An Expat’s Guide to Shinjuku: Tokyo High City and Low
Shinjuku is Tokyo’s coolest neighborhood, and should be the first stop for any visitor to The Big Sushi
There’s an anything-goes feeling to the place.
I have always loved the Shinjuku neighbourhood of Tokyo. This part of The Big Sushi, as I like to call Tokyo, was the setting for many of my urban adventures when I first arrived from Hokkaido 20+ years ago. Even now, despite the shifting tides and fortunes of other parts of the city, chiefly the massive — and ongoing — development around Shibuya Station, and tourist distractions such as Tokyo Skytree, I still maintain that a walk around Shinjuku Station is a circumnavigation of everything Tokyo has to offer, big city and small.
Herein, a colourful introduction and guide to my favourite part of the world’s greatest megacity.
From time to time, the question arises on travel discussion forums: which is the “best” neighbourhood in Tokyo? Never mind the vagueness of the question. If I had, say, 24 hours in Tokyo, I’d head to Shinjuku, a city-within-a-city. There’s no better place to get a feeling of 36 million people living together Blade Runner-style than in this west-end microcosm of The Big Sushi.
