Day 2: Ikebukuro

God I'm so lazy.

In case you don't know, this is a continuation from the previous post.

M is a crazy ass fan of all things One Piece so of course like anyone with a sane mind, we head off to J-World Tokyo in Sunshine City, a place we didn't know how to get to except for the fact that we needed to stop at Hamamatsucho and changed trains and lines. Sunshine City is situated in Ikebukuro, and I knew beforehand that Ikebukuro is the second busiest place in Tokyo after Shinjuku and I had some misgivings about going to an unknown place without a proper guide but since Google told me that 2 and 3 November were national holidays in Tokyo, I put aside my misgivings.

So yeah thanks but no thanks Google. National holiday pun ramai orang pergi sekolah dengan kerja lagi. Asshole.

Proof.

Did I mention that this was before 7am? I think it was around 6:40am or something. In case you're wondering why there were lots of girls wearing the same uniform, there's a school in Ikebukuro, near Sunshine City and from what I could see, it's an interesting school too.

Note: I took the photos while sitting on a bench near a smoking area. Nope I wasn't being my lazy ass, I was tired to the bone. Did I tell you that I didn't get any sleep the night before? Yeah brace yourself, I'm gonna mention about the sleep I wasn't getting 80,000 times more.

Imporatant note (and I don't know where I should put this): There are only 2 lines that connects Haneda to Tokyo City, Tokyo Monorail line and Keikyu line and both of them stop at Hamamatsucho. Most of the popular spots are on the JR East lines, including Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Shin-Okubo, Shibuya and Harajuku, so you have to change trains and lines in Hamamatsucho. When I say lines in the JR East lines, I mean lots and lots of lines. Holy shit man, I think the Tokyo railways system is more complicated than the London Underground, Frankfurt U-Bahn and Rhine-Main S-Bahn combined (Edit: WHAT. I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS).

Never mind.

Everything went well at first. We got out of Haneda at around 6am and since we already had some Mamee Xtra Pedas about an hour before that, did not bother stopping for breakfast. I asked M over and over again whether she knew where this shit was located and she answered over and over again she had the map hammered into her brain. And of course even with all those map-hammering-into-brain shits, we got lost. Epically lost. You know I don't use the word "epic" loosely.

Oh did I mention that we dragged all of our bags all the way too because we couldn't find any empty locker at the train stations (Hamamatsucho and Ikebukuro) we stopped in? (Yeah damn you all hard-working Tokyoites) On very little sleep? Cranky does not describe me at that time. I was so close to blowing my fuse but I reined everything in haha because well, there were only 2 of us and it was only our second day in Tokyo. After lots of false turns and backtracking, we finally found it.

Iyerps. my temper. Reason #12,896 why I don't have many friends.

Looking back, I can't believe how we could miss it. Sunshine City is gigantic. And I truly can't tell you how to get there from the Ikebukuro station, simply because I don't remember much. All I know is that we walked north from the station and we turned left after a few blocks and then turned right and after crossing a busy street, Sunshine City was right in front of us. From there, you would enter Sunshine 60 (an office building connected to the Sunshine City) first and just go straight. From what I can see, Sunshine City is the Pavilion of Tokyo. Lots and lots of luxury brand shops. And J-World Tokyo is located at the 2nd floor.

We arrived there at about 8am and since J-World only opens at 10am, we dumped all of our bags at a nearby bench and I.. I just went to sleep. I totally acted like a hobo by lying down on a bench and slept the shit out of things and the next thing I knew, M woke me up at around 11am.

We went to grab an early lunch first and because I was still groggy, I ordered apple sorbet or something that I thought were potatoes. But it was okay, because I wasn't hungry much. Or maybe it was because I wasn't awake enough to be hungry.

Please tell me those apples look like potatoes. That blue-bunned burger was a fish fillet burger, in case you're wondering.

And then off we go exploring the J-World. I was still half-asleep so most photos I took were crap except for this:

Yes, a photo of a dustbin. And it wasn't even a good shot.

Thank goodness we managed to find empty lockers at that place. After depositing our bags, we continued our exploration and since we needed to pay more money to play most games on top of the ¥1,300 admission ticket (yep, cheapskates), we just walked around and snapped some more crap photos. At around 4 o'clock, we took off to our first hotel in Shin-Okubo.

And I'll tell you everything about that in the next post! Haha sorry but I need to do something right now.