Sunshine on a rainy day

Sunday was an all out miserable day in Tokyo, rainy and windy. The original plan was to go back to the Harajuku area, visit Yoyogi park and people watch, but we had to ditch that plan due to the weather. We needed to find something to do that was inside. Apparently there is a place in Ikebukuro called "Sunshine City" that is all inside - so we hopped a train and headed there.

First stop in ikebukuro was the Toyota AMLUX, which has some older toyota race cars, info on new toyota tech and how they are doing things to be better for the environment - essentially a big commercial. Pretty boring mostly aside from the driving simulator that lets you see the difference their new VDIM safety system makes - but that only takes a couple of minutes and then its back to boring. The next few floors are actually a car dealership. You can check out the cars, sit inside, play with the gadgets etc. There are a lot of cars there that aren't sold in the states and would bomb if they were. The cars have a different look due to the tight pedestrian rich streets. The cars are mostly narrow with a high center of gravity and have some extra mirrors so it is easier to avoid hitting people. There was one car on the floor with the luxury cars that amazed us. It was called the Century and what was amazing was the price - over $100K for this car that looked like it hopped right out of 1972. It was kind of a cross between old bentley and chrystler reliant K - Weird.

We headed to sunshine city afterwards. This is basically a mall, and a pretty american style mall as well - all the way down to the eddie bauer store and burger king in the food court. The real draw for us to come here was a place called Namjatown. This is the type of place that helps build the stereotypes we have of the japanese. I really don't know what the hell Namjatown is, but i do know it has something to do with a cat, a cat that kinda looks like a Nazi to me. It also has to do with food as evidenced by the 2 boroughs of namjatown - Ice cream city and gyoza town. The place is overrun with kids and has games and sounds all around and of course is sculpted and designed to look like everything but the inside of a mall. Apparently there is some game you can play where you get this odd machine with a cross hair at the top that you point at random objects and then have to reel something in like a fishing rod. So every 2 steps you take you see crowds of kids reeling away on this little device - it looks really odd especially if you can't see the device in their hands.

We made our first stop in gyoza town. This place was insane - the hallways are really narrow and you are accosted by people trying to get you to stop at their gyoza booth. Each booth had a picture of some guy - whom i assumed pioneered that particular gyoza specialty - but i really have no idea. After trying some we left for ice cream city. They had a room with freezers filled with odd flavors including ramen, garlic, chicken, squid, potato and tons of other less interesting flavors as well. Billy and I decided to try some of the more interesting flavors so we grabbed some indian curry, and octopus ice creams to give a try. Erica and marc weren't feeling as adventurous they got some soft serve - pudding and sea salt vanilla flavors.

As you can see we all enjoyed our ice cream.