West Shinjuku - October 12, 2007

I start work at 5pm on Fridays. That is pretty cool even if I don’t get home until 9pm. It gives me an extra chance to squeeze in some sightseeing that might not have been done on my normal weekend (Tuesday and Wednesday). It also lets me go back to some place where we went before, and take better pictures or video that I wasn’t able to get earlier because of my camera. Now that I have a new battery, I thought that I would try it out to see how well the pictures turn out.

I started the day by going to the Meiji Shrine again. The first day that we went there, my camera battery died, so I didn’t get the pictures that I wanted. Today I was very happy with the way my camera worked, and the pictures that I took, and the video that I shot. Because I already wrote about the Meiji Shrine, I will not write too much more about it right now.

Later, I decided to go to West Shinjuku. Last time that we went to Shinjuku, we stayed on the east side of the station, which was all flashing lights and that sort of energy. The west side is the more business part, with skyscrapers and official buildings. I wanted to see the different architecture that they have here. I don’t know the names of the different buildings, but I was impressed with what I saw. I was even excited to see what I recognized as a Norman Foster designed building that I did not know was there. It was still being built, and was not finished, but still looked finished enough for me to appreciate.


After walking around this skyscraper district, I went across to the east side of Shijuku to visit a bookstore. My friend, Matt, told me that the Kinokuniya there had a big English section, so I wanted to check it out. I like hanging out at bookstores, and seeing what’s new, and what I might want to read. We went to one bookstore, and they only had one bookshelf dedicated to English language books. This bookstore had about a third of a floor dedicated to English books, with a whole aisle on books on Japan (history, language, and literature). There was more that I saw here on Japan than I have found in all of the American bookstores that I have been to. I was very happy, and felt that I should hurry up and read the books that I have so that I could have a good reason to go out and buy some other things to read. I basically have two books to finish, that are both about half done, so now I am trying to read fast so that I could get some new books.