.:Day 3 – Ikebukuro:.
After an eventful first full day in Japan yesterday we decided to take it slow and explore the neighborhood where we would be staying in for 2 weeks, Ikebukuro.
The basement of the department store, Seibu, is connected to the Ikebukuro station. Basement floors of department stores are AMAZING I tell you. I don’t normally tend to shop in department stores as their stuff tends to be pricier, but I will most definitely shop in the basement floor, aka, food floor.
LOOK at that! And that’s only the sweets section. Didn’t even get to film the savories/cooked food part. We were in a hurry to start our adventures that day so and the food was so tempting so Sir Durr had to pull me away. We later on would return to buy our dinner there. (´• ω •`)
I regret not buying those macaron pops. But in hindsight, I probably wouldn’t have had the heart to eat them,so they would’ve been a waste anyways…
Wandered around to see what our lunch options may be and ended up in a Hanamaru Udon (a fast-food type udon chain in Japan). It was a cafeteria-style affair. When you enter, you grab a tray and you can grab any side dishes that catch your eye (I got a chikuwa and karaage) and then you order your udon/main dish and pay for everything at the cashier. Your udon is out within a minute. The menu was in Japanese so I was explaining the options to Sir Durr and we pondered a bit on our choices. During our exchange, the cashier said to her coworker in Japanese, “Ah, they’re foreigners” and looked a bit uncertain as to if she would need to attempt to explain to us how it worked. Hearing this and realizing a small line was beginning to form, I placed our orders with the cashier in Japanese and she looked a bit embarrassed/surprised.
Ikebukuro is considered the girl-oriented version of Akiba so we had designated today to be our first of many of our nerdy/hobby-related days. You can’t miss the SEGA UFO building so that was our first stop after we filled our stomachs with udon. We spent so much money on the UFO machines… well, Sir Durr especially because he SUCKED!
（ ´∀｀）ｷﾞｬ――――――――――――――――ﾊﾊ八 ﾉ ＼ / ＼
I was actually decent at the UFO machine. I was so happy to have finally found something that I beat Sir Durr at.
ヘ(￣ω￣ヘ)
When he finally decided that he was done with losing we headed off to find Animate and Mandarake doujin. Finding Animate was another adventure in itself as apparently they had moved not too long ago so when we got to the old Animate and went in, we got really confused. Actually, our entire trip was filled with adventures trying to find our way to places. LOL
Long story short, I spent A LOT of money on manga and doujins which I would later regret when trying to fit it into my luggage without exceeding the baggage weight limit. ┐(´∀｀)┌
Next up will just be gratuitous pictures of food and my nerdy loot.
Afternoon tea break between our Animate and Mandarake stops
Perhaps blogging about food and Japan late at night is not such a good idea. Getting those hunger cravings for good Japanese food right now!!!
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻