Winter 2011.
Shinjuku, a major commercial and administrative hub where the busiest train station can be found in world; the Shinjuku Station. With a population density of estimated 17,000 persons per km sq. The Shinjuku station is the epicenter of the ward. Surrounded by hotels, department stores, electronic shops, camera shops, restaurants, bars, the list is long! This place alone is so huge that it may take up to weeks to explore. I’m definitely going back there again the next time I hit Tokyo.
The first place I wanna go when I got to Shinjuku was to locate this famous tempura restaurant called Tsunahachi that I read about in the guide book. Unfortunately I failed to locate the place. According to the map, I was already standing on the spot. But this seems to be the only tempura restaurant there! The guidebook said it’s in a pre-war building. This didn’t look like a pre-war building to me. But what the heck. I gave up, I was hungry so I just went in and had my lunch. 😋
The menu looks yummie. Man my first thought was to try everything but heck I can’t eat them all! Price looks decent!
After 5 minutes of hard thinking of what I’m gonna order, I decided to go for this! I don’t know what’s its called, I can’t read the menu so I just smiled and pointed at the dish.
And here it is! Nice and warm! But man! It’s huge!! The thing I love about Tokyo is that every restaurant you go, green tea is the default drink they serve for free and its refillable! Took me a while to finish this meal but it was yummie! The prawn is really fresh and big, the vege fresh like it was just harvested from the garden and, man, Japanese rice is shagtastic! For the price I paid, I think its worth it. No way in Malaysia will you get tempura this nice and such large portions for the price. 😋
The name of the place is called Tempura Tendon Tenya. I don’t know the name of the street it’s on coz all the street’s name are in Japanese. So GPS coordinates are all I can provide.
GPS : 35.690457, 139.704136
Had my lunch! Now it’s dessert. I headed over to this camera shop opposite the tempura restaurant to check out what they have.
They have pretty good stock of used cameras. All ranges. There’s even a super bargain basket with a pile of used old SLRs going as low as JPY 2,000.
Love this cool bike! It looks fat! Check out the chick riding it with heels yo!
A bundle shop selling used designer bags.
Another camera shop with lots of used item in stock. Shinjuku is definately a place for collectors to shop for old cameras.
Erm…. I don’t know what to call this…
Advertisement?
On what? Movie? Services? A theatre?
Beer lovers would love this place.
Tokyo is a bicycle friendly city. It’s nice to see the mothers bringing their child on the bicycle to school and back.
You all know what this is. I don’t have to say it. Shinjuku is full of malls and boutiques.
This Miffy doll is nearly half my height.
The fish looking skyscraper. Shinjuku is the skyscraper ward of Tokyo due to its seismic stability.
Lawson is my favourite convenience store. It has everything! And I mean everything! I love the milk! I would buy their pastry every evening on my way back to my hotel and collect the Hello Kitty stickers that come with each pastry. The sandwich is good too! I mean they have everything!
❤ their school uniform.
Tokyo is a very clean city. The shop tenants would actually sweep up rubbish in front of their shop.
Tokyo is a signboard wonderland.
❤❤ her hair!
It’s nice to see women in their kimonos on the streets of Tokyo.
From the back.
From the front.
Cool leggings.
“What beer should I have?”
Captain Jack Sparrow!!
Japanese pastries anyone? Her voice is so cute!
I don’t know what they say but I just love how there are so many signboards in one place.
Entering the area called Kabukicho. I wonder what this place is selling. Ducky Duck. What a coincident, Kabukicho used to be a swamp area and was a duck sanctuary.
Nice outfit! I wonder if it’s a costume or just a really cool dress.
A friend wanted to lent me his bicycle, but I thought it would be better for me just to walk so I can take pix. Perhaps my next trip I’ll cycle around a bit.
I’m in ❤ their hair.
After the war, this devastated area was rebuilt and a theatre was planned to be built here. Hence the name Kabukicho which derived from the Japanese word kabuki for theatre. But the theatre was never built.
One of my favourite shots of the day. The Kimono girl.
This place looks naughty. I was curious but I didn’t go in.
In present day, Kabukicho is an entertainment and red light district. Also known as “Sleepless Town” by the locals, where there are lots of host and hostesses clubs, love hotels, bars, restaurants and night clubs.
Shinjuku is filled with colorful signboards every corner you turn there’s definitely colorful signboards.
Check out the tyres of this bike.
MERI KURISUMASU!
An information center. I was curious what sort of information it’s providing so I went in to check it out.
Information on escort services in Tokyo. According to the guy behind the info desk, these girls don’t do hanky panky stuff. No sex. Just basically to keep the client company.
A Hummer H2 parked outside a club. My gut feeling is that it belongs to a yakuza? Since this area yakuza territory.
I’m not sure what sort of place this is but seems naugthy. After all this is the red light district.
I believe this is the room rate for the love hotel.
This is the street with a lot of love hotels.
I wonder what the “O” stands for!
Most of these hotels don’t have a human receptionist. They run on vending machines. You select the type of room, the duration you want, insert payment and the keycard will be issued to you.
The Hummer bicycle.
Hello Kitty.
This street is literally cool. Was you walk along it, you can feel gusts of cold winter chill. This leads you to the next interesting part of Shinjuku, Golden Gai. Golden Gai is famous for it’s interesting decorations. It consists of 200 tiny shanty bars connected by 6 main small alley which is connected by even narrower passage ways that is just enough for 1 person to pass through.
It’s a popular hang out place for many artist, film makers, directors, actors, writers, musicians, academics, even local celebrities.
It consists of mainly tiny 2 storey buildings.
Each unit is really small. This is the width of 1 unit.
A Japanese fat meow.
Met a new friend Miko, a fat meow.
Miko belongs to one of the bar owner.
So round!! Sqeeze and shakes!!
OK, enough of Golden Gai. It’s time for dinner.
Pork ramen!! Ok that’s where I had my dinner! Hakata Tenjin.
GPS : 35.693294, 139.702202
The uncle cooking the ramen.
Serving the soup.
Adding the seaweed.
The pork!
And served!!
Yummie!!
Check out the unique spoon. It has edges so it’ll stay in place when placed on the bowl. Refer to the pix above. The uncle was so interested in where I’m from so after chatting with me, he actually made me another bowl of ramen and gave it to me free. But unfortunately I was already full too eat anymore.
This shop has a lot of piggie decorations.
It’s a very small but cosy shop.
Tokyo never ceases to amaze me with their street fashion. On my way back to Shinjuku station I saw this chick with her garter. Sexie!!
Here’s another shagtastic style. Even on the phone she look like she’s doing a pose!