Day 5: Ikebukuro All Over Again

I wanted to have a bit of a short "break" day after my long walk yesterday, so I looked up a couple places in Ikebukuro and just went back there. Rather than walk, I was able to take the Tokyo Sakura Tram, which I had wanted to do. It is one of only 2 trams in Tokyo, the rest are subways or have elevated tracks as far as I know. The platforms for the tram were a lot smaller so I was worried it would be very crowded since it's only 1 car at a time (compared to the subways that have up to 10 cars), but it wasn't so bad.

I ended up going back to Sunshine City and was planning on grabbing lunch there but WOW, it was like 10x busier than it was when I came the other day even though it was around the same time of day. I don't know if school gets out early on Fridays or something but it was much more crowded.

I actually did grab a table at a place on the basement floor but awkwardly left after being seated. It had been an Okonomiyaki (basically a savory pancake) place and I had been craving it, so I asked for a table and was seated. To my dismay, it was a place where they bring you the batter and ingredients and you cook it yourself. I think it would have been fun with friends or if I was really confident in my cooking skills, but neither applied to me so I just left. I scrambled out the door and hoped I wasn't causing too much of an issue.

I didn't find anything I particularly wanted to wait for in Sunshine City, so I walked across the street to try a family restaurant (think something like Denny's) called Jonathan's. One of the nice things about chains like this is that you place your order on a tablet at the table and can change the language on it, which is really helpful. You can also press the button at the table to order from a person, but that was the exact opposite of what I wanted, so I opted to go the tablet route.

The table also had a flyer to warn me that my food might be delivered by one of our new overlords. In this case, a cute cat robot.

While I prepared for the imminent arrival of the tabulating tabby, I got water at the self-service drink bar. At these types of restaurant, I've heard it's common to have a drink bar that you pay for all-you-can-drink soft drinks, but I did not partake in that delight today.

A few minutes later, the networking neko did arrive as promised. It flashed my table number on it's face/screen to acknowledge the food was actually mine and then swiveled around to offer up my treasured meal. I grabbed the food and my tab and the cute robot left as soon as it had appeared.

I got the hamburg steak and a crab croquet. The croquet was too creamy for my liking but the hamburg was good. I personally think the set was overpriced. I think it was ¥1,800 for my lunch, which makes it the most expensive meal I've had in Japan so far and it definitely wasn't the best meal so far. But let's not sweat the details.

After lunch, I explored Ikebukuro in more depth than the other day. I spent a good amount of time wandering into game centers like GIGO to play crane games or watch others play some of the intense arcade games. I also got some Taiyaki in one of the shops.

Since the day had turned into me poking into shops and looking around, I ended up getting into the shopping mood. I had told myself I wouldn't buy any anime figures because I don't have space for any more but how could I not buy them when they're this cheap?? In the US the ¥700 one would be like 5x more expensive! The other one is a bit rarer and IDK how much it would even cost in the states but it was produced in 2008 and is in pretty good shape. Since it's a collab between 2 of my favorite anime franchises, I consider it a steal!

After shopping around for a bit, I tried to get to the rest of the locations on my hastily put-together schedule. The first stop was Ikebukuro West Gate Park which seemed like a nice area to meet up with people and looked pretty cool. If it sounds familiar, it's because of a media franchise of the same name exists and I think the TV series is on Netflix! If you've seen it, let me know if it's any good!

To wrap up the day, I had intended to go to a couple of temples in the area but by the time I got to each of them, they were closed. A problem I clearly haven't solved yet. Luckily, I could see through the gates to look at the temples, and that counts for something, right?

Tired at the end of the day as always, I boarded the Sakura Tram and headed home for the day.

Although I had intended for the day to pretty light after a brutal day the day before, I still ended up walking quite a lot. I'll have to wait until I'm back in the states to fully rest up it seems.