Tokyo Trip part 9

Just north of Yoyogi Park is Shinjuku, which is a completely different type of neighborhood from Shibuya. It might as well be a different city. We almost chose a hotel in Shinjuku before we found the Shibuya apartment. Ryan and Kevin liked the red light district in Shinjuku, but Lily & I thought it looked like some kind of cartoon neighborhood. It was more like some weird Disney Toon Town than a sexual haven. It was funny because other parts of Shinjuku were more of a serious business area while a lot of Shibuya was like a cartoon town. I thought they should have put the red light district in Shibuya and our apartment street in Shinjuku.

Shinjuku also has one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo, the Metropolitan Government Building, which is probably a great place to see views of Tokyo. Unfortunately, we went in between storms, so we never saw Mt Fuji. Supposedly, you can see it very well from the observation deck, which is completely free to enter, but only on a clear day. We almost went to the Tokyo Skytree, which is the second largest tower in the world, but it was too cloudy to make it worthwhile. We would have had great views of fog.

We went to other areas of Tokyo, of course, but we spent most of our time in Shibuya and Shinjuku.

We spent a tiny amount of time in Chiyoda, home to the Imperial Palace. You need a reservation to go inside the Imperial Palace, and there are a million blackout dates, so we just looked at the outside. It is probably far more impressive inside.

Minato is an enormous district with far more than anyone can see in one trip. Even if we had stayed in a hotel there, we would barely know the place. The main tourist sight is Tokyo Tower, a slightly taller version of the Eiffel Tower. Everyone told us the views are better from the Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku, though again, only on clear days.

Chuo is a tiny district, by Tokyo standards, but home to the Ginza. By day, the Ginza is a shopper's paradise. It is Tokyo's version of New York's Fifth Avenue, Paris' Champs-Élysées and Amsterdam's PC Hooftstraat all rolled into one. By night, it is an epileptic's worst nightmare. The sensory overload from the lights alone is enough to give you seizures. Tokyo has about nine million people. The lights and noise of the Ginza make it feel like all of them are on a single street at any given time.