Casual sights and revisiting Shinjuku.
This day was pretty short in terms of available pieces to string together.
Ikebukuro didn’t host too much where we were concerned – my group were interested in the Pokémon Center at Sunshine City.
Next to Sunshine City is an entire building dedicated to Chiikawa, to the amusement of a few friends.
Chiikawa is a manga series following a character of the same name and their best friends. What makes it popular is the day-to-day lives that the characters go through – where the series includes struggles and situations relatable to real-life experiences that people often face. I assume that is the reason it is popular domestically and globally – and big enough to have an entire building dedicated to it.
Outside of the two buildings are more merchandise shops and a shopping district, and this odd bus.
Basically a rare type of animal specific to a small piece of land, this IKEBUS is an electric bus operating only within Ikebukuro. Given that the highest possible speed it can muster is a measly 19 km/h, it is more for leisure than a convenient mode of transport that a traditional bus is.
Please do search for interior photos of these are they are equally as polarizing as the ten wheels that these buses have.
By the power of omitting storytelling, I can now tell you about Shinjuku; frankly, you wouldn’t want to hear of the commute that not even I remember anymore.
I’m happy to return here for nostalgia sake as I get to find back the hotel I stayed in when I first visited around two years ago. Its a bittersweet feeling to come see this stretch again, although bitter that there weren’t any provocative individuals that my group kept joking about Shinjuku to see first-hand.
In any case, due to my clumsiness and self-diagnosed amnesia, I seemed to have misplaced my 55-210mm lens back somewhere in Penang. Its either in a bag, or somewhere in the carpark I went to for photos.
Happy to report that I bought a second-hand lens that seems to have recurring issues for focusing. Per the above text, I am guaranteed to have clumsiness – I dropped the camera right outside the shop after fitting the lens on. Whole thing still works, but focusing takes longer – too long for panning photos at times. My fault.
This is a Sony E-mount SEL18200LE.
~Efini
Gallery:
Read more: Tourist in Japan: Pushing through Shibuya
