Japan Pictures Day 4: Shinjuku and Ikebukuro

 Day 4: Shinjuku and Ikebukuro!

(There are a TON of pictures, so I am going to do a lot of talking in the captions)

Melon Pan! Bread covered with cookie-
like crust. Called "Melon" because
the scoring makes it look like a
melon, not because it tastes like it.

Saturday the 28th of September. We started off in Shinjuku, where our hotel was located. We wanted to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which has the highest observation deck for free, we were told. So we walked straight from our hotel (after getting breakfast).

My Pan was filled with vanilla and
chocolate pudding. Yum!

Large intersection in Shinjuku.

My new favorite drink! Some kind of "Yogurt"
drink, that tasted kinda carmel-ly.

Fun Whale named Kuu-chan.

Kerri rockin it out!

On the way we saw a few shops, and some Gachapon machines, so we had to stop (of course!). There we saw they had a DDR-like game, but with Taiko drums! You hit the drums when the circles passed by, and it was surprisingly fun. I was not the best at it. XD

And me, about to beat up the drum.

We can see the building now!

When we got to the building, they had just barely opened, so we didn't even have to wait to go up (going back down was a different matter).

Selfie in the tower.

The funny-looking building in the middle was some
kind of art building, and it was called the "Cocoon".
Pretty accurate if you ask me.

I liked these three buildings all lined up.

Central park below us. What's going on down there?

This is "Tokyo." Buildings crammed together as
far as the eye can see. Also, like Salt Lake can mean the entire
valley, but it actually has many cities in it, that's the way
Tokyo is referred to a lot.

Very large, tall installation in the middle of
the tower.

Waterfall where the Market was being held.

We were interested in what was happening in Central Park (pictured above), so we went over after we finally got down from the tower. It was a Flea Market! I think they have it either every day, or once a week, or something, because there was a fairly permanent-looking sign calling it the Central Market.

Someone offered to take a picture of the two of us.

And a full-grown cicada (we think)!
It was huge!

I thought this was a live cicada, but it
was actually just a husk. I pinched
off the leaf and stuck it in an
empty gatchapon to take home!

Flea Market!

Base of the tower. They had a bunch of artsy statues and such.

We got a lot of stuff at the Tower and the flea market, so before moving on to Ikebukuro, we decided to stop by the hotel and drop our stuff off. We ended up walking in an underground passage almost all the way from the Tower to the train station near our hotel.

One part of the underground passage.
More like a station/shopping center!

I needed to get some more cash, so we did a detour to a 7-11 on the way to Ikebukuro. The 7-11s were the only place besides a bank to get cash, because they had ATMs that would take foreign credit cards.

A large, old fashioned gate on
the way to 7-11

Same gate, with a very
Japanese-y tree.

And a large monolith on
the other side

Kerri got some An-man while waiting
for me at 7-11. Steamed bun with
anko, sweetened red bean paste.

Then the drama started. The ATM wouldn't take my card. It wasn't that I couldn't read it, because I could check the balance and such, but it wouldn't let me withdraw any money! After trying to get it to work for a long time, we finally decided to move on and try again at a different location later. I still had some money, but only about 3000Y ($30) and it was only day 4! The good thing was that Kerri still had plenty of cash, and could cover me for the day.

 We stopped at Health/Makeup store (that's how they billed themselves) to get me some Ibuprofen, ice packs for me knees (which were starting to hurt a whole ton), and some shoe inserts. Explanation time: For the last several walking-intensive activities I have done, my knees have hurt like the freakin' blazes. I learned at the last activity that it was related to swelling somehow, though that wasn't the cause so much as the main symptom. So I brought knee braces, cold packs, and anti-inflammatories to help stave off the inevitable. While in Japan, however, I noticed that my arches were starting to hurt as well. "That's suspicious" thought I, and so I started looking for some arch supports.

I put them in immediately, and while it really hurt to walk in them, because I wasn't used to it, they really helped my knees! They didn't get a ton better, but they didn't get any worse, and that was sufficient.

Eating gyoza with dinner. It came out with
a sheet of whatever on the top, from being
fried and flipped over onto the plate.
Gyoza is Srs Business.

After food we went and got Puri-Kura's. Basically
super-photo booths. I stole Kerri's that she posted,
but I have my own that's a little different.
Can you tell what the booth did that is funny?

Nekobukuro in Ikebukuro

After Puri-Kura (see photo sheet) we went to Tokyu Hands, which had all sorts of stuff, and is called a do-it-yourself store. We went through almost all the floors, and all I got were a couple glass bottles. The main attraction was on the top floor, the Cat cafe, Nekobukuro. You pay a cover charge (600Y) to enter and get to pet their cats that they have all over. The cats get really good at dodging the people visiting. Until they let the kittens out after dinner, and I was able to entice them with my shoelaces.

My favorite part was the cats were trained to jump into the arms of the workers when their name was called! All the cats were hanging around the door to the back, since they knew it was dinner time. Then a worker girl came out and called a cat, who literally jumped straight into her arms (or so, since they were full-grown cats and the girl was rather small). So fun!

Enclosure with kitty in a basket

Cat walks, complete with cat.

Cat from below.

This kitty knew it was dinner time.

Little scottish fold kitten. They are called that because
their ears are folded over from a defect in
the cartilage gene.

No kitten can resist the laces.
The one advantage I had with my shoes.

After kitties, we went to a large Anime store called Animate. They had a lot of stuff for animes that we didn't know, and from the most recent flame "Shinjeki no Kyojin" or "Attack on Titan" that I had actually watched most of. We went through almost all the floors, but I ended up just borrowing 5000Y from Kerri to get a bunch of Copic markers! They are some amazing markers that are great for coloring and blending, but they are wicked expensive. They are $5 or more in the US, so for about 400Y a piece, it was a great deal! So I got like 16!

By now my feet hurt a lot, so I sat outside while Kerri finished perusing the shop. I tried another ATM that didn't work (not surprising because it wasn't a 7-11) and mostly just sat on the curb playing with my gameboy and people-watching. It was busy!

I should have gotten this, but it was
too expensive for something that I
would only wear in Japan.

We were wiped out by this time, so we went back to the hotel. I emailed my parents begging for help with my card/money problem, then realized that I had left the entire bag of copic markers somewhere in Ikebukuro! Oh man!