Ikebukuro 「池袋」

Sorry I haven't written a blog for a while-- some things came up and I wasn't in the frame of mind to think about writing a new entry. But now all is good, so a new entry is here!

I'm going to write a new blog for each day, the events written in this blog occurred on Wednesday, July 16 2008.

Today we fluffed around the house for a bit before deciding what to do. The decision was made to suss out Ikebukuro, and experience a true Japanese department store (apparently the huge stores we'd visited previously were only for electronic goods, and thus, weren't true department stores).

So we hopped on the train, and made our way to Ikebukuro, where several of Japan's mega-department stores can be found in relatively close proximity to one another.

Upon arriving at Ikebukuro, finding the first department store (Seibu) was easy-- just follow the signs leading you out of the station until you get there. Then all you have to do is enter and be overwhelmed by the ridiculous amounts of... well, everything.

Seibu department store is massive (over twelve floors). We didn't stop to look at every item on every floor, as there aren't enough hours in the day, but we made a beeline for men's clothes, stationery (of course) and any level that contained food.

In Japanese department stores it appears they have a love for food. Expensive food. Expensive food in pretty little boxes. In fact, on the basement floor(s) of most Japanese department stores is what they call a depachika 「デ パ地下」, which basically means it's a basement full of food. Counters upon shiny-brightly-lit counters of food. Bento boxes, fruit and vegetables, fish, dumplings, sweets, cakes, lollies, meats, alcohol-- pretty much any type of food you can think of.

And if that wasn't enough food for you, head up to the top floor to the restoran-gai 「レ ストラン街」, literally "restaurant street", where you'll be delighted to find a plethora (over fifty restaurant on Seibu's top floor alone) of places to eat.

Between the food-orientated floors are floors containing every accessory and item of clothing imaginable. From memory, there were at least four levels of women's clothing (including shoes), a level for women's accessories, and the rest of the levels had men's stuff, music, pens, watches, gift wraps and miscellaneous merchandise.

From Seibu we went to the Tobu department store, which, for all intents and purpose is like Seibu, but bigger. Less levels, but bigger floors. Bigger depachika, more stock, insane amounts of consumerism, at some insane prices.

Ikebukuro holds another department store even bigger than the other two I've already mentioned. It's called "Sunshine City", and it's been referred to as a city within a building. To put it simply, Sunshine City is 60-floors of office space, shopping malls, museums, art galleries, cinemas, an aquarium and a planetarium, with a few cultural and entertainment options thrown in. We didn't go there, as after Seibu and Tobu we were all department store'd out, but if shopping is your deal, then it may be worth a look.

Fruit is a popular as a gift, with stores supplying vast amounts of the stuff, from peaches the size of grapefruits, to black watermelons, to what better be a delicious mango for the price. If you can't see the prices on the pictures, click on them to enlarge.

For all those people bitching about prices in Melbourne, don't buy fruit in Japan, haha.

To give a quick idea of the prices in Aussie dollars, the Melon in the cage is $128 (the black watermelon to the left of it was only $86), the rockmelon/green grape combo box is $126, and a display of mangoes, retailing for $75.50 each.

Now, to put it into perspective-- these aren't fruits you give your kids to take to school. They are specially grown, packaged and maintained to ensure the utmost quality, and are given to others on special occasions.

While the average price of fruit in Tokyo is indeed higher than that in Melbourne, the average Japanese resident is definitely not paying ridiculous amounts of money for the fruit they consume on a daily basis.

At our local supermarket, a twin pack of peaches (ie: two peaches) is about $5. An apple is about $2. The only fruit I saw that really stood out as an "average" price was watermelon, where the cheapest one was going for $15. Most fruits (besides watermelon) are at least twice the size of what you'd find in Australia. Peaches and apples are about the size of a grapefruit, grapes are as round as a twenty cent coin, but watermelons are slightly smaller than their Aussie counterpart.

The fruit grow so large because each tree has half of it's fruit knocked off when it's still developing, so that the nutrients absorbed by the tree fuel half as many fruit, providing them with more nutrients so they can grow to freakishly large proportions.

Pretty nifty... Besides all the fruit going to waste because they knock it off.

EDIT: Forgot to add...

We ate lunch in the station, inside some little restaurant-type place. But the ordering process is a little different in this type of restaurant (which is fairly common throughout Tokyo). You order your meal via vending machine!

First, select what you want, either from a picture menu in the shop window, or by reading the Japanese on vending machines just inside the door of the restaurant. If the restaurant doesn't have a picture menu, and you can't understand/read much Japanese (like Ben and myself), then you kind of have to ask someone who can help, or just take a wild guess and hope you got something good.

It works like a regular vending machine-- insert coins, press button, receive ticket. Take ticket to the correct counter (there were four counters to go to, depending on what you "ordered") and hand it over to the waiter/waitress. They cook, you wait (for a whole two minutes :o ), you eat.

Quick, cheap, easy and pretty tasty, though I think I chose picked vegetables instead of regular ones. If you're still hungry after your dish, an onigiri　「おにぎり」(a triangle of rice, wrapped in a thin sheet of seaweed, with or without fish in the middle) or two will tie you over.

Another thing I forgot to add: we paid a visit to the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, which is basically a big venue for performing arts. We're not really into theatre, so we went for an entirely different reason-- the escalator.

It's huge. And blue. And the atrium it's situated in is pretty damn big as well, with weird sculpture things hanging from the ceiling. Besides the hanging things and the escalator there's not much else to do here-- unless you've got tickets for show.