Sunshine City: Observatory, Cat Lounge

If you get off at Ikebukuro metro station, you're bound to stumble upon a sign like this.
Sunshine City is an enormous complex containing a Planetarium, an Aquarium, and the enormous Sunshine 60 skyscraper. It's a popular destination for young girls and couples.
 Being that I am part of neither of those categories, I only gave Sunshine City a quick tour, not really going into the bigger attractions of the area. Still, what little I saw was worth sharing, I think. Without further a due, let us proceed onward.


The enormous Sunshine 60 (the number a reference to the number of floors) houses an observatory at the top, allowing one to take in a 360 degree panoramic view of Tokyo as seen from the top of Sunshine City. It's almost surreal. The elevator travels the 60 floors in just a little over 15 seconds. It's fast as hell. My ears popped. But here's what you get once you're at the top!


 You can click on any of the pictures to make them bigger. Clockwise, starting from the left of this text, is East, South, North and West. The weather condition wasn't the best, but you do get a sense of the size of the city. There's no end in sight!

 On the East picture you can see the Sky Tree! It's the world's current tallest tower. To the South is Shinjuku, that small amassing of gigantic skyscrapers near the center of the pic. To the North, just barely visible, is the Nikko Mountain Range.

So that was quite nice. But my visiting of Sunshine City didn't end here. On my way out of the complex, something caught my eye. It was an ad for a "Cat Lounge" called Nekobukuro. I just had to visit.
 As the name "Cat Lounge" would imply, it was basically a place where you could just sit down or stand around while surrounded by something like 25 cats going in and out of the various rooms. There was a system of catwalks and ramps and bridges and holes in the walls that allowed the felines to flow from one place to another. So I basically paid 6$ to go in and pat twenty cats in twenty minutes.

Technically, there's no limit as to how long you can stay inside (their advertising even mentions this) so you really can just sit down and stay there for hours, if you so choose. As a matter of fact, I did stumble upon a few people sleeping on the chairs. The cats themselves are extremely chilled out, and I'm pretty sure they handpicked the most relaxed and non-aggressive cats they could find.
All in all, Sunshine City was pretty cool even though my visit was brief. I'll probably come back when I'm done being single or whatever.