Japan day 11/13 - Ikebukuro, Saitama Chichibu, Nezu Shrine

(how have these posts become so large 😵‍💫 this one 7200 characters, yesterday's 7800)

 

Today another late awakening, but my next destination was close! Today I wanted to go explore Ikebukuro. Wanted to do this earlier but later today I had a train to catch from here anyway, so it was the perfect timing! From today on my leg was really starting to hurt from all the extensive running and walking, but only had three days to go, so had to get the most out of it somehow. Thankfully I had a lot of painkillers with me! Idk if it was the painkillers or if I didn't eat enough but today I kept snacking and snacking, pocky, butter cookies, baumkuchen, no end to it!

There's an easter egg you can find in Ikebukuro, or easter owl? The place itself means pond bag(?) but bag written on its own is fukuro, and owl is fukurou, someone must've thought this was really funny cause you can find owl statues all throughout the area, some area hidden, some are more obvious.

Otherwise Ikebukuro is kind of a weeb paradise much like Akihabara, but less neon lit, with more of a modern feel to it. They say Ikebukuro is like the girls' version of Akihabara, and I can see why. In manga stores shoujo and BL themes were much more prominent 👀 On that topic, I found the first manga volume of Sono Bisuku Dooru wa Koi ga Suru / My Dress up Darling for a few hundred yen and just had to get it. 
To my surprise it's uh... a bit more spicy than the anime. Normally I'm not much of a manga fan because anime are so much easier to get into, but since non translated books are so hard to get by outside of Japan, this was the perfect opportunity. I collected a few more other titles during my stay here too, now to continue that kanji learning!

Anyway a big reason I wanted to visit this place was also because a lot of the anime is set here and the second season recently came out, and I loved it so much, so big new refreshed excitement! This was one of the times I was really awake during the daytime in Tokyo and it was possible to see gigantic the skyscrapers actually are, how they build these so high and earthquake proof them goes much beyond my small town European mind.

First big part was the square, or park, or park that looks like a square Naka-Ikebukuro Park, and two big malls around it, one for about anything, and the other just for manga I think? Man the Japanese are something else!

Then I went over to East-Ikebukuro Central Park, the place where they do the cosplay meetups. There were also a lot of pigeons, I hadn't seen that many in Tokyo before. I discreetly dropped them some crumbs and continued taking my pictures. Then later on the way back I saw a Japanese guy throw like a mountain of seeds on the ground and and there were pigeons sitting on his arms and head, what a legend.

Right next to there was Sunshine City, a a multi story building that is both mall and offices, and on part of it there is like a square you can walk onto from the sidewalk, but it's also a roof. The lower side of the building is made with really pretty colored bricks, and the garden in the front is so cute, so many tiny houses in a forest!

At the entrance of the building for some reason there was a Sesame Street store, never thought I'd see that here. Of course they also had gachapon machines with epic figurines!

Once inside of the mall I searched for the aquarium, and found it on the very top floor! The main reason was just a minute of anime pics but I knew it wasn't so easy to get me out of there, the atmosphere was absolute on point for an aquarium. I could've spent hours there but unfortunately, time constraints... I went through the two floors with the fishies, will include some pics and videos. Next up was of course a souvenir shop and after that there was a lot more to see but I had to start running back to the station if I wanted to make it. I reserved a train with Seibu for a direct train to Saitama-Chichibu at a specific time, and unfortunately the much later tickets back were already sold out so I was gonna stay about 1,5 hours, before the main even would even start.

I made it to the train with minutes to spare. The train interior was nice but felt wrong, everything was covered in carpet, even the floor, but everyone enters on their shoes? How do they keep that clean D: it did look clean though!

The ride there was nice as far as it was visible, but I got to witness the sunset, the sun quickly disappeared behind the urban and tree filled environment. The stops they announced on the way sounded very familiar, I realized it's because I watched another anime about an apocalypse train adventure where they take exactly this route 😳

When we arrived, I should've known for the amount of tickets sold that it would be busy, but nothing prepared me for this. It was impossible to walk at a normal pace. The market was way more gigantic than I thought, the stalls looked like they went on for kilometers (oh I checked and it was actually one kilometer!) Despite all this I had a good time, the atmosphere was on point, it smelled like food everywhere. Recording here:

 

As a happy vegetarian but infinitely curious weeb I just had to try out takoyaki (grilled balls of batter with octopus). It was pretty good, but still I was hit with sadness for eating another creature (sometimes I feel like this world isn't made for me 😅).

After walking all the way to the shrine where the main event/parade would take place (which I would miss cause of the early train back..) I started slowly walking back to the station and still had some time to spare. Maybe it was enough time anyway. But I liked seeing a big part of this traditional yearly yomatsuri (night (or evening?) festival). The train back to Ikebukuro was very similar to the one to Chichibu but it had Moomin decorations 🤍

When I got back to Uguisudani despite my leg hurting like hell I decided it was a good time to check out the big cat shrine since it was just 2km away, apparently you can still see much of it even after closing hours! On the way there I found a small cat shrine next to a store and it had so many little trinkets and statues and pictures! When I eventually got to my destination, Nezu shrine, I realized this was not the cat shrine at all. The cat one is Goutokuji, and it's not a shrine but a temple! Man what a flub. But when I got closer it was still insanely beautiful, there were those yellow ginkgo trees everywhere, even much of what fell to the ground was still bright yellow and reflected the moonlight. There was also a thousand figurative torii, apparently they call this senbon torii, a thousand of those gates. I think it was still at least a hundred to be more realistic. Well you can count them for yourself if you want: 

 

There was also a strange low pressure storm happening, felt a bit ghostly, matched perfectly with the nightly shrine visit.

Was thinking of taking the train back but got lost somehow and decided to just walk. Between Nishi Nippori and Uguisudani station I found a vending machine that sold pudding in a drinking can(?), never seen that before so I got it. It was impractical to eat/drink but it was really good. The deliciousness dopamine helped soothe the leg pain 🤎💛 and with a few steps to go I was back at the hostel!