Ikebukuro
The Northern entertainment district
Ikebukuro is a big district of the Toshima area, in the North-West of the Japanese capital. Very lively, it offers an ideal concentration of Tokyo’s atmosphere with its electric appliances’ stores, manga bookstores, the entertaining Sunshine City tower and its numerous popular restaurants.
Organized all around the surprising Sunshine skyscraper, the district is mostly famous for its range of possible entertainments, shopping and gastronomy places.
Its train 🚅 station sees everyday the flow of more than 1 million passengers, making it the second most crowded station after the unbeatable Shinjuku.
We don’t generally think about it, but Ikebukuro can be a very convenient lodging district, thanks to its geographical location having many advantages, and a range of prices rather cheap compared to other areas of the capital.
Ikebukuro also corresponds, since the beginning of the 2000s, to a form of Akihabara specialized for women. Therefore we can find a street called "Otome road", home of numerous stores for feminine otaku.
In the video below, we offer a visit of this district in the heart of Tokyo. 90 seconds of walking in Ikebukuro, where you can discover the commercial streets and listen to the urban noises in this electric megacity:
As an anecdote, you can note that the symbol of Ikebukuro is the owl 🦉, that we can find physically on its train station, as being the shape of its koban (district police box - see main picture) as well in the kanji composing its name.