Day 5: Ghibli Museum, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro

It was a magical start to the day! I went to the Ghibli Museum and it was so cool! I would highly recommend this for all Ghibli fans. They had really awesome exhibits to show how they created the movies. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed inside. The admission ticket was a movie cel! I got a boring one but it's ok. Everyone's is different. The ticket also allowed us to go and watch a short movie. Classic Ghibli...very feel good. I noticed they had a wall promoting a movie with great visuals called Les Contes de la Nuit. The museum featured the more feel-good movies like My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Pom Poko, Porco Rosso, Naussica of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, Arrietty, etc. Less of the creepy ones like Grave of Fireflies (Sorry Tish...)

Charming Mitaka City

I already feel magical...

On the way I saw a bunch of statues

There it is!

My Ghibli admission ticket

Too awesome

My protector!

I'll miss you!

Afterwards, I headed to Shinjuku. My goal was to head to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building where there was a free observatory on the 45th floor. After that, wander around to see what it was like.

I didn't take many pictures. I hopped into a couple of department stores to see what it was like but everything was really expensive. I'm not a huge fan of Shinjuku. I guess I just didn't know where to go. I was also starting to get grouchy because my feet hurt but I prevailed.

After an obligatory round of Shinjuku and seeing nothing to capture my interest, I headed to Ikebukuro, the last stop of my day. My goal was Namjatown in Sunshine City. But Ikebukuro, unlike Shinjuku, captured my attention. Claw machines everywhere! Anime stuff! That's what I'm talking about! I headed for Namjatown which is an indoor amusement park. It has two food areas where they specialize in desserts and gyoza. The amusement park thing confused me a bit. A lot of people were holding statues of cats and they had to get to a lot of different goals within the three floors. Since I didn't understand Japanese, I didn't play. I wasn't terribly interested until I realized that there were stamps placed randomly in the place. A lot of stamps. My mom always said I was 多手 (handsy?) which basically means that if there's a button, I want to push it. If there's a knob, I want to turn it. And by god if there's a stamp, I want to stamp it! I have been collecting stamps this whole summer. There aren't many in Hong Kong but there have been a few more in Tokyo. It was super fun trying to find the stamps because they weren't in obvious places. I found out later that there was a book I should have been stamping in but whatever. The stamps were challenging since they were on the side, in a corner, in a box, in a tree, etc. I was too focused on my quest to take pictures. 

Ikebukuro

Ikebukuro

Gyoza everywhere!

This was only the beginning. I might have been a little obsessed.

So all in all, magical beginning, boring middle, exhilarating end.  On my way home I was so full of adrenaline from my stamp quest that I forgot how much my feet hurt. Then I remembered when I boarded the train.