Shinjuku itself was quite interesting and something of a cultural shock, you had to learn to look up at the sides of buildings as well as at street level as quite often the place you were looking for was located on one of the upper floors.  Until I realised this I spent quite a while searching for a particular restaurant eventually discovering it was on the 5th floor, buildings which are mixed use have special elevators that only go to the floors where the restaurants or shops are located.

I first went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building which has a public accessible observatory on the top of each of its two towers.  These are some of the views from there.

As this picture shows Shinjuku is a very “vertical” city and there are often snack bars or cafes in the most unexpected places, in the above photograph there is one under the blue sign (the Keio Sky Garden). It was very pleasant on a nice day.

The above is a view towards Tokyo showing one of the numerous open spaces in Shinjuku and the spread of tall buildings.

The above is a similar view but using a telephoto lens, the Tokyo Tower can be seen in the centre of the photo (to the left of the brown building) and in the distance is Tokyo Bay.  Unfortunately the day was very still and as a result was very hazy so that the bay is hard to make out.

The tall tower in the centre is the Tokyo Sky Tree which at 634m is the tallest free standing broadcasting tower in the world.  It is needed because as the number of very tall buildings have increased the Tokyo Tower is proving not tall enough to adequately support terrestrial digital broadcasting over the Tokyo area.  The “bumps” are the two observatories at 350 metres and 450 metres, the upper observatory features a spiral, glass-covered skywalk and a section of glass flooring to give visitors a direct downward view of the streets below.

Looking downwards it is possible to see that there is a river working its way through the centre of the photograph.

Another general view, somewhere in the distance there are mountains but they are mostly lost in the haze.

Now a complete change, visible from my hotel room was this - the Shinjuku Golden Gai.  It is composed of six narrow alleys with over 200 tiny shanty-style bars, clubs and eateries squeezed into the area.  Apparently in the 1980s many older buildings in Tokyo were set on fire by Yakuza so the land could be bought up by developers but the residents guarded the Golden Gai round the clock and it has survived.

The red and white building in the top centre is the Hanazono Shrine (it means Flower Garden) and there is a close up of it from my hotel room below.

This is the entrance to Hanazono Shrine - A Torii - it is a gate whose purpose is to divide our world from the spirit world (often described symbolically marking the transition from the profane to the sacred).

This is one of the buildings within the Hanazono Shrine.

Go to the East Garden page

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