#19 Ikebukuro has a bit of everything

Transcript

Oh man, I just noticed. Oh, nice. In this Airbnb in the bedroom, there's a little AMFM radio cassette recorder player. It's got a little tape player on the front. Is there a CD player on the top?

There is. Wow, that's awesome. I don't have any cassette tapes or CDs to play, but this place really got everything. I think this might be the high watermark from Airbnb. I've only got today, tomorrow, and then the next day I gotta get out of here. But I do have some solo apartments set up in Fukuoka that I expect to be pretty good. But yeah, this is probably going to be the best one. It is a shame it wasn't available a little more. And yeah, it's booked up like, oh, the whole time I'm here. I mean, everything, I've already got everything booked, so it's not like I could take advantage anyway, but all the way up to like January, this place is booked every day. I think I think this is a good example of I'm going to keep my eye on it next time I'm in Japan, but I bet the price is going to go up on this property because at whatever it was, 40 some dollars a day, it's probably worth more than that. Especially if you came here with multiple people and you split up the price, then it would just be like crazy. What a crazy good deal it would be. So yeah, I assume that's probably if you run an Airbnb, that's probably a good sign. If your place is just booked literally all the time, like even the way I got it was just that there was this one little spot, this one little space of six days where it wasn't booked. I just took those. That's a sign you can raise the price. I think you can raise the price pretty guilt-free at that point. Not that I assume property owners feel guilt about the prices they check for the Airbnb. But yeah, this episode, I'm going to talk about Yukimukuro, but first I just thought I'd do a little apartment update. I just got a little curry flavored cup noodle, which is not my favorite, even just opening it up. You can hear the echo in the different rooms. Let's go stand in the shower room. See, that sounds. Yeah, even when you open it up it's like, whoa, it sure is that. It is curry, curry flavored noodles. But I got it just because just nostalgia, reasons I remember. I got one of these to try because I'd never seen them in North America and I ate it on the balcony of my Airbnb in Fukuoka that I stayed at last time. It is just a nice little memory of just because I guess it was such an unusual taste. It's just such a strange, strong flavor. So I always just kind of remembered that little memory of sitting on the balcony in the summer, eating the curry noodles. So this time I also have a little balcony and it's functionally summer. It's essentially summer.

I still can't believe it's this warm in November. But yeah, I've been bumping my head a lot. Definitely got to be careful of that because this is an old house. There's this lamp in the kitchen that is definitely bonk, bonk hype, but the the ceilings big enough. But yeah, I realized all these doors. I'm six two and yeah, this door comes to jeez. The top of the door is just above my eyebrows. They're really small little doors. So I've kind of had to make a little habit of crouching or a little being a little gonomy when I walk around because if I'm not mindful, especially in the dark yet, just bang, bang my head. Oh, and here's a, I guess because in the bedroom, I just go straight into bed. But this one also, bonk. Another light that's bonk hype. I've been scrolling through Japanese TV a little bit, which is also kind of a rare thing. Also, my Airbnb footwork last time was the only one I had with the TV. And in this case, I don't know. I don't know if there's going to be TVs in the other ones, but I thought I should just put on some TV in the background while I can. But you know, it's, it is just, you know, Japanese daytime TV. I don't know what the heck it is. It's sometimes if there's, it's weird if there's an anime. I guess my favorite things are the nature type shows. There's this one show that was just this old guy. I don't know who he is, but they were just taking him around at different places, different sites. And I was like, oh, cool. All right, a little travel show. I'll watch this. That's all I do. And just go to weird little shrines and stuff. So I just watch some guy go do it. That's great.

And they just throw some anime on the background once in a while. Why not? But I did notice there's this show. It was also, I noticed it before. So it's been on for at 5:00 least four years. It's probably been on since time immemorial. Where it's just, it's like these sort of a panel of people and they just show them different stuff, different goings on about Japan. And they just kind of react to it. But so much so that even when they're showing the clip in the corner, they'll just show a little circle with the person's face. When I say react, react is too strong of a word. It's just the all-encompassing positive. Everyone's just like, cool. But it reminds me a lot of when Twitch started getting big and video game lets plays. I remember that being one of those things people thought was weird at first. Why would you want to watch someone else play a video game? But then really quickly it became clear that it's actually really fun to watch someone else react to a thing. Be it a video game or a song or whatever. Now it's like a bonus if you don't know something. If you've never played a video game or you don't know a genre of music or something, you can make a little mini-career out of just being the person who reacts to that stuff. It's fun to see another human's reaction to things. But it made me think like, what are how long Japan has been doing that? Because did they sort of invent that Twitch culture way before the internet did? Because they definitely invented video game lets plays because if you go way back nowadays, it's very common to watch other people play video games. It's not weird at all. But I think the first video example is it's a really good show. It's called Game Center CX. And there's some official translations you can find but also a lot of fan translations. It's not too hard to dig up. But it's this guy, this Japanese comedian that they basically just sat him down, made this little low-budget TV show where they sat him down with old, you know, the way old video games were quite short but they were very hard. And it's like, hey now that you're a grown man, let's see how you can do it this and you'd have a certain amount of time to beat the game. And it's surprisingly nail-biting. And he's also the perfect level of, he's not bad at video games but he's not exactly great at them. It's like he does do quite poorly at first but he just perseveres. But he plays these games for hours and hours and hours and the sun goes down and everyone's like, hey it's going to be the last train soon. The crew needs to go home. This is your last chance to beat the game and a lot of times he doesn't but sometimes he does and it's like wow what a great show. But that's been on forever. It's on like season, I don't know. I don't think it's up to season 20 yet but it's getting there. So that came way before internet lets place. It's just it was a bit, you know, local to Japan not extremely known outside of Japan. We certainly didn't have TV shows like that. But I wonder, I mean in general, did they just, did they do the let's just watch people react to stuff way before everybody else? It seems like maybe they did. And I guess just my last little apartment thing I can say that comes to mind is uh yes I never could figure out how to get the ancient 1970s era gas based uh water heater to work for the shower but that's okay because like right now what is it now? It's 1022. It's still nice out but it feels a little chilly in here but if I do a little editing do some work before I leave the house. By the time it's uh early afternoon once I get out of here it's going to be quite warm and I'll just take a cold shower that's fine. I really don't mind. Again I'm only here two more days. I'm not going to bother the Airbnb person about it because I don't really care. It's kind of an interesting experience to do cold showers. I've been doing okay with these cold showers but I have not been washing my head. You know maybe it's fine maybe it's no big deal that I think it's still just the the East Coast Canadian in me that I'm just like that's how you die. Like I've had hypothermia in my life you know you just you just don't do stuff like that you don't you don't risk your head with cold water you don't do that. It feels so wrong it feels like not worth it and I mean I'm probably just being ridiculous. It probably doesn't matter at all. It's like no cold water on the head for me. I just can't do it. It's against my culture. It's against how I was raised. It feels wrong. It feels dangerous.

You know I was just saying like oh what a shame I can't state this Airbnb longer and then like right on cue I was washing a plate and there's like a little again how the whole place sort of feels like camping halfway like you're in a cottage. There's like a little wash basin inside the like separate from the sink and when I moved it there was a cockroach underneath 10:00 and it's like oh yeah okay don't worry too much. This place is good but every place has their ups and downs and this being a wicked old building with sliding doors and tiny door frames it also has some cockroaches. It's funny because the first one I saw he was like on the little mat as you first enter and now this one is like the one ushering me out in a way. It's like on the way in and on the way out. They are my valleys. Also just the the size of this place since this was you know this would be like a whole apartment for like a family you know which is very different from my the East Coast Canada thing where the house that grew up in is three floors and a basement it was like a rectory for a priest or something there's a church next door to us that's no longer a church so this was like the house that the priest lived in just an enormous I mean great big old drafty ass house with intermittent rat problems and you know it's also just an old fucked up place but enormous super big terrible insulation. But yeah the idea of an entire family living in this area that made me think of the Famicom how you know if you take a game cube and N64 super Nintendo they all look about the same no matter what country you got them in but the first one the old Nintendo entertainment system in Japan is called the Famicom the family computer and it looks radically different it's like a weird little red thing the design is different red and gray looks much more like a toy than the sleek Nintendo entertainment system that was supposed to I guess because of the video game crash that happened in the early 80s they wanted the Nintendo to not look like a toy they wanted it to look like sleek 1980s consumer technology so they made it look kind of like a boxy VCR but the Famicom is this weird little toy looking thing and it has controllers that are hardwired to the system you couldn't detach them and instead of the big long cords like we have in North America it was just these little teeny cords and all things seem very weird to us in North America because we're like man you just have to really sit right in front of the TV huh like what a strange design so it's neat because I knew conceptually like I was just because Japan has smaller houses it's interesting to be in one right now where my eye line is at the level almost of the top of the door frames and you know everything is it is very small and yet it would just make total sense even though this is a modern flat screen TV this would be an old school 80s TV and yeah you just sit right here and plug in your Famicom if you don't need the long wires and the long cords because where where you gonna go there's no room there's no room to back up from the TV that's just kind of neat because that is like that the convergence of of 80s nostalgia between these two countries is so neat to me it's so neat to go into a retro store or just any store just go all over the place and you just get memories of what it was like when I was a kid because so much stuff came from Japan and it's just so neat to think that these kids from this other country that I mean as I've illustrated many times I can't even ask for a plastic bag in Japanese I can't communicate it all I like the city and I like the place but I'm very much outside of the culture that's like a distant side dish to my visit it's just it's happening around me but I am not part of it and I can't take part and I don't know what's going on and yet despite that I still know very clearly what it would be like to sit right here in this house in the 80s and play a Famicom they had a bunch of games that we didn't have but even those what's that guy's name on YouTube Dr. Sparkle Cron Tendo he goes through every single Nintendo game chronologically including the Japanese ones and I've just looked into that stuff myself with Brahms and things and a lot of the games were the same just that we had this extremely similar experience it's so neat it's so neat to be able to transplant myself back 40 years and to kind of be able to imagine not what it was like to be an adult I don't know what their problems were like or what their jobs were like I mean it was the 1980s maybe it wasn't so bad but but still I have no real basis of comparison for that but the kids of Japan it's pretty easy to imagine and they're still like retro candy stores and stuff around 15:00 that are different than our candy stores but they're still here I know what they look like I've been to them you know if you boil down a kid's life to video games in candy which I don't think is unfair I think that is kind of it and so my life was it's so cool that I can like think of those things in parallel and it's probably pretty accurate And it's also interesting about this place in particular because it's right by a highway, an elevated highway, but it has barriers on either side. Maybe if I lived here a long term, that would be an issue. But for this short term visit, I'm really surprised how little the traffic noise is bothering me. It really does just blend down into white noise. It's very even, it's very uniform, and it's just... Yeah, again, I don't know if I would want to be right by the highway for my whole life if I owned this building. But I'm shocked how visiting how it's not bothering me. It's kind of nice. It's weird. All right, so slight change of plans. What I'm going to do, instead of walking from Naki Tabashi to OG, I got to make sure I get to Ikebukuro earlier in the day, because I got there last night. I'll talk about it when I get there, but it was a shit show. It was so busy and so crowded on a Sunday night. I want to get there while it's still Monday afternoon. Theoretically, there should be less people around, because I don't want to fight through crowds. So I'm going to go take the subway, because I'm doing so much walking, but I took the subway from Ikebukuro to Naki Tabashi yesterday. And I kind of forgot, because subways in Canadian cities generally, you pay the fee, and that's it. You pay the fare, and you go as far as you want to go. It's split up a bit in Vancouver, and if you go really far in Montreal, there's ways you can cost more, but generally you pay the fee, and that's it. Where Japan, it's by station, and I kind of forgot how it all worked. I just remembered if you're way in Western Tokyo, it costs $7 to get downtown. It's probably better to not bother. Just stay where you are, because that's expensive. But that little ride from Ikebukuro to Naki Tabashi, it's only four stops. It was like a cheat code. It was $1.50. It was like, fuck yeah. So I got to take the train in, go back to the little stop I always got off at, got off at that neighborhood. And it's just like, ah, that's nice. What a nice little, another nice little nostalgia journey, and $1.50. Jeez, yeah, no problem. I'll pay that. So I think I'm going to walk from OG up through that path that I like so much along the Shikouji River, but I'm going to do that on the way back. I'm going to do it at night this time. On the way there, I'm just going to walk over to Naki Tabashi Bay. I'm just going to pay the buck 50. Get me straight into Ikebukuro. So let's do that now.

Alright, this seems a bit better. I mean, it's still busy. It's obviously a major part of the city, Ikebukuro, but I just felt like it was bananas last night. But I don't know, I could be misremembering. I guess because my Airbnb was near here, and I would hang out here all the time, I got to assume probably on weekend evenings. I just didn't come here. You know, maybe it was always this busy, or maybe Ikebukuro is picking up, I don't know. Yeah, this is the OK busy. It's busy, but you can walk around. You know, I'm not packed into people. Yesterday it felt like it was that Shibuya Shinjuku feeling of just like this is an uncomfortable number of people. This is too many people. And if you heard last episode, I recorded a tiny little bit at the end of the episode just about like, oh jeez, I got to Ikebukuro and it's crazy, I got to get out of here. I think it's kind of telling that I really have not, maybe I should be thinking about COVID more, but I'm not. It just hasn't really been, it's like, hey, if it happens, it happens. But I haven't felt like I was, besides traveling at all, I don't think I'm doing anything too weird. They're too crazy, like I'm not doing anything that feel irresponsible. But Ikebukuro last night, that's the first thought I felt. I turned the corner to like the main strip near where there's like an entrance to Sunshine City and a big book off store. It was like a warning bell went off in my brain. I said, don't do this. There are so many people and why are you even, why are you here? This is, you're not here to get a life saving blood transfer. You're here for no reason to get out of here.

I'll talk a bit more about that though, because it actually ended up being a pretty cool night.

First though, I just want to mention what a weird thing. So I've hardly taken any subways while I've been here. But just such a weird thing is that the train, the Tobu Line, I think it's called from Naki Itabashi to Ikebukuro. For whatever reason, back in the day. Oh yeah, I'm actually there right now. I met, there's the book off and the Yumex Cinema and the entrance to Sunshine City. Maybe I'll go into Sunshine City. But this train, this one train line, I remember it always giving me like a tickle in my throat, like I had to cough. And it would be the weirdest thing because no other train in the city made me feel like that. I'd be going through the day, don't need to cough. Get off that train, don't need to cough. It was definitely the train. Because then as soon as I'd get on the train, I'd be trying to hold back the coughs. And even though it's only like four stops, it's not that far. That's a long time to try to force yourself not to cough, just to not make everyone around you uncomfortable. Even though I clearly wasn't sick, but they don't know that. And all this time later, four years later, I got on that train and right away the tickle in my throat. Actually, now I always have cough drops, I had some cough drops in my little day bag, threw them in, no problem. But how weird, what is up with that train? There is something there that my throat does not like.

So there's a little escalator that goes underground to Sunshine City. And then the mall itself, I guess stretches out, past this, must go underground under this overpass that I'm walking under. Yeah, I'm just going to walk over on foot, sneak in one of the alternative entrances instead of near all the people.

That was quite a, even at this like calmer time of day, quite a fucking blast of noise. I guess that's the other thing. Because usually when I was walking around there, I had headphones in that were dulling the sound, where here it's, you know, because I'm doing this podcast, you shit. It's like I'm getting an extra blast. That was a lot. And there's a thing I'll mention just real quickly, just because it happened to happen just now. I always feel like this is like a dicey subject in North America. This is a contentious thing. I've only seen two people wearing yoga pants this whole time, and they were both white women. And it's one of those things I never really noticed, because it just, you know, you don't notice your own environment. It's just one of those things that happened in North America, and there's a lot of good to it, you know. Obviously, it's nice that we do not live in an oppressive society, and you know, you can just dress how you want. And generally, not be bothered for it.

But I did always find it a little, I don't know, what's the right word? I'm sure women don't even know that they have this effect on people. You know, they're like in the eye of the storm. But it's, I would describe it as inconsiderate, possibly, to walk around in public functionally nude. It really does. I mean, it throws me off every time. Every time I see someone walk by where it's just like they look like a superhero one. I'm always like, man, that is just, it seems weird to me that I'm walking around, and that lady is like basically naked. I don't, I don't like it. I do like it, but, you know, what I mean, I like it in a creepy way. I prefer not to have my brain send me ancient deep dark symbols from generations past, but I don't want to repress anybody, do whatever you want, you know? Obviously, when push comes to shove, I'm much more for freedom, for the freedom to do whatever you want. But then I went to Amsterdam, and nobody dresses like that. Everybody was wearing jeans, you know? Cool leather jackets a lot, but jeans, just jeans everywhere. And jeans are not the same, jeans are, you know, you can have some tight jeans. It's not the same as yoga pants, which are virtually, yoga pants are, it's like better than not wearing anything, because it additionally sculpts your body. Yoga pants are fucking insane. They are just super hero clothes. But I noticed once I got to Amsterdam, like, then I just feel more normal when I walk around. It don't feel like I'm walking through a pornographic wonderland. I know no woman will understand this, this sounds insane, but I can't help how my monkey lizard brain is wired. 25:00 That's just how it is. Anyway, also in Japan, in Japan, it's like skirts, long skirts, shals. Nobody really dresses, quote unquote, like sexy. It's just not a thing here. Even if you're in sort of one of the like, nightlife areas of town, and people are kind of dressed up, it's a fire cry from just how people dress walking around downtown Toronto. And yeah, I don't know, it's just, I just thought I'd bring that up because I don't know if North America even knows that it is that way. That it's like not that way, other places. I'm not sure what kind of awareness we have of ourselves, because I didn't, I didn't realize till I went other places. And I'm like, ah, look at that. Everyone is actually wearing clothing. And then you get back to North America, and it is like, again, I know this is like potentially offensive. Women don't want to hear it, but it's like being in a strip club. That's exactly what it feels like to a guy. And I don't know, just, just I guess you should just, you don't have to change how you live. You don't have to care about me. But just be aware, I guess, that it feels less than fully considerate to just show your butt to everybody all day.

There's a lot of other cultures that are not doing that. And it's extra weird, those couple rare times that I see somebody wearing yoga pants in Japan. And it's like, you did not get the memo. You are aggressively at this point not looking around at what's going on here, because nobody is doing that.

Yeah, it's one of those things. I don't even know how to talk about that without sounding like a terrible person. Some horrible sex, this bigot. But it's weird. It's a weird situation.

I'm just walking up the steps outside Sunshine City now.

Nice and a quiet away from the people.

And there's a park with just like a passed out guy in it.

So Ike Bukuro, what happened yesterday is, yeah, I had that initial blast of people. And I was like, I just got to get out of here. This is too many people. I don't like this. You know, it's kind of fun to wander around and see the stuff. But I'm not really in the market for anything. I can't really buy stuff because I don't have room for it anyway. So I did the quick little thing that I threw in the last episode of the podcast. If like this is insane, I'm going to get out of here. But then I actually hung around for a couple hours because the rest of Ike Bukuro was still great. It was just that main area was extremely crowded. But I was like, all right, let's get out of here. But I always remembered there was this one area I really liked. The same way that I'm always like, I like these weird little areas that are not areas, that are not anything that you're supposed to care about as a tourist or something. Because I just like the little comparts. So Ike Bukuro east, the east side of the station is where all the major stuff is. And I always remember that there's a little walking pass. If you don't want to go through the crowded station to get from east to west, I guess to the south, if you use the east and west cardinal directions of the station. On the south side of the station, there's a little underground passage you can walk under. And to the side of that is this little area where, not little, pretty big where people just kind of hang out and smoke a lot. And I was like, well, let me just maneuver my way over there. And even as soon as I got away from the main area, things calm down a lot. They weren't as bad. And once I got over there, it was just like I remembered it. It was just some people milling around. Also not as many smokers as there used to be, but some people smoking. And it was just like I remembered it. Like, ah, there we go. Ah, there's the nice little area. I can just kind of hang out here.

And then I went through the walking path, which is again with the tallness thing. Just a little taller than my head. A little bit of a weird feeling to walk through this tunnel that's just fairly taller than me. Which is like the cedar side, maybe. But that's kind of the side that I like better anyway. And just hung around out there and it's just like, ah, this is fun. This is good. I pretty much just put some music on. Some MP3s on and just walked around. Just soaked it in. Just soaked it in the night time, make a booker up. And then took the train home and it was sweet.

But yeah, I think I'll yammer a little more about why a booker up is cool. But for now, I'm just going to go in Sunshine City and wander around a little first.

I just went to Super Potato, and I think that's a perfect way to sum up what I like so much about Ikebukuro is that it's like the neighborhood that has everything. So for anybody who's not a video game nerd, Super Potato is this really famous retro video game store in Akihabra, Electric Town, where all the anime and video game stuff is. And it got really famous, I think, partially just because 30:00 of the name, but these journalists from EGM and stuff back when there were print magazines, they would go to Japan to get scoops on the new games coming out, and you'd start to hear about Super Potato. Like, hey, have you been to Super Potato? Like, yeah, I went to Super Potato, and I got this, this, this, and this. Like, I fucking love Super Potato. And this was like, I'm talking 15, 20 years ago, I started hearing about this place. So it became one of those things, if like, if you ever go to Japan.

You gotta go to Super Potato. And Super Potato is pretty cool. I'm sure I'll get to Akihabra eventually do a podcast about that. It's neat. I've heard apparently price wise, it's not the best, but I don't actually buy stuff, because you know, I've got my one bag, I can't fit anything else in there. I don't have any retro video game systems anymore. I'm just not a guy who owns or buys things. I just look at them. I just like to be around them, I just like to soak it up. And it's like, like I was saying earlier, wow, look at this. There's like a River City ransom t-shirt. It's not. They call it Kunio Kun. It's a whole different thing. But it's, it is the same thing. You know, we just have different names. They have more of them than us. But it's like, dude, look at that. Your nostalgia is minus nostalgia. We're all coming together. Instead of Game Pro Magazine, it's a game-est magazine. But you know, it's all so cool and neat. Even just to see the box art for maybe some, some game you owned as a kid. And the boxes are all different. And I saw a Sega Mark III in there today. I had never seen one before. I had a Sega Master System as a kid. But in Japan, it was the third iteration of the Sega. So it was called the Mark III. For us, it was just the first one. I never saw one before. It's gray, ours was black, and it's smaller, and it was lighter, very light. Yeah, just to see that. It's like, I just love stuff like that. So, yeah, even if you don't buy anything, Super Potato is definitely worth going to. And the big benefit, I guess, to the Akihabra one is, on the top floor, there's arcade games. So that's cool. But I never in my life heard anybody say there was more than one Super Potato. I just assumed that was it. And then I was walking around Ichibukuro, and I walked past a Super Potato. And I was like, what enough? Fuck. There's another one? There's another one that I think is a bit smaller, but is really packed full of stuff. There's approximately a very similar amount of stuff in there. And it's kind of on a little quieter side street, pretty close to Sunshine City, even just when I was in there now. I mean, there were three other customers in it. It was a little packed. It's really narrow aisles and stuff. But it's not the crazy shit show that Akihabra is. Akihabra is just fucking insane, you know, like unpleasantly busy. So that would be my main selling point for Ichibukuro in general, is it's probably got a version of whatever it is you want to see. You know, if you go to the main neighborhood that's known for X, Y, or Z thing, yeah, it'll be more intense. You'll get more of it. But if you want some of it and for it to be less crazy, Ichibukuro, you know, last night it was pretty crazy, but now that it's late afternoon on a Monday, it's not a problem. It's all good. So for an example, as far as the video game stuff goes, Akihabra is the top dog for that, but there's a super potato here. There's a big two story book off here that's got all kinds of video games on one of the floors. For anime, again, Akihabra is the place. But Ichibukuro has got a big anime thing going on and apparently it originated as being kind of the neighborhood to go to for anime that is more aimed at women and like boys love anime and stuff. Now it's way more than that. There's all kinds of different stuff, but that stuff is still, there's a core of it here. And even that, I kind of like, I like that that's the core vibe. That the core vibe is kind of like girls romance stuff. Because the core vibe of Akihabra is women getting seamen ejaculated on them. You know, there's giant porn stores and yeah, there's the seven floor anime store, but the top two floors are just fucking porn. It's, you know, it's the boy-centric version of that whole thing. Again, it's worth going to. You gotta go, you gotta see it. 35:00 But you can get a very good taste of that experience in Ichibukuro and it's less outwardly creepy and weird. On the east side, not on the west side, I'll get into that after. Sunshine City itself, it's basically just a mall. Being back in there, I was happy to see that the Tully's coffee I always used to go to is still there and thriving. Great place to get a coffee and sit down with a laptop because there's a million seats. It's all good. But I'm remembering that I mainly went there on rainy days because from Naka, Ichibashi, I could get all the way from the station to Ichibukuro Station to Sunshine City without having to go above ground very much. You could mostly avoid the rain and then just hang out there for the afternoon if it was raining. Because now that it's not raining, I'm like, yeah, it's kind of cool, but, you know, it's just a mall. I'm not gonna really spend a lot of time in here. The two new things that weren't there before, there's a big Pokemon Center, which I get the feeling I really would have liked Pokemon. I bet I would have been into it. It seems like it was pretty cool, but I was about five years too late. When the Pokemon Big Boom first hit with the card game specifically, where everybody was losing their minds trying to get these cards, I was already working at a comic shop. I was like 16 or 17, and I just had to field the telephone calls all day. I was like, no, we don't have any Pokemon. No, I don't know when anymore is coming in. Eventually, I think I just took the phone off the hook because it's like, what is the point? No one is calling for legitimate business. They're just calling to ask if we have Pokemon cards which are sold out everywhere. That was such a bizarre phenomenon at first that like occasionally like gas stations and stuff through their distributors would manage to get a box of Pokemon cards somehow. And then they'd sell them for like $20 or $30 a pack. It was ridiculous. It's like, what is happening? But even after that boom obviously Pokemon has stayed strong this whole time. But I didn't go in because I don't know shit about it. Like I said, it just seems like it would be cool. But since I was a bit older than that, I played Magic the Gathering. I played Old School Final Fantasy and Fantasy Star. I missed out on the Pokemon thing.

And the other thing is the World's Biggest Gacha Store, where Gachapon is where you put coins in and you turn the knob and a little plastic ball comes out. And you know what the general topic is. It's based on a specific anime or a specific sort of topic. Some of them are weird. It could be like a little figurine of a sushi meal or something. So you know generally what you're going to get. But you don't know exactly what. It's all kind of random. And this was the biggest Gachapon store in the world. 3000 Gachapon machines. And it sure was. But I got a Gacha Story too, but I'll tell that. If not this episode, then next. What do I got lined up? Gacha? If Sega? Well here's K-Books. K-Pop, J-Pop. I believe that is one of the famed stores for girls type of thing because there's a lot of handsome boy bandlabs outside that store. And yeah, and like I said, it's just whatever the vibe is you're looking for. I don't know about fashion stuff with that whole Harajuku thing. My experience with Harajuku is that it's super overrated and crazy crowded. There might be fashion stuff here. I don't know. That's just not something I looked for. So I'm not sure. But generally, everything's here. A smaller version of everything is here. And I thought that was so cool because it's just one of those things that I'd never heard of. Like I'd heard of Shibuya, I'd heard of Shinjuku, I'd heard of Akihabra. Ikubukuro is big. It's like one of the top five biggest neighborhoods or like convergent zones like that. If I remember right, it's not small, but it's not big enough to just be famous outside of Japan necessarily. But once you know about it, it's like, oh yeah, for sure, that place. That place is great. It reminds me of like when I first moved to Vancouver, and you find out about Granville Street. Granville Street's a super famous street. Everybody in Vancouver knows it, but outside of there, I didn't know about it. But you move there, you immediately learn about it, and it immediately becomes one of the most famous areas. Or in Toronto, I did know Young Street, but the one I always think of is Bluer Street, because it's a weird name, B-L-O-O-R. But it's a big major street that just crosses all the way across Toronto. And it's again one of these like major streets, you'll go there a million times, you'll always navigate based on it. But until I moved to Toronto, I never heard of it. So Ikubukuro is exactly like that. Instantly, the moment you go there, it's like, oh okay, yeah, that's a place. That's an important cool place where basically everything is.

But until I came here, just through sort of accidentally having an Airbnb near here, I never heard of it.

It was kind of interesting too, I went into Book Off, the big two-story, used bookstore. And it's just cool to walk around, especially for the video game stuff for me, but all the anime and manga stuff that I can't read. But it's like theoretically, this is cool. Again, it's just cool to look at. It's cool just to browse through. So yeah, I'm going to go mosey to the west side, which is the first side of Ikubukuro that I mostly went to. That is a lot less, there's a lot less direct like reason to go there of like, oh, it's cool because there's this side or that. Yeah, I'm going to take the little underground walking path that goes under all the train stuff. And then we'll ramble about that a bit.

That couldn't be a more perfect introduction to the west side. I'm just going down this little back alley I never saw before. DVD store, lots of girls and bikinis on the posters. So I went in an anime store that I think is new on the east side. That it's like your seven floor, gargantuan anime store, just like Akihabra has, but it really is. That thing I was saying about how the baseline of the anime stuff in Ikubukuro is more based on girls comics, girls like boys love comics, girls gay romance. I don't explain this, gay romance between boys meant for female readers comics, boys love comics. It absolutely is that because the seven floor super gargantuan store did not have the top floor mega porno wing like in Akihabra. It did get pretty spicy, some of the stuff in there, but it dudes blow and come on each other instead. But generally, yeah, a lot more calm in general. But then I went and hung out with the smokers near the walkway till the sun went down because you definitely want the sun to be down before you come to the west side of Ikubukuro. Because it's like a seedy nightlife area, I guess. But even still, it's still just a smaller version of this. The big famous one, I think it's called Kabukucho, maybe. I've never been there, because I was just like, why? Why would I go there? What am I going to do? But I might, I might make the effort because while I was locked down with COVID, I played Yakuza Kawami. That was the remake of the first Yakuza game. Gameplay-wise, not a very, not a great game. But the storyline of it is awesome. It all takes place in this one little neighborhood. And you just run around and do missions for people and you get to know the neighborhood and know all the people there. And they've made like a pile of those games. So the later ones are probably better. But it played the first one, the remake of the first one. I definitely do recommend it. Overall, fun game. And apparently it's based on a real neighborhood. So it might be cool to go there just for that, like to see how closely it aligns. And like, will I feel like I'm inside the video game? While I walk around there, that could be cool. But just to get that vibe without having to go to the real place. Because that's also the place where you hear about foreigners getting fucking, hey, come into this bar. And then they get drugged and robbed. It's not like that happens a lot. And it's just to sometimes, you know, generalizations they'll save you. It's not Japanese people doing this necessarily. It's Nigerian people. So if some Nigerian guy in the city nightlife area invites you to some bar to get drunk. Either they're going to rip you off on the price or you're literally going to wake up from a drug stupor with all of your stuff going. It's pretty fucked. So I mean, that's the kind of neighborhood we're talking about. But this feels way safer here. Because it's way smaller. And it's just, you know, it's got a bit of that taste. But again, it's not the real thing. It's the Ikebukuro version. It's the smaller one. But it's still awesome. It's really good. I love, like, this is the place where the only thing to do here, quote unquote, by my nerdy standards, since I'm not a man of the evening, since I feel guilty spending money, we're certainly not going to go get a hand job at a fucking soap land or something. There's a Taito station here.