Adventures in Japan: Tokyo Trip: Exploring Tokyo

Day 3, Part 1

(Austin)

Considering the craziness of the previous day, we decided to adventure around Tokyo with no real schedule in mind. We wanted to go see a few of the famous towns in Tokyo while we were here, so we decided to do that this day. The first place we decided to go was Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro is a very famous entertainment district in Tokyo. It is also the setting of a few Japanese TV shows and anime. A very famous anime named Durarara is set in Ikebukuro. Of course, before we headed there we ate breakfast at Yoshinoya again.

After breakfast we grabbed a local train and headed towards Ikebukuro. The train ride was maybe about 10 minutes. Coming out of the station we found a map. I have watched Durarara so I wanted to try and find some of the places and landmarks shown in the show while we were in Ikebukuro. We found the parks on the map and headed towards them as I was sure I would recognize something.

We found some local parks that I had seen before and we also took pictures of other statues. Sadly, the pictures that we took with Elijah and I in front of some of the statues were lost because Elijah's phone broke :/ Before leaving Ikebukuro we went to the local Animate store. On the very top floor they had an entire display "museum" setup for the anime/manga called Shingeki no Kyoji (Attack on Titan). Really cool.

On our way back to the station we grabbed food at a fast-food restaurant called Auntie Anne's. This is actually a restaurant that exists in America as well. The specialize in pretzel based food; It was really good. We ate and went back to the station. From there we headed to Shibuya.

Shibuya is world famous its "Shibuya Crossing", the largest and most busy pedestrian crossing in the world. During peak times upwards of 2500 people might cross during a single light change.

It's nuts.

After we crossed we walked around and found a game arcade. If you didn't know it already Japan is pretty famous for its game arcades. Tokyo is of course no exception to this and Shibuya had quite a few. After playing games for a while we walked down the street and found the Disney store. The outside of this build is crazy to say the least. From the outside it looks like a giant metal fortress. The inside was stuffed with Disney related stuff from mugs to stuffed dolls. I bought a few buttons and Elijah bought a mug.

It was late afternoon so we decided to head towards or final destination... which is in part 2!