, mainly marketed towards girls. Sunshine City is a big shopping center complete with aquarium and food theme park (is that a thing?), with a whole bunch of stores surrounding it. I visited it in my trip in May, but I live here for now, so why not another trip?
Ikebukuro is filled with people, even on Sunday evening. I love places filled with people!
It also had food that looked really delicious! Bomb-yaki! I need to eat this. Note to self: come back and eat here.
I bypassed the giant Sunshine City building for the time being, and instead for Otome Road.
I gotta say, I was kinda disappointed. Maybe I'm due for a trip with a guide, but there just weren't many stores. I stopped in the big Animate store and checked out all the wacky toys and books. They had Hetalia-themed drinks.
For those of you unfamiliar, Hetalia is a webcomic-turned-anime and manga where they take countries from World War II, and turn them into silly characters. It's pretty hilarious in concept, if not in execution. Go America!
After leaving there, it was on to Sunshine City. I crossed the street and entered the shopping plaza.
Stores, stores, everywhere! It's like a glorified mall...or just like a mall. Still fun to walk around in, though. The radio was playing exclusively American pop, though. I heard all of your favorites: For Your Entertainment, Already Gone, Your Love Is My Drug (go Ke$ha!), Telephone, According to You, Bad Romance, and Empire State of Mind. Man, that's a regular top 40 station's lineup!
I meandered my way through the mall, coincidentally (or not really coincidentally) ending up in a Toys 'R Us. After perusing the interesting toys and candy, I headed out of Sunshine City and back to the outside shopping plaza.
That's when I found the arcades! I'm a man who likes his games, and Japan has lots of wacky games. Two whole floors dedicated to girls taking pictures with their friends in wacky booths. A floor for card-based arcade games, a floor for Gundam pods, a floor for fighting games. But the best was this wacky fake horse-racing show area! If you look closely enough, you can even see the very-real smoke coming from the old men playing the game:
There's also this wacky new adaptation of the NES game Elevator Action.
I hit up some ramen place for dinner (sadly no pictures) and then found my way back south (of course after getting lost a couple times briefly)
-Benjamin
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