Next stop Shinjuku. On all Japanese trains it is not difficult to find your way, even for those who know no Japanese at all. In all stations signs and names of stations are written both in Japanese characters and in letters –here called romaji. The female registered voice announcing stations and changes will speak to you also in English. If this were not enough, every station, also the smallest ones, are full of personnel ready to help you out –up to the point to accompanying you to the places you are looking for or to explain anything in details using the international sign language.
Let’s take the Yamanote and get off in Shinjuku, in the fourth of circle located on the bottom to the left. We will find a station too big to be understood. It is the biggest station in Japan for number of passengers, with more than three million people passing here every day. During rush hours you will have to raise your elbows to make your way to the trains. Impossible to understand its geography, just look at the indications that will take you to your train or to your exit. Something that will also help you is that in every station you will find indications to reach virtually any place of interest in the area. Furthermore, at every exit you will find a map, but be careful: for some reason which I cannot understand, Japanese maps sometimes have the North pointing down, or left, or right. So make sure you check where the North is or you might find yourself wandering in a circle for hours.
If you get to Shinjuku with the Yamanote and take the stairs from the platform to the station, you will get to a long and broad corridor. On one side all exits on the West side, on the other the ones on the East side. If you go out on the West side you will find a world full of skyscrapers and post-modern architecture, flowing buildings made of mirrors and bending towers. It is a rather quiet area, full of offices, upscale hotels, business restaurants. One of the towers hosts the Metropolitan Governemnt offices. It is the highest building in the area and if you climb up to the top (the entry is free) you will be able to appreciate a stunning view of the city, both daytime and nighttime. If the weather is particularly fine you will also see Mount Fuji as a background to Shinjuku. A very fast elevator that will make your ears feel weird will take you to the top in less than a minute.
On the other hand, if you take one of the exits on the East side you will face a chaotic world: big shopping malls with tenths of young people wearing the shops’ uniforms screaming to you the offers of the day. A chaos of lights, noises, bars, restaurants, cars, big screens.
Five minutes from the east exits of Shinjuku station you will also find Kabuki-cho, an area that takes its name from the kabuki theater, but that is actually the red lights district of Tokyo. It is worth a visit. Do not expert Amsterdam: nothing in Japan is exposed but rather hidden by a wall –even if it is just made of paper. It is a different area, full of gentlemen’s clubs, massage centres, love hotels and much more. What is actually surprising is the very natural way many people pass through this very central area of Tokyo with the same air as they were having a walk in Yoyogi park or in a shopping mall.
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