Shinjuku Nightlife

We set out from the hotel in Nishi-Shinjuku for a walk to the Shinjuku area (non train station, as that's all we see of the area lately). We passed an odd LOVE statue. No description or reasoning for it being there, so we plopped down Andrew and snapped a photo anyway.


The Shinjuku nightscene is breathtaking. Very much like being in the middle of New York City. People everywhere, lights upon lights upon lights on every corner, every building, and every bike. There were people in the middle of the streets trying to encourage people into their bars, restaurants and karaoke places. By the way, did you know that karaoke in Japanese means empty orchestra (空 kara, "empty" or "void", and オーケストラ ōkesutora, "orchestra")?



Restaurants, bars, stores and pachinko parlors are so crammed into the streets of Tokyo, that it is not unusual to find them located on floors other than ground level. Many TINY stairways lead up and down, or into small buildings with elevators to take you to your desired floor.


The Golden Gai (golden district) area of Shinjuku is a bar district. There are rows and rows of alleys with teeny tiny "themed" bars in all manners of crevices (a couple hundred total, at least). The map below shows you just how many bars are crammed into the area (each of the little rectangles is an individual bar). Many of the bars are only big enough to seat a dozen or even less patrons at any given time. I had no idea they were so small! Photo number two shows a peek inside one of the many bars, this one happened to be empty as it was not quite time for Golden Gai to be bustling (we did have Andrew out, ya know).