Sunshine City

In Ikebukro, a part of Tokyo there is a complex called Sunshine City. I think there are 4 buildings that interlock and it is VERY easy to get lost in there. One of the building is 60 floors high and it has a super fast lift to take you up, there is a spectacular view from the top, I don't have a photo of that today because we went to a different building. This one is only 9 floors high and has an aquarium on the top floor. Yep, that's right, massive tanks of water filled with fish on the top floor of a high rise in the heart of Tokyo! We actually went for lunch first, found a nice Mexican place, the three of us filled our boots (and two of us drank beer) for just ¥4500 about $49/GBP 33 (at todays rate). We can eat cheaper at Japanese places but this is more than reasonable for Mexican which are few and far between.

After stuffing ourselves we went up to the Aquarium, they had a special display on, which I can only describe as 'Disney Does Fish'

This tank has cascading plastic blocks going through it, looked very impressive but the occasional fish did get hit by a boulder.

I did like this one, the seahorses looked so cute. Other tanks were dressed up as presents and had things like winter scenes inside.

The rest of the aquarium was pretty standard, as far as Japanese aquariums go, it isn't spectacular but just big enough to keep a little one occupied for a couple of hours. There is also a sea lion show (yep on the roof!) and they do a penguin walkabouts which is cute. It was really cold up there, so what does one do when you are froze to the marrow, go for ICE-CREAM of course. But not any ole ice-cream. On the 3rd and 4th floor is Namja town, ice-cream city and gyoza stadium. You can pay ¥300 yen to go in or about ¥4000 which gives you a ticket to use all the attractions inside. We just got the ¥300 tickets. Inside is a kind of amusement park, it is loud, a complete sensory over-load. We managed to find Ice-cream city, which has, I guess 15 ice-cream shops inside, it took us a  while to decide what we wanted.  One of the shops had rows and rows of these freezers filled with cup-ice-cream, some are lovely flavours.

From L-R is Eel then Crab and the bottom row is squid and fish sauce Ohh yum! I don't eat fish so I thought I would give these a miss...but this guy decided to try a few, including snake!

This is a view of inside ice-cream city

Ebi-kun spotted an ice-cream with sprinkles and set his heart on that, it was made on a cold plate and had all sorts in it, almonds, chocolate, banana, choco chips and heaven knows what else. We all shared it and it was good. Then we tried the Turkish Ice-cream, mainly for the entertainment factor.
We came to the conclusion that we are ice-cream wusses because after two between us we had had enough and decided to head home. I think if you are in Tokyo on a bad weather day this place would be good to kill a few hours, especially with older kids, there are other places to eat inside too, you don't have to make up a 3 course meal of ice-cream :o)