Day 7 in Japan: For Sunshine

Today we went to Ikebukuro, a popular shopping district in Tokyo. Our goals were twofold: to visit the place’s many department stores and to visit a cat cafe.

A cat cafe is a place where you pay some money, then for an hour or so you can play with the cafe’s very clean cats. As the cafe part suggests, you can get drinks too.

We first stopped by a department store called Tokyu Hands. Unlike a lot of the department stores we’ve visited, instead of clothes and the like, this store had lots of hobby and crafts stuff.

Tokyu Hands

My favorite floor was definitely the 2nd floor, with lots of toy-like items, novelty goods, and anime/game-related goods. Lots of cool stuff like mini-speakers, cell phone accessories, those Puchi Puchi toys (no Puchi Puchi Moe ones though!), Eva stuff, Gundam stuff, and a bunch of other fun things.

Got this awesome SF4 keychain thing for a friend that is a joystick and a Punch and a Kick button. Each one is character-themed and if you do the move inputs, the thing plays a voice. For instance, I got the Akuma one, and if you do 236P, the thing will shout “Gou Hadouken!”.

Also got this Zeon cell phone sticker for my red DS. My plan is to turn my DS into a Char’s custom DS.

Tokyu Hands loot

Hungry, we went to a massive department store next door, Sunshine City, to find food.

Sunshine City

Lots of different stuff, but we ended up choosing this Omelet Rice specialty place called “Tamago to Watashi” (The Egg and I).

Tamago to Watashi

Food Report: Omelet Rice

Short version: Not bad. For some reason, the customers were mostly female.

We wandered around Sunshine City for a bit more, looking at all the various stores. I stopped by Daiso, a 100yen store, again for some more hard cases for my now massive doujinshi collection.

Inside Sunshine City, they have this food amusement park called Namjatown. At least, that’s how my sister’s guidebook put it. It had sections devoted to ice cream, gyoza, cakes, massages, and other fun stuff.

Namjatown

So we decided to cough up the 300yen and go.

It was probably the weirdest thing I’ve seen yet.

Lots of kids running around, but it had the strangest decorations for a kid’s amusement park I’ve ever seen. WWII bomb-shelter deco? Zombie jail? Satan?

Weirdest Decorations... Ever.

Weirdest Decorations... Ever. 2

At least they had plenty of ice cream:

Ice Cream... Lots of Ice Cream.

Seemed to be having a One Piece promotion for its new movie, Strong World.

One Piece Stage

Not really enticed by the food choices (there was this cool all-black gelato though), we left after wandering around for a while.

Walking back through Sunshine City, we saw this awesome store devoted to Miyazaki merchandise called “Donguri Kyouwakoku” or “The Acorn Republic”.

Donguri Kyouwakoku

Lots of Totoro gear, as you’d expect. Even had Totoro playing on a screen in front of the store! It’s been forever since I’ve seen Totoro, wonder if they have it on Blu-Ray?

After deciding that we needed a break, we returned to Tokyu Hands and went up to their top floor to their cat cafe Nekobukuro (get it? get it? … ). Well… it turns out it wasn’t a “cafe” per se but rather a cat habitat (?) where you enter and play with cats. So a cat cafe minus the cafe part.

Nekobukuro

Lots of cute cats… sleeping. We must’ve come in during nap time or something because pretty much all of them were sleeping.

Highcat sleeping.

Basketcat sleeping.

Shelfcat sleeping.

Then the kids came. And the cats weren’t sleeping much anymore.

Not-sleeping cat

After we had our fill of cats, we went to the nearby animate, a store filled with anime/manga goods. Turns out this place is part of the infamous Otome Road, gathering place of fujoshi (female otaku). Explains why the animate had so much stuff not so relevant to my interests.

animate in Ikebukuro

Unfortunately, they had a no-camera policy in animate, so no pictures of the inside.

Lots of fun stuff though, got a bunch of manga like the “Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan” manga and more Fujieda Miyabi works like “Chatting in the Amber Teahouse” and “The Miko’s Words and the Witch’s Incantations”.

animate loot

Tired, we went for this one store we saw earlier with great-looking parfaits. Turns out it was called “Milky Way”.

Milky Way

As the name implies, the whole store had this astronomical theme, with their parfaits being named after zodiac signs. They went with a weird system though, having 13 signs for some reason.

Food Report: Parfaits

Short version: Mine wasn’t bad, but my sister’s was SMOKING when it came out. How cool is that?

We went back to good ol’ Akihabara for dinner again. Our goal this time was to eat sushi at this place called Sushi Zanmai in this department store called the Yodobashi Camera Department Store.

Yodobashi Camera

Turns out there were 2 different flavors of Sushi Zanmai. Ground floor had a Sushi Zanmai which was a traditional sushi place and the 8th floor had a Sushi Zanmai which was a conveyor-belt sushi place. Went for the conveyor-belt.

Sushi Zanmai

Food Report: Conveyor-belt Sushi

Short version: Seriously awesome. Nothing like sushi in Japan. Also way too easy to empty your wallet.

We made our way back down Yodobashi Camera after dinner. Like SofMap, it’s a department store with nothing but electronics and computer stuff. It has really annoying music though.

Favorite floor was definitely the floor with video games and toys. They had this huge area devoted to plastic models and figures!

Models and figures.

Lots of new Gundam models that I didn’t know existed. Like a MG Astray Blue and a huge-ass GP-03 Dendrobium. They had some other cool stuff like a Goku model, a Hoihoi-san model, and Itasha car models. If I didn’t have so many unfinished models, I’d have come out of there much poorer.

They also had these USB Shaking Hip things that I totally almost bought.

USB Shaking Hip

Yep, it’s a pair of panty-clad hips that shake when plugged in. I totally would’ve gotten one if they had the blue shima panty one.

Ended up getting these things for my PSP that make it easier to use the d-pad and analog nub.

PSP mods (?)