Ghibili Museum & A Taste of Home (Sort of)

So today was a fun but sort of lazy Sunday. We started by going to the Ghibili museum. For those of you that don't know, Ghibli is the studio that made the movies Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and many others. The founder, Hayao Miyazaki, is the Japanese Walt Disney and makes beautiful, award winning animated films. Anyways, this museum is awesome!! You have to buy tickets in advance (we bought them in the States) because they limit the number of visitors each day. I am not typically into animated stuff at all (I'm not a big Disney fan) but this museum was stinking awesome!! Seriously, I can't believe I'm using this word but the place can not be described in any other way other than magical. We even got to see a never released short film that was made for the museum. You aren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum unfortunately but you'll just have to trust me that it's cool. It's designed like an old-school dollhouse with all of these different rooms with spiral staircases everywhere. It was really neat. The following two pictures were what we were able to take outside the entrance or on the rooftop deck.

Afterward, we headed to the neighborhood called Ikebukuro. It's another happening area with lots going on. We headed over to a building called Sunshine City which stands on the former site of Sugamo Prison. Anyways, we went there with the intention to kill some time before meeting up with Isaac and his wife again and decided to check out Namco Namjatown. I have no idea how to describe Namjatown. For those of you that don't know, Namco is a arcade-game company and they invented Will's beloved "Flamin' Finger" game. Anyways, this place is this weird mix of games (but not regular video games) plus a major scavenger hunt. Basically, the kids and adults (more so than kids surprisingly) get these weird technical devices and roam all over the place playing games and completing puzzles to open secret doors and passage ways and get clues to finish a scavenger hunt. The entire thing is in Japanese so we couldn't play. Not to worry though because there was still tons of excitement to be had for us!

Inside Namjatown is a a place called Ice Cream City that has an Ice Cup (ice cream) museum! This place was out of control. They sold ice cream in over 100 different flavors from the traditional to the odd to the plain disgusting. Some of the most memorable flavors were fish sauce, shrimp, squid ink, octopus, chicken wing, egg, eel, wasabi, tomato, etc. We didn't try any of the weird ones because we found a delicious ice cream shop instead that served MILK TEA flavored soft serve. It was absolutely delicious and it made me wish I got my own instead of sharing with Will.

In this picture I'm holding tomato and shrimp ice cream!

Before we left this weird place, Will & I decided to play a strange game. Basically the point of the game is to capture 6 live mini-lobsters with this weird device (shown below). There's no time limit and basically you have to pick them up by capturing them from the back of their tail and balancing their body on the picker upper until you get them in the bowl. This is tricky b/c they are difficult to balance due to their uneven body weight distribution and they try to swim away. The hard part is that one part of the tool is connected to the handle with a thin piece of paper so while there's no time limit, eventually the paper part will get so soggy that the tool breaks and becomes useless. Needless to say, the paper broke after only getting one lobster! It was pretty hilarious though and just totally random.

Afterwards we met up with Isaac and his wife, Melissa, again. They took us to the top of the Sunshine 60 building to the observation deck. It is 60 floors and is one of Japan's tallest buildings. It also has the world's second fastest elevator and whisked up to the top so fast! There's a speedometer and at it's peak it was going 600 meters per minute! You definitely could feel your ears pop! Anyways, it was a really beautiful indoor and outdoor observatory and you could get beautiful 360* views of Tokyo.

Afterward, we went to dinner with them to a Denny's! We wanted to check out the Denny's because the food is nothing like the Denny's we have at home. The only thing in common is that it is open all night and looks like a Denny's and they have french toast. Other than that, they have Japanese-American fusion and homestyle Japanese food. It was actually really tasty and a funny experience!

Tomorrow: We finally get sushi! Will it be worth the wait?!?