Bookstores, Namjatown and K-On! in Ikebukuro

Today we ventured into the shopping district of Ikebukuro, where young Toykoites go to shop, play and hang out in the late afternoon and evening. It's an older crowd than Harajuku, mostly high school and college-age and not "hip" like Shinjuku or Shibuya or just plain weird like Akiba. Just a normal place where normal kids hang out...with lots of neon lights.

Our first stop was Junkudo, another one of the largest bookstores in Tokyo. Junkudo dwarfed yesterday's Shosen Book Tower. Junkudo literally has over one million books in stock, and looks more like a library than a bookstore.

All the floors look like this in all directions

And not just quantity, but quality as well. Along with fiction and pop culture books, there were serious technical books, in Japanese and English, on most every subject imaginable. One floor contained nothing but computer and medical books, but not just things like "C++ For Dummies", but algorithm textbooks and a full shelf of video game design theory books. The medical section was just as deep, with professional texts, journals and any specialty you could imagine. It was quite simply the best bookstore I've ever visited, and that is saying something. In the half floor of travel books was three shelves full of ancient maps. Just amazing.

The title reads "How To Build a CPU" and is literally how to design CPU circuits. Japanese technical books often have cute characters drawn throughout the books, quite possibly to liven up the text.

Quite a view from the top floor. You rarely see this kind of vista in Tokyo. Usually there are too many other tall buildings that hide the mountains in the distance.

After spending way too long and too much money at Junkudo, we wandered over to Sunshine City, a large web of tall buildings that house shopping, entertainment and offices. We had a specific destination in mind, but first we stopped in at the Toyota showroom. This is one of the main showrooms in Tokyo, five floors of the latest cars

Toyota has really gone all out with it's hybrid technology. Over half the vehicles on display were hybird, including a four-seater PHV (plugin hybrid vehicle) that boasted over 75 MPG. Sumi was partial to the new IQ

Toyota's answer to the Smart car, but with far better MPG and a lower sticker price

Me? My favorite is rather obvious

Can I get the Cygnus sport package, please?

One thing I noticed that was quite different here in Japan is that all the car salespeople were women. They were dressed in various uniforms (of course) depending on the floor. This gives us rather incongrueous scenes, such as a woman in what looks like a school uniform, go-go boots and purple jacket on her knees polishing the tires of a display vehicle

After we took the driving simulators for a spin

It takes you around the neighborhood in Ikebukuro and onto the expressway

we headed out in search of our final destination in Sunshine City

Follow the creepy-looking signs on the floor...

Namco NamjaTown in Sunshine City....what's that?

...

What are YOU looking at?

NamjaTown is several things. It's a theme park of sorts, with rides for small children. It's also home to some of the more interesting food shops in Tokyo, including the Gyoza Museum, with all kinds of gyoza (small steamed buns filled everywhere but here in NamjaTown with pork) from all over Japan, a Curry Center, with many different kinds of curry dishes, and Ice Cream City, which has more varieties of ice cream on display that you are likely to see anywhere else. For a small ¥300 entry fee, you get to go in and wander around any of the areas and buy whatever looks good. That was our mission.

Pepper and cheese Gyoza on the right, pork gyoza with pepper and lemon on the left

Crispy Pizza Gyoza. Tastes like Pizza Bites

Beneath all the green onions is chicken gyoza

The name says it all

I'll have number 534 on a waffle cone...

We actually ordered the Wasabi. It tasted, to our disappointment, like vanilla

I thought about ordering Glape...

After eating our fill, we left NamjaTown and promptly got lost in Sunshine City, literally. It's not hard to do, even with all the bilingual signage. While trying to find our way out, we came across a plastic food making demo. A what? Well, most restaurants in Japan use plastic models of their food to advertise what they are selling. Here were some people with tables set up so you could sit down and try your hand at making them yourselves.

Very well made and realistic-looking

After we finally escaped, we did some more window shopping at Animate, one of the large anime stores, and Tokyu Hands, Japan's version of Wal-mart, Target and Marshall Fields all rolled into one, followed by a movie. What movie? Well...

Guilty Pleasure Anime #38

K-On! A TV anime about five girls who are in the Karui Ongakubu, or light music club. Basically they are a bad pop band with songs like "Love Is a Stapler" and "Rice Is a Side Dish" who spend almost no time actually practicing. The writers don't take them seriously, and it's an amusing show, especially if you have ever been in a bad band. The movie was only worth it if you were familiar with the series, so don't bother. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sumi slept.

We ended the day with a walk through the ancient Sensoji temple near our hotel, but it was too dark for pictures. I'll be taking some tomorrow, so I'll post them afterwards. For now, I'll leave you with a few store names in Sunshine City to ponder: