Shinjuku Station　新宿所

Shinjuku Station is going to EAT THE UNIVERSE. It may have already done so. The station proper is enormous, with somewhere between ten and twenty commuter train, express train, Shinkansen, and subway lines running through it. At every hour of the day or night, it swarms with tightly packed masses of commuters. But the station is also an enormous underground complex containing ticket offices, vending machines, pedestrian walkways, and shopping malls. This makes it difficult to know where, exactly, you are. You can be walking along a street, and go down a flight of stairs in what seems like a sidewalk, and discover that you’re actually in a mall. Or you can be in an underground walkway and discover you’re actually on a street. And I’m not positive I’ve actually been in a building in central Shinjuku which isn’t in some sense part of the train station. Every single mall and multistory department store is either inside the station or joins up with it underground; every city block has an entrance to the subway part of the station. And our map showed at least four buildings (several blocks apart) which are simply labeled “Shinjuku Station,” as if that distinguished them. There’s no escaping it.

The Station is probably one of those architectural achievements which is impossible to appreciate fully because it’s impossible to stand still for long (although much longer than at, say, the fish market). Our first time there, we quickly exited through the New South Exit and crossed the pedestrian bridge to hotel. We checked in and unpacked, and then headed out to find dinner in the neon jungle of Shinjuku.