Ikebukuro Babylon

On my way to and from the station in the morning there's one building I pass by that I always found really fascinating, it's placed just in the borderline from where the nightlife area stops and the resedential area begins. It's the building in the picture and it's been closed the whole time I've lived in the area and from the looks of it it hasn't been used for many many years.

From the looks of it, it used to host a number of snack bars (or so-called hostess bars) but probably due to being placed too far away from the main drinking area the building and its clubs never really did good business and the place closed down. I like the whole tackiness and aura of decadence of the building and the architects surely deserve a prize of some kind for this effort.

However, just recently they opened up the bottom floor for a garage sale, selling out some of the furniture and other stuff that probably has been used to decorate the clubs it once hosted and the stuff in there is pretty fascinating. Among the more interesting stuff was one fully sized stuffed deer, one bear and several smaller alligators. The utter tackiness and bad taste of it all really appeals to me, surely this must've been the Babylon of Ikebukuro in it's heyday.