As seems to have become tradition, we went to Ikebukuro today for shopping, Game Center’s and arcades. This is the sixth Japan trip in which day one has been spent at Ikebukuro, and as always it ended up being the right choice.
We are of course jetlagged and our food schedules are all messed up but we feel better than yesterday and I assume we’ll be mostly fine tomorrow.
That’s one of the limited Christmas drinks at Maccas (‘Double Choco Strawberry Frappe’). We ate in the Maccas in Sunshine City and even though Christmas here is hardly as big as in the west the entire mall was bonkers and it felt as if most of Tokyo had turned out to shop today! This was true for most of the shops we visited, and the lines at restaurants eventually became unreasonable, such as a three-hour wait at our local Kura Sushi.
Oh unlike last Christmas and when I was here in June, foreign tourists are conspicuous in their absence. Either my theory was correct (ask me!) or maybe they just don’t want to visit in winter?
We bought lots of stuff – stationary, cosmetics, candy, books etc – and as a result were laden with full bags all day. I still found time for some retro arcade gaming at Mikado, and I’ll say again if I lived in Tokyo I’d be visiting that place all the time.
Given we’d woken very early and set out hours before the shops even opened, it ended up being a very long day and by the time we dragged ourselves back to the hotel we were exhausted.
In fact even as I write I’m struggling to remain awake. But sleep is for the dead, since I’ve yet to sort and pack everything again so we can ship the suitcases to our final hotel as we travel away from Tokyo for the next week. Where will we go? Stay tuned…
