Proper bo' cityscape Shinjuku

Eternally busy
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After an extremely late lie in, we decided to explore Shinjuku, a bustling center of Tokyo to see the bright lights of the city.  We'd memorised how to ask "do you speak English?" naively assuming that because there were English translations in the ticket office, we'd be fine.  It turns out, no one understood English, so after a bit of bumbling through our phrase book, we finally secured our train tix!  Unfortunately we didn't know there was an express, so our journey took a good 1hr 15mins, but it was fine due us getting to witness the sights of Tokyo businessmen & women falling asleep & inadvertently falling asleep on other's should and occassionally slabbering!

South exit of Shinjuku...GIANT buildings and no earthquake...phew!
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Upon alighting the train and feeling like lab rats in a maze inside Shinjuku station, we finally found the East exit, stepped outside and we were greeted by the dizzying heights of Tokyo!!  Massive buildings with even bigger electricity bills; tv screens larger than vanessa feltz in contrast to the teeny, tiny standing restaurants selling things we couldn't identify!  We finally felt like we were actually here.

Luckily there were no earthquakes when we were in this impressive building.

Walkway leading to the Shrine, with Jodie B just out of shot.
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Wandered about, marvelling at the excess surrounding us (size, money, shops), and we managed to find our first Shinto Shrine, Hanazono-Jinja.  Located just off one of the main streets, this Shrine is quite close to the saucy part of Tokyo and is therefore used for many requests of a dodgy nature haha!  the place was gorgeous though...strange to think of it's location when you're looking at something so traditional, in amongst the most modern of modern!

We spent time exploring the maze of alleyways known as Kabuki-cho...aka the entertainment district aka red light district!  We were there pretty early so it was quite tame; we saw the escort bars and 'gentlemen's clubs'.  Merged in with the dodgy clubs were tiny, hole-in-the-wall restaurants and massive 6 floor buildings dedicated to gaming!  6 floors isn't really massive in Tokyo standards, but when it's dedicated to computer games, I think that's pretty huge!!  As mentioned in yesterday's blog, we're still trying to get to grips with written Japanese; we checked out several wee restaurants as most have plastic versions of dishes in the window, but we weren't sure what was contained in the dish, so we wimped out and settled for some Indian food!  Hahaha!  We will eternally be lovers of the curry!  Ate our fill and chatted to the lovely wee man (from Kolkatta), then we headed to a game place so Jodie could get it out of his system.  He paid 100 yen to play Streetfighter IV, and ended up playing for almost half an hour.  I was extremely proud of him; several folk joined the game (on the console behind his) to fight him, and he bet almost everyone haha!!  Then a wee Japanese guy jumped on and only just managed to beat Jo!  Once Jodie had finished flexing his virtual muscles, we took a walk to the West exit of Shinjuku and checked out the massive Tokyo Metropolitan Government building, reason being it had a free observation point on the 45th floor!  The walk took us through the business district, which was as you'd expect - full to the gunnels of skyscrapers and suits!!

A shrine! Ta-daaa! We think that man was requesting something legitimate...he didn't appear to be dodgy
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Arrived at the Tokyo Met, jumped in the lift (we didn't actually jump, we walked), our ears popped 4 times and we were up on the 45th floor!  Only took about 10 seconds which is quite scary I think!  Luckily there were no earthquakes when we were in this impressive building...it was massive!  By this point it was dark outside, so we so Tokyo night-time...lights, lights and more lights!  And in true Tokyo style, there were two toy shops up on this floor...they sell some rubbish here hahahahah!  It was great to look out over Tokyo, and we might even go up again to check  out Tokyo during the day, as apparently you can see Mount Fuji on a clear day!

Blurry close-up o' the shrine...chuck your money in, ring the bell, clap twice and the Gods'll fix it for you a la Jim'll fix it.
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Headed back to Atsugi having just missed the commuter rush, met up with Mark and his ladyfriend Atsuko for a while, and before we knew it, it was 2am!  A good day!