Shinjuku

This morning I woke up and decided to visit the district I'm staying in. Last night I was too tired to really go out and check things out, so today was the first time I really got to walk around.

A couple of notes first: Most streets here do not have street signs. Only the streets with 4 lanes do. This makes for some frustrating navigation. Luckily there are street maps posted sporadically to help.

First, let's talk about my hotel. It is located near the train station. The nearest named street is koshukaido, which runs east-west, and is about 200 feet north my hotel. The room itself is fairly small, but definitely comfortable. There are a few interesting quirks about the room. First off, in order for any electricity to be available, the room key has to be inserted into a special slot. Other than that, it is basically a bed, a TV, and an area to use my laptop. Here is a video tour of my room. Sorry the video work is so shoddy.



For breakfast, I wussed out and had McDonalds, since there was one about 20 feet from my hotel. Not much here to say, but one thing I should point out is that this is a medium sized soda.














After breakfast, I began my tour of Shinjuku. The first area I visited was Shinjuku Gyoen, which is a park. Enterence fee was 200 yen, but it is a large park.
















Being that it is the winter, many of the plants were not blooming, and the grass was brown. That said, it was still beautiful.


























































The building in the above picture is a traditionally Japanese tea house. This is one of my favorite shots I took today. The signs posted near the pond's edge says there are turtles in the pond, but I didn't see any. Sorry Stephanie :(















This is a greenhouse inside the gyoen. Unfortunately it is closed right now for renovations, so I couldn't go inside.

The park was large enough to have several resting areas, bathrooms and even a resturant or two. Of course there were also vending machines.















Yes, I bought that cup of coke from a vending machine. 120 yen.

After I left the park, I backtracked about 33m to meijidori street. My destination was the hanazono-jinja, a Shinto shrine, which according to my guide book, is dedicated to the spirit of a 4th century Emperor who nearly killed off the Ainu people. I'll be honest, I was a little uncomfortable being here. I felt as if I was prostituting the local people's religion. That said, It was a very interesting experience. There were a lot of people there, one of the reasons probably being because it is still close to the new year, so people were making their new years prayers.














Shinto Priests were giving away a drink of some sort. I'm not sure what it was, to be honest, but if I had to guess it was a sort of rice milk. Whatever it was, it was very warm, very sweet, and very tasty. I donated 300 yen to them, which they thanked me greatly for(and watched intently as I drank their drink). Speaking of being stared at, I haven't been stared at as much as I expected. I did catch a woman telling her showing her 3 year old son what an American looks like (me). Her son was quite shy of me.
















There were special stands set up around the shrine for people to walk over and purify their hands. I was tempted to try it out, but didn't want to infringe anymore than I already was.















The main part of the Shrine was a up upon some high steps. People would walk up, pray, then pull a large rope, which rang a bell.



Also worth pointing out is that during the new year, people can write prayers, and have priests attach them to trees. This is suppose to give them luck in coming true.















After I left the shrine, I went south, looking for a large, 6 floor book store called Kunokuniya.














Other than being large, it wasn't too different from an American bookstore. One floor, however, was dedicated almost exclusively to english-learning products. CD players were playing various tapes, some of which were pretty funny to listen to. One in particular was teaching people how to say such phrases as "You are very pretty, would you like to have a drink with me," and "If you are interested in staying the night with me, I can give you my hotel room." Some businessmen were listening intently to that tape.

One thing I found interesting is that the bookstore was selling the English version of Shonen Jump, which is an adaptation of a popular manga magazine here in Japan. Immediately outside the back enterence to the bookstore I found a game store aptly called Game +. To my delight, they were advertising Dragon Quest IX.















The inside of the store was sort of similar to US gaming stores. Games were organized by system. Of interest was that Dragon Quest had its own section in the store. They even had copies of Dragon Quest VII, a nearly 10 year old game, for sale. I ended up buying a Dragon Quest IV DS players guide for about 1500 yen. It is quite nice, actually. Really great layout, lots of artwork. Much nicer than US players guides.














From here, I was starting to get tired from walking, so I started heading back towards my hotel. On the way, I found a large video game arcade. Most of the games inside were rhythm games. One in particular that seemed to be popular was a game where you play as a Taiko Drummer.
The game I was most interested in was Dragon Quest Monster Battle Road 2, which came out about 2 weeks ago. The game itself is quite simple. When you pay your money, you get a card with a monster on it. The card I got was of a monster called a Chimera. You insert it into a sword like device, which scans it and places the monster in the game. You then have it attack, and while you attack, you hit a button (or buttons) at a specific time to deal enough damage to your foe. You also have to hit the button(s) at an exact moment in order to block. I imagine the main draw of the game is the cards themselves, rather than the gameplay.
















There were lot of crane games inside the arcade, as well as vintage Space Invaders machines, mostly, as the posters all over the arcade pointed out, it is the 30th anniversary of Space Invaders.

After the arcade, I went to a large department store called the Takashimaya Times Square. Think of it as a giant Macy's. There were at least 13 floors. The floor I was interested in was the 11th, though. Like an idiot, I ignored my father's advice before I had left, and did not buy an adapter to turn power outlets from 2 prong to 3 prong. I should point out that ALL outlets here are 2 prong. Therefore, I was mortified when I realized my laptop charger wouldn't work. However, I was able to find a prong adapter at the Takashiyama store. So word of advice: When your father has been to a foreign country that you haven't been to, listen to his advice. All in all, the adapter set me back about 435 yen, so it wasn't too expensive.

A couple of miscellaneous notes: First off, there does not seem to be any homeless people here. I mean, I'm sure there has to be, but they stay quite hidden. I only saw one in all of my walking around today, and he was hanging out near the Shinjuku train station. He wasn't bothering anyone for change. In fact, he was trying to make himself as invisible as possble. Also, the Japanese public appear to be in love with the song "Canon in D". I've seen played in at least 4 different TV commercials, as well as played by randomly while walking in the streets. Also: Japanese KFC.














It is about 6:3o right now, so I'm going to go out and get some dinner, then walk around a bit more, checking out the nightlife. I might post again tonight.