Namco Namja Town

After spending the day in Kawagoe, I wandered around Ikekuburo for a bit. Ikekuburo is one of the three main JR train hubs (the other two being Shinjuku and Tokyo stations), and as such, it is a commercial center, home to two of the world's largest department stores.

Sunshine City is a huge retail complex with shops, restaurants (including a branch of NYC-based Joe's Shanghai), and an amusement park. So, for ¥300, I took a peek at video game producer Namco's Namja Town.

As one might expect, the amusement park is filled with flashing lights, over the top displays and cacophonous noises. The first area I wandered into was some sort of ghost town, with eerie cat lanterns and ghosts dotting the windows.

There was even a haunted Bhuddist temple, complete with neon dancing skeletons in the background. I'm glad we have a healthy dose of reverence for religion in this country.

Really though, I was much more interested in the other half of the amusement park's offerings. First up was Gyoza Stadium, where over a dozen vendors compete to sell you fried dumplings. These range from your standard meat and veggie filled dumplings to soup dumplings to cheese "dumplings."

Even better, the dumplings were featured in posters detailing their stats: weight, length and quantity.
I think there was some sort of voting ballot, but I didn't bother attempting to read the signs.

Upstairs, I came across a miracle fruit cafe. Zomg, I could be downing lemons and vinegar again!

You can order normal foods, like a curry rice bowl, but to truly appreciate the miracle fruit's effects, you should probably order one of these sets with sour foods.

That display is all plastic, by the way.

This is Ice Cream City, where you can get all sorts of gelato, ice cream on waffles, some sort of Turkish ice cream served to you by a guy in Turkish attire, etc.

The Cup Ice Museum features ice cream of many walks and flavors. I began reading through them: pumpkin, green apple, darjeeling tea, tofu, currant...yawn. Wait a minute, that one said garlic. Which was followed by beef, shark's fin, curry and viper. That's right, you can get snake in ice cream form here. This is a wonderful country.

This is a 5-carton sushi flavored set. Mmm, octopus ice cream. The other sets available included potato flavors and miso flavors.

This flavor was misfortunately translated as "old taste ice cream." Maybe they meant to say "classic"?

After mulling it over, I ended up buying a carton of wasabi ice cream. The wasabi is definitely present, and the sting of the cold ice cream transforms into the sting of the wasabi. It was interesting but not my favorite feeling, so I probably would opt for something else next time.