Japan Day 11: Chiikawa Park, Sunshine Aquarium and a Dangerous Amount of Kawaii Shopping

Day 11 was another very kawaii day in Tokyo — although I don’t think I realized quite how kawaii it was going to become when we started the morning.

Our main destination was Sunshine City in Ikebukuro. The plan was to visit Chiikawa Park, which Kid 2 had specifically asked me to include in our itinerary, explore Sunshine Aquarium, and have our meals there. I had also planned a stop at Book-Off later in the day.

That is not quite what happened.

Chiikawa Park: This One Was for Kid 2

Kid 2 was already a big Chiikawa fan before we went to Japan, so Chiikawa Park was one of her requests for the trip. Kid 1, on the other hand, didn’t really know what to expect and was mostly along for the experience.

One thing to know about Chiikawa Park is that I wouldn’t really describe it as an amusement park in the traditional sense. There are no rides. Instead, there are displays, activities, games and, of course, plenty of opportunities to shop for Chiikawa merchandise.

Kid 2 had a blast.

The highlight for all three of us was the character meet-and-greet session. There were two characters, and we took turns taking pictures with each of them, so we ended up with quite a collection of photos.

And the characters were taller than Kid 2!

That meant she could actually hug them and hold onto them for the pictures, which made the whole thing ridiculously cute. Even Kid 1, who hadn’t gone into Chiikawa Park with any particular attachment to the characters, thought the meet-and-greets were adorable.

Would I recommend it? If you’re a Chiikawa fan, definitely. If you’ve never heard of Chiikawa before, however, I’m not sure there would be enough there to make it a must-do stop in Tokyo.

But for Kid 2? Absolutely worth adding to the itinerary.

Sunshine Aquarium

Our other planned attraction for the day was Sunshine Aquarium.

We had already visited Osaka Aquarium earlier in the trip, but the two experiences were surprisingly different. Sunshine Aquarium is much smaller, and it felt less crowded when we visited. There were also plenty of places where we could sit down and rest, which by Day 11 of a trip involving this much walking was definitely appreciated!

The aquarium itself was beautifully presented and very pleasant to explore.

I don’t think visiting one aquarium necessarily makes the other redundant. They have a very different feel, and I’m glad we did both. If you enjoy aquariums, Sunshine Aquarium is still very much worth visiting even if you’ve already been to the much larger Osaka Aquarium.

And then there was the rest of Sunshine City.

Wait… This Mall Is Actually Really Good!

I had planned to eat at Sunshine City, but I hadn’t expected to do quite so much shopping there.

We had lunch, explored the shops, visited more boutiques, and eventually had supper there too.

It turned out to be a fantastic place for kawaii shopping, with so many character stores and boutiques to explore.

And then we found Kiddy Land.

Oh my.

Kiddy Land and the Character-Merchandise Problem

I’m not even going to tell you how much we spent on character merchandise.

Let’s just say that everyone found something.

Kid 2, unsurprisingly, found more Chiikawa merchandise, but that wasn’t all. There was Rilakkuma. There was Sanrio. There were all kinds of cute things that are extremely difficult to walk past when you’re already in full kawaii-shopping mode.

And then there was me.

I had recently discovered that Sumikkogurashi was becoming one of my favourite character families, so naturally I found myself looking through all the Sumikkogurashi merchandise.

That’s when I spotted the T-shirts.

I had absolutely no intention of buying Sumikkogurashi T-shirts that day.

But they were SO cute.

And so cheap!

Really, what was I supposed to do?

Obviously, I bought them.

Sometimes Japan makes sticking to a shopping plan very difficult.

One Stop We Didn’t Make

I had actually planned one more stop for the day: Book-Off.

But by the time we finished exploring Sunshine City, we were too tired to go anywhere else.

So Book-Off didn’t happen.

And that was perfectly fine. One advantage of visiting Tokyo is that there isn’t just one Book-Off! We knew we’d have other opportunities to visit one elsewhere, so there was no reason to push ourselves just to check another stop off the itinerary.

We could do that another day.

A Very Cute Day in Tokyo

Chiikawa Park was very much Kid 2’s destination, but the character meet-and-greets managed to charm all three of us. Sunshine Aquarium gave us a quieter and more relaxed aquarium experience than the one we’d had in Osaka. And Sunshine City itself turned out to be a great discovery.

And sometimes you suddenly become the owner of multiple Sumikkogurashi T-shirts.

No regrets.

Coming Next

Possibly the cutest pastry of the entire trip… followed by an afternoon of unexpected treasure hunting in Tokyo.