Tokyo - Asakusa Sensoji Temple, Nakamise Shopping street, Sunshine City

Hello readers! We started our itinerary by visiting Asakusa! Asakusa is a traditional and cultural district to explore in Tokyo. It was about a 30min-45min journey from our air bnb. Their famous attraction will be the Sensoji Temple, and the Nakamise shopping street.

There were too many people around so we didn't stay for long before exploring the nearby street around the temple.

It will be quite challenging to take a nice photo of the day in this area. Haha

The place is simply too crowded with people everywhere.

We do see some tourists dressing up in yukata, but i think dressing up in Kyoto give a more authentic feel compared to in Tokyo. Haha

As we explored further, there were food stalls selling all the snacks.

I was trying to look for matcha ice-cream as it was not common to find it in Tokyo street compared to in Kyoto, initially i thought this was the bun that i saw others had it together with Matcha, so we bought one and try, but only to discover this is actually malt. Too sweet for my liking.

As we walked further into more shops with shelter, i finally found matcha ice-cream!

Tadah! There were so many different kind and the bottom one looks like our singapore style of ice-kacang or the korea bingsu! Hahaha, but eventually i decided to try their matcha ice-cream with the bun!

This time round, this is the correct one that i am looking for! This is different from the usual matcha ice-cream that i had.

Then we saw this store, i called it the penguin store because i had seen it several times in Tokyo but i have never really enter and check out the store, i only remember it has this penguin logo. Anyway the correct name for this store is called DonQuijote/Don Don Donki and this building has a few level so went in to visit the store for the first time. This store sells all sorts of stuffs, from snacks, to toiletries, cosmetics, bags, accessories etc and even branded items! (Though i couldn't tell if they are imitations good or real branded stuffs)

I bought this from the store as recommended from my colleagues, the price is so much cheaper in Japan than buying it in Singapore!

The cute packaging of their snacks

Hahaha, i thought this mask is quite unique because i have never seen marketers using a fat face as the model for a mask pack. But this mask do! I didn't bought it though.I also spotted this Asahi that does not have any alcohol content in it, it was dry zero so i bought one to try, only to prefer the one that has the alcohol content instead.

As we was exploring the different level in the store, we were attracted by the music and the crowd downstair as there were a group of people surrounding together and dancing around in circles.

It's common to see rickshaw parking at the roadside once you exit from Asakusa station walking on the street leading to Kaminarimon (thunder gate) and entrance of Sensoji temple. Asakusa is the only place they allow rickshaw tours in this busy metropolis city which is a sensible choice because there are so many shrines and temples crowded together. It was similar to what we saw back in Kyoto, most of the guys wear shorts and some of them look really good with tanned body.

We went to Nakamise shopping street after that, which was equally crowded as well. This street have all the traditional snacks and souvenirs that you can purchase back home. In my personal opinion,i feel that this shopping street seems more for selling items that catered only for the tourists.

Our next stop was to visit the Ikebukuro district, it was another place with plenty of entertainment, dining and shopping. It was raining heavily when we was on our way to Sunshine city mall. This mall provide more than just your typical retail stores, it has an aquarium, planetarium, museum and indoor theme parks! We had coco curry rice again, hahaha, couldn't decide what to eat so we had a quick one before continuing with our exploring.

There is a Pokemon Mega centre located inside Sunshine city, the store size is relatively big.

I thought this is cute, but my heart tells me nope, i am not buying. Haha

We didn't get to explore much as many of the shops started closing so we were planning to go back the next day. Returning back to our air bnb and took a different train line, surprisingly the train were empty.

I shall end this post for now.

Till then~