Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Shinjuku is split in two by a thick band of train tracks. The western half,
Nishi-Shinjuku
,
with its soaring towers, including the monumental
Tokyo Metropolitan Government
Building
, is a showcase for contemporary architecture; the raunchier eastern side,
Higashi-Shinjuku
, is a nonstop red-light and shopping district - though it's also home to
one of Tokyo's most attractive parks,
Shinjuku Gyoen
. As you head west from the station,
the JR Chūō line will transport you to two must-see sights for anime fans: the
Suginami
Animation Museum
and the
Ghibli Museum
at Mitaka.
Brief history
The district takes its name from the “new lodgings” (
shin juku
) which were set up here in
the seventeenth century for travellers en route to Edo. It eventually evolved into one of the
city's six
licensed quarters
, catering mainly to the lower classes. By the late nineteenth
century, Shinjuku - nicknamed “Tokyo's anus”, due to the transportation of human waste
through its streets to the countryside - had the most prostitutes of any area in the city.
A turning point came in 1885 when the opening of the railway encouraged people to
move out of the city into the western suburbs. The commuters made Shinjuku the ideal
location for the department stores which sprang up here during the early twentieth
century. In the immediate postwar decades Shinjuku's seediness attracted a bohemian
population of writers, students and radical intellectuals, who hung out in its jazz bars
and coffee shops.
The area's first
skyscraper
, the 47-storey
Keiō Plaza Hotel
, opened in 1971 and was
swiftly followed by several more earthquake-defying towers, while Tange Kenzō's
To k yo
Metropolitan Government Building
set the modernist seal on the area two decades later.
11
Nishi-Shinjuku
West of the station,
Nishi
-
Shinjuku
is dominated by skyscrapers; the biggest of these is
the futuristic Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building complex, from which the city
is administered. Several have free observation rooms on their upper floors, along with
a wide selection of restaurants and bars with good views. Collectively, their impact is
striking, mainly because their scale, coupled with the spaciousness of the surroundings,
is so unusual for Tokyo - despite the recent boom of high-rise buildings across Asia,
this remains predominantly a low-rise city.
Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building
౦ژி
, Tōkyō Tochō • 2-8-1 Nishi-shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku; both observation rooms 45F • Tours Mon-Fri 10am-3pm; observation
rooms Mon-Fri 9.30am-10pm, Sat & Sun 9.30am-7pm • Free • Tochōmae station
Some 13,000 city bureaucrats clock in each day at the Gotham City-like
To k yo
Metropolitan Government Building
(TMGB), a 400,000-square-metre complex
MAKING SENSE OF SHINJUKU STATION
Shinjuku Station
is the busiest in the world, with an average of over 3.7 million people (that's
more than the population of Uruguay) passing through its gates every single day. Many visitors to
Tokyo erroneously assume that rail staff are employed to squeeze people onto crowded train
carriages - this only happens at rush-hour in very few stations, and Shinjuku is certainly one of them.
The station also features 36 platforms, and more than two hundred exits, so if you find yourself lost
and a little bewildered, nobody would blame you - unless you happen to be in their way.
The station is, in fact, comprised of three overland terminals (the main
JR station
, plus the
Keiō
and
Odakyū
stations beside their respective department stores on the area's west side)
and three connecting subway lines. There's also the separate
Seibu Shinjuku Station
,
northeast of the JR station. The rivers of people constantly flowing along the many
underground passages only add to the confusion. It's easy to get lost; if this happens, head
immediately for street level and get your bearings from the skyscrapers to the west.
