Japan - Nakano Broadway and Sunshine City
We spent an amazing 36 days in Japan! We did a lot of traveling, and we went back and forth between a lot of locations, cities, and districts. To make things easier to read and write, we have grouped everything in our travels into city locations and not exactly by time.
The Japan list of contents so far can be found here!
First up is Tokyo! Tokyo is divided up into districts and wards. To keep things all organized we kept all the districts and wards of Tokyo separate, even though some of these locations we visited days and sometimes weeks apart from each other. The districts and cities we visited in Tokyo are:
*
Ginza (Imperial Palace)
*
Ueno Park
*
Akihabara
*
Nakano (Nakano Broadway & Sunshine City)
*
Mitaka (Ghibli Museum) & Sumida (Tokyo Skytree)
*
Shinjuku
*
Shibuya
*
Harajuku
*
Odds and ends and final thoughts on Tokyo
For those of you interested in Akihabara, we would say that a much better option is Nakano Broadway!.
Nakano Broadway is bits and parts of what you can find scattered around Akihabara crammed into a shopping mall complex. It's much easier to navigate and filled with interesting things to find. The range of items is fascinating in itself, ranging from modern day collectibles, to Victorian Dolls, and even old American household collectibles like Mr. Clean dolls and the Green Bean Giant dolls.
For those of you who want to see Akihabara, Nakano Broadway is a must. If your one of those who loves to go to the weekend swap meet or flea market, you should also check it out. Some of the items we spotted here would sell out quickly at the Rose Bowl Swap meet in Pasadena!
Right outside of Nakano Broadway we spotted this place and popped in for some foods.
It's pretty hard to go wrong with potstickers and chow mein.
Another place you can visit is Sunshine City!
We went to Sunshine city for one store and one store only. The Pokemon Center Mega Tokyo! Sunshine City hosts a lot of interesting big things but we only came for the Pokemon store. The die hard fan who dragged me to it commented that she was a little disappointed in it and expected a bit more. The rest of the "mall" is pretty much just a normal mall. We would not recommend making a separate trip just for the Pokemon store.
We grabbed some grub near the bottom floors at Tempura Tendon Tenya, a chain restaurant in Japan. It was a tasty quick meal that filled us up.
Coming up next is Skytree and the Ghibli Museum!
