Tokyo Trip Day 4: Ikebukuro

Our first stop of the day was to the Loft store above the Seibu Department Store. After perusing and shopping to our hearts content purchasing cute bento boxes, onegiri makers, erasable pens and stationary, we headed into Tokyu Hands. I can tell you now that I am going to have some awesome lunches once I get started on making up my own bento boxes; I got the cutest little sandwich puff makers and hello kitty shaped rice balls and cut outs as well as traditional shaped ones. Tokyu Hands is more of a department store like Myer or Target with a toy section, home-maker section, bathroom section and so on. Though, to put a black cloud over my day, while inside, my wallet was stolen from in my bag, as I stupidly left it unzipped while walking around. Thankfully the only money inside was the amount I had put aside for shopping that day, and not the whole of my savings for the trip. The real blessing was that my passport was not taken, and I had removed all the cards from my wallet; and put my bank card in with my passport. I am not really sure why I did, but I tell you now that I was so happy that I did.

Afterwards, we made our way to over Sunshine City. Slowly, shopping our way to the top, we made it on up to Namjatown - the goal of which was Icecream City. 300 YEN entry, and you get a pass to look around at all the games on offer and entry to the wonderland of icecream available. Throughout the place there are very cute kitty statues and differently themed areas encompassing the mascots. As well as food. I chose the super cute cat pancake ensemble. It seemed appropriate as it matched the neko theme. There are also lots of game machines and treasure-hunt style games that you pay extra to play; as well as purikura. We shopped our way back down to the bottom and after checking out a few more stores, we headed back to the hostel with sore feet and started unpacking and admiring our purchases for the day.

It's a bit of a culture shock when it comes to purchasing items in Japan. Packaging seems to be a very non-existent issue over there. In Australia we go light on the plastic bags and a lot of things are bundled in together; and in some cases they make you pay for the plastic bag too (a rip off in my opinion when they have not cut the stock prices down to accommodate the new fees). In Japan, everything is individually wrapped, then they wrap your purchases up in a bag or plastic sheet and then put it into a plastic or paper bag with handles so that you can carry it around. We made sure to toss all our packaging before coming home, that way it lightened our suitcases of the extra bulk and we would not be polluting Australian rubbish bins with all the extra plastic. Talk about wastage.