Tokiyo Trip 11 : Ikebukuro

October 10, 2015

Day 5 : Ikebukuro ( Sunday )

We didn't really rest since the day we headed to the airport and our body was aching from extensive walking. It was Sunday and I checked the weather, it was supposed to be a rainy day in Asaka on that day. I was still paranoid with the flood news several days before, so I asked Af if we could just go to Ikebukuro that day and spend a slow day in the mall. He agreed, *wee!*

I know Ikebukuro got so much more to offer and even though we stopped by on the station every single day, we didn't really explore the place - almost at all. For that Sunday, we chose Sunshine City, the closest one from the station. We planned to go to their aquarium or planetarium.

I remember a lot of underground walk to arrive to the mall.
The first thing we did when we finally reached the place were : 
1) go to the toilet 
2) find a nice bench in the mall and eat our onigiris for lunch

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What we did at Sunshine City :

1) We found a Ghibli shop (!!!). If you are planning on buying Ghibli Studio's merchandize, you should find Donguri stores. I found out later that night about how they were selling those official merchandizes only at specific places ( I found one in Tokyo Station, in Sunshine City and Skytree ). Mr Miyazaki decided to make all items hard to get in other places, so finding one in Tokyo was a huge deal for me.


I didn't take any photos of the shop because I got too excited with choosing what to buy *especially when you have a strict budget to follow =.= I finally bought a planner (1,800yen), a handkerchief (250yen) and a random badge from Studio Ghibli - Castle in the Sky (250yen). We also bought finger-puppets of Totoro + Chi Totoro (AF's) and mine is the black cat, Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service (all 150yen each).  I really wanted the tea cup, but God, I can't. - *the shopping spree didn't stop here.



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2) We found so many big stores selling all famous anime's merchandize and I also bought my clear-glasses here. We saw the line to the aquarium was really long so we cancelled our plan *maybe because it was Sunday. Even the planetarium was closed for renovation until the upcoming October =.= Everything didn't go as we initially planned. We later decided to buy a strawberry juice + a cafe latte and find a place to lepak2.

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3) We went to the rooftop. *after we checked from their building's guide map
We saw some Japanese people wearing weird clothes, making poses and taking pictures. We didn't realize that we were in some kind of cosplayer's event until we walked farther down :F There were hundreds of cosplayers gathered in the Higashi-Ikebukuro Park just outside of the building ! I have never been in such a huge passionate crowds. The best part is it was totally unplanned :D


They mostly ignored us and they also took huge amount of pictures. There were also weird group of men wearing cute girls' costumes *they were far from cute and a man with his pet cats *more than 5! sitting together in the crowd. Ohh, and they also have fancy name-card with contact details and photo of them. 0,o It's not only the young-adults, there were also full-grownups! I wonder what makes them do it.


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We headed back earlier than days before and Asaka greeted us with a beautiful sunset view :)
Despite random earthquakes and tsunamis, how can anyone not fall in love with Japan ?


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Public transport : 492 yen
  
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