Japan - Day 9 - August 27th

Someone was tired.

Can you guess who?

In case you weren't sure, here's your answer.

She actually did fall asleep on my shoulder.

We made our way to the Pokemon Cafe.

Across Japan, they have Pokemon Centers (which are essentially Pokemon stores) that are full of anything and everything a Pokemon fan could ever want. Some of them have cafes attached.

In Japan, kawaii (cute) cafes are a thing. The cafes are themed - for example, Pokemon, Sanrio, Monsters - and offer dishes and drinks that match the theme.

I know my kids love Pokemon, so I decided to try and get a reservation. 

And, you HAVE to have a reservation to eat at this place.

A month or more before we left on our trip, I woke up early for four days in a row to try to secure a reservation that would work with our schedule. And, when I say early, I mean 1:30am so that I could be ready to make reservations at 2am (which is actually 6pm Tokyo time). 

I finally reserved a premo time slot - right when they opened, at 10:30am. 

Making reservations in countries that are 16 hours ahead of you is a pain in the ass.

When we exited the train to walk to the building, it started raining. Hard. 

Yay for our cheesy travel umbrellas. I really thought that they would've been broken by this point in the trip.....but, nope. They were still good. We made it to the building and were NOT soaked. 

We got there a little early and had to wait for the hostess to let us up the elevator.

The elevator opened and the Pokemon Center (store) was on the right and the cafe was on the left.

Upon showing our reservation confirmation, we were seated immediately.

They sure do give out a lot of take-homes at this place.

Each seat had its own random Pokemon place mat (you turned it over when you sat down to see who you got).

Here's our haul......

There was even a newspaper.

Everywhere you looked, there were Pokemon.

From table centerpieces.....

....to display cases of Pokemon stuffies.

We got gently "reminded" not to touch this Snorlax.

PHOTO OP!!

We had 90 minutes to enjoy the atmosphere and eat.

English was not a thing here. No one really spoke it well enough for us to communicate. 

By using our allergy cards and Google Translate, we talked about food options. 

I’m pretty sure the waitress said there were no nuts or peanuts in anything, but the list was all in Japanese. We were able to sort out some GF options - there was just one dessert and maybe some drinks. 

After figuring all that out, we had to place our order via a tablet that was on our table. It was mostly in Japanese and it didn’t really describe what you were eating. Most of the time it had very unhelpful information like, “Cute Pikachu is ready for a meal!” or something like that. We eventually just looked at the pictures and guessed what the meal actually was.

Three of us ordered the same thing – the Pikachu Plate – tomato rice wrapped in egg (Pikachu's head in the picture below), a salad, potato stars, some spaghetti, a hamburger steak with some kind of sauce on it and a fried shrimp. 

The only option for Katie was Pikachu Mango Pudding with Fruit. 

She hates mango. She ate most of the fruit though.

We each ordered a fancy drink, except for Huzbend who was not impressed with the food or the prices.

 When you place an order for a specialty drink, a member of the wait staff will come over and ask you to select one of six images on a tablet that they are carrying.

 When the image is flipped over, it shows a Pokemon. You then get a drink coaster with the pictured character on it. 

Both kids got Pikachu and I got Chikorita.

(you can see them above in our stash of Pokemon Cafe goodies)

 Katie ordered a drink full of strawberry flavored marshmallows.

Mikey got a “Fire Float” with an unknown fizzy flavor and tapioca balls, which he did NOT like.

I ordered a Pokemon Latte. The only reason was because you could choose what character you wanted pictured on the foam. 

Out of hundreds of choices (251, to be exact), I picked Jigglypuff (known as Purin in Japan). 

Our food was, uh, goodish?

We'd had much better on our trip.

As stated, Katie hates mango flavored anything.

Huzbend got to eat her pudding.

He was very happy to demolish and consume Pikachu.

As Mikey was eating his meal, he said that his lips were itchy.

I could see some small hives and redness (it's hard to tell in this picture).

He immediately stopped eating and drinking.

Stress immediately spiked.

We gave him a benadryl and began to watch for other symptoms, hoping we would not have to break out the Epi-pen.

As we sat to wait on Mikey's situation, I decided to order dessert.

I know. Weird. But, I was stressed.

Again, the tablet menu wasn't much help as to what each dessert was.

I picked the craziest looking one.

A PokeBall.

I had no idea what was inside it.

This is what was in the PokeBall.

A Slowpoke Pokemon.

It was a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting inside. 

Under the cake was some strawberry jello and whipped cream.

It was quite yummy.

I'm happy to report that Mikey's reaction did not progress.

His hives slowly disappeared, but we did not let him eat any more at the restaurant.

As we finished up, a surprise guest made an appearance.

Yep.

Chef Pikachu.

Pikachu had a handler who only spoke in Japanese.

We had no idea what he was saying.

Pikachu slowly made his way around the restaurant greeting everyone.

It was not like a Disney character meet-and-greet. 

For some reason, you could take pictures of Pikachu wandering the restaurant and waving at you, but you could not take a picture of Pikachu posing with your kid. And, I'm guessing, they didn't want you to touch him either. It was weird. 

I did sneak a few of Mikey before they asked me to stop taking pictures. 

They didn’t kick me out, so I guess I wasn’t too obnoxious.

Here's some more Pikachu awkwardness.

As Pikachu departed, so did we.

We headed over to the Pokemon Center (store) next. 

I have never seen so many Pokemon in my entire life.

And I say that as a mom who has kids that have watched hours upon hours of Pokemon shows and have played just as many hours of Pokemon video games.

I mean, the stuffie shelves went on FOREVER.

They even had special "Only In Japan" Pikachus for sale.

This was my favorite.

We spent quite a bit of time wandering around the store and looking at all the merchandise.

They had home goods, school supplies, all sorts of stuff.

The kids each picked out an obscure Pokemon stuffie to bring home.

On our way back to Ikebukuro, we spied "Mike" Popcorn at a train station.

The next big thing on the agenda, as promised earlier in the trip, was to try out karaoke. 

I guess Huzbend had a specific place in mind that he was trying to find while walking, but Katie saw a place called "Big Echo" so we stopped in there. 

Huzbend stopped by the front desk to sign us in and get the details. I guess you paid by the hour. He reserved a room for us for two hours and I think we also paid an amount per song. The price included a drink for each of us that would be delivered to our room. 

There was a advertising “collaboration” going on. I noticed a lot of these for the summer. This one was with "Hypnosis Microphone" (HypMic for short). If you want to know more about HypMic, you can click here. 

This is a member of the "Buster Bros!!!".

Representing Ikebukuro.

His name is Yamada Ichiro

We were up on the 5th floor.

We found our room. 

In it were two small tables, a couch, two chairs and an elaborate karaoke set up. 

Someone brought our drinks. I don’t know who, because I was using the bathroom. 

It took a bit to figure out how the system worked and how to find English songs.

Up first was a Mikey/Huzbend duo of an ACDC song. 

You could adjust the volume of the song, the singer and the echo. 

It was still really loud in that tiny room. 

Katie covered her ears. She wasn't to into it.

Huzbend and Mikey begged and so I decided to give it a try.

"Let it Go", of course.

Mikey joined in and Katie warmed up by singing without a microphone.

After that, we took turns.

Mikey sang accompaniment on all songs.

One of the best parts about karaoke were the videos that played in the background to the songs. 

They never matched what you were singing about AT ALL. For example, all the ACDC songs had this stoned white guy wandering around aimlessly.

There was another rock song that had this lady shopping for vases. It was hilarious. 

Only the Disney songs had the movie playing in the background so you could match your signing along with the scene.

Katie still covered her ears for all the Mikey/Huzbend songs.

Katie and Mikey chose the majority of the songs for the last hour or so.

I'm not quite sure what the head banging was for?

Maybe for this Weird Al gem?

Our last stop this day was to a giant anime/manga store called Animate Ikebukuro. It has nine floors.

Each floor has a different theme – whether it's stuff for boys or girls or merchandise or video games. It’s very easy to tell which floor is which. 

Ikebukuro is know for being a center of female oriented anime and manga and there was plenty of that here. Lots of pictures of "hot" anime/manga guys. They were lining the stairways, the walls and even the elevators.

The pictures on elevator doors are of "Ensemble Stars" whose media empire consists of an all-male idol training simulation where YOU get to train the next pop idol, a mobile card collecting game, an anime, a manga series, a stage show and a novel. They must bring in big money.

(Yes. These are all guys on the elevator doors)

We were able to find a display advertising the newest CD (I guess CD's are still a thing in Japan) for the boys group that generated that huge line back in Osaka that we encountered our first day. 

One of the floors had this weird display of jars full of preserved flowers that matched more “hot” anime dudes. The pictures had signatures – maybe the voice actors? I don’t know.

I'm not even going to pretend to know.

As we were leaving, Mikey decided that he had to use the bathroom (he was still drinking A LOT of water and had to pee frequently).

We found one on the first floor. While standing there waiting for him, I realized that this was a bathroom for limited mobility people. Ooops. Luckily, no one came to use it. 

Outside the store was a huge stash of Gashapon (capsule toy machines). These are super popular in Japan. The little prizes cost anywhere from 100-500 yen ($1 to $5). Although they are little knick knacks - most of the time they are characters from popular music groups, anime and manga or they are mascot characters from the tourist attraction you are visiting – they make a good souvenir. We picked up a couple. 

It was still light out and we were on our way back to the apartment! 

We saw this cute owl topiary on the way to our apartment. As I understand it, owls are popular in this section of Tokyo because of a play on words. Ikebukuro is the name of this part of Tokyo and "fukuro" means owl in Japanese. So, owls are big in Ikebukuro. I don’t know.

I just read it somewhere.

We decided to stop at the supermarket once again, this time with kids in tow, to do some shopping for dinner that night.

We were on the search for the GF noodles for Katie, as we were going to have spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner. 

The kids had fun wandering the grocery store.

We did end up finding GF rice noodles for Katie, but they weren't very good.

We decided to make her some rice and had to wait four hundred hours for the rice cooker to do its job.

For the rest of us, the spaghetti really hit the spot.

After dinner, Huzbend and I went out on a “date” to find some special treats while the kids stayed at the apartment to watch TV and chill out. We had purchased the kids ice cream bars at the grocery store.

We headed to the train station. 

Did I mention that train stations are full of stores, fast food and sit-down restaurants, barber shops, department stores, etc.? Oh. Well, they are. 

We found a cream puff place in the train station and ordered three pastries. 

We were going to also stop at this bakery with super awesome cakes, but thought eating one and a half cream puffs along with a cake would be TOO much. 

It was a nice way to end our time in Ikebukuro and at the apartment. 

We took the extra time we had that evening and packed up all of our stuff to move on to the next portion of our trip the following day.