A chill day in Ikebukuro
February 14, 2025.
Our first full day in Japan was Valentine's day. Due to many horrible delays beyond our control, we didn't get to meet at the airport until just before midnight on the 13th. So we took a $400 taxi to our air bnb and went straight to bed. Despite having both been awake for over 24 hours the night before, we woke in the morning on the 14th around 9 or 10. We shoveled some random snacks into our faces that Kouniko blessedly had left over from the flight over and set out.
Our AirBnB was located in Ikebukuro, a short walk from the station in pretty much any direction. Naturally, the first place we went was an arcade. Koinuko loves rhythm games, so she played a few there. I'm not a fan of them myself, but I'm a big fan of shapes and colours so it was fun to watch her play them. While she played rhythm games I lost a few times at some crane games. I also forced Koinuko into our first purikura booth and we took some god awful photos.
After this we stumbled our way towards the main attraction for the day: Otome Road's 2nd hand book stores. I was so excited to finally get to visit the infamous Kbooks Yaoi Dungeon (formally known as Kbooks Otomekan) and it did not disappoint. I picked up the majority of purchases on the first day in the Yaoi Dungeon. They had so much merch of older, more obscure BL series. I was very happy to see the MDZS standees in the entranceway.
Ikebukuro is really an incredible place for female otaku. I'd never seen so many nerdy girls in one place before. All carrying cute itabags or goods of their best boys. Many of them are in super pretty outfits. We saw a few lolitas every day in Ikebukuro! I've also never ever seen so many stores or even a large section in a store or at a convention aimed entirely at female otaku. Here in New Zealand, if you do find a rare nerd store it's almost always aimed entirely at men. Maybe you'll get a tiny shelf in the back for the dumb chick stuff. But here it was everywhere!!!
We popped into multiple doujinshi stores and second hand goods stores such as Lashinban and Surugaya. We even got to see various BL games for sale brand new in a Stellaworth! It was weirdly surreal. These games that are so obscure and underground feeling in my home country were just out on display for purchase in this game store. A game store aimed entirely at girls! I also checked out the Ikebukuro Closet Child and picked up an iconic dangly star clip. It was so crowded there though and I was in normie clothes so I didn't spend too long there.
Once we were done looking at a small selection of what Otome Road had to offer us, we stumbled back home (taking major psychic damage going through a Donki on the way), picked up some konbini food and fell asleep at like 6pm. Whoops.
