Shinjuku

Tokyo is not a small city. In fact, it is very large and spread out. I didn’t anticipate this, and so when we set out to walk from Ikebukuro to Shinjuku, it didn’t seem that the walk would take about an hour. We were very tired and worn out before long, but we were determined to get there.

By the time we got to Shinjuku, it was worth the tiring trek. Surrounding the train station in the middle were tall buildings covered with colorful signs and lights and television screens. It seemed to me like the typical Tokyo scene that I was waiting to see.

Having walked through two main areas of Tokyo by now, we noticed that Pachinko parlors are popular. I had seen some travel documentaries, and read in books about them, but I didn’t really grasp how prevalent they were. Basically, Pachinko is a form of slot machine, except instead of pulling a lever, the player drops ball bearings from the top, and watch as they fall and bounce down the pinball-like machine, and hope that they fall in the right places to win. The parlors are filled with colorful flashing lights, and outside, the entrances are covered by banners that feature all sorts of different cartoon characters.

Walking down a pedestrian street, I saw a guitar store, which made me very excited. I went inside and looked around. I felt confident enough about my Japanese that I asked if I could play a guitar. Before I left, I bought some strings for the guitar that I brought here (now if I could only find a screwdriver to put it together).

The guide book said that there was more things to see, such as temples, or whatever, but we didn’t really care much for that today; we just wanted to walk around and see as many different areas as possible, and feel their relation to one another. Despite that, on our way south towards Shibuya, we came upon another Buddhist temple. This one was bigger and had more elaborate decoration than the one we saw around Ikebukuro. Again, there were very few people inside the grounds, but we walked around anyway. The people who were there may have minded, but they didn’t tell us so, so we stayed. Like the last temple, there was what seemed to be a cemetery in the back. I suppose that this is standard fare for Buddhist temples.