shinjuku (Page 12)
Photos show just how much the capital of Japan and the King of the Monsters have grown in 60 years.
Exact makeup of strange liquid still unknown.
Neapolitan-style pizza comes to Shinjuku, with fully customisable pies baked from raw to crisp perfection in only one minute using wood-burning ovens.
Tokyo’s historic drinking district is sitting on prime real estate, and that’s got people thinking…
Everyone’s favourite tokusatsu titan has a very important message for the people of Shinjuku this week.
Pom Pom Purin celebrating 20th birthday in grand style in Shinjuku Station, adorable butthole and all…
Let your smartphone take the guesswork out of finding your way around Shinjuku and Tokyo Stations.
Popular anime shop Animega makes up their New Year lucky bag with all our favourite Sailor Moon characters, including Luna the cat.
Experience the samurai spirit first-hand with original swords and armour at the recently opened Samurai Museum.
The attraction will task guests with navigating a compound using their wits and spy skills and will even feature a laser tripwire obstacle course. A LASER TRIPWIRE OBSTACLE COURSE!
On vacation in Tokyo but feeling a little “lost in translation”? Well, if you’ve got the cash to splash, why not make your Japan experience even more memorable by paying homage to the classic comedy-drama of the same name by staying at the Park Hyatt Hotel, considered by some to be Tokyo’s best luxury hotel.
For those who are extremely fortunate, as one Reddit user recently found, you might even score a fabulous night in the suite used by Bill Murray in the movie.
You never know what you might find when you’re walking the streets of Tokyo. You could stumble upon nine cats in a stroller along the Omotesando shopping strip or enjoy a chance encounter with costumed meerkats on a sunny street in Ginza.
But it’s beneath the city where the big surprises lie. For the rest of this week, deep within the underground labyrinth of passages, shops, and platforms that make up Shinjuku Station, you’ll find a huge black cat. And this particular feline is especially spectacular as it responds to a nose rub by opening its mouth and dispensing presents to passers-by.
Makeup is big business in Japan, where there’s almost a cultural obsession with the stuff. But the demand for makeup and beauty products also means, through the magic of capitalism, that it also tends to be a lot more expensive out here than in, say, the US. I’ve personally never purchased or used makeup, outside of, obviously, those Halloween Rocky Horror Picture Show events, so I couldn’t tell you exactly how much the average woman in Japan spends on makeup, but it’s gotta be somewhere in the ballpark of, hmm, approximately their entire paycheck every month.
Luckily, there appears to be a “lounge” in Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood that is sympathetic to the thorough wallet-denting women must endure in the pursuit of beauty, offering all-you-can-apply Chanel makeup at just 300 yen (US$2.50) an hour. A service with “all-you-can-(verb)” in the description? You bet we went to check it out!
Japan has spent just about all week getting drenched by a pair of typhoons that have decided to leisurely make their way across the country’s skies. Thankfully, there hasn’t been any significant damage in the Tokyo area, but whenever there’s heavy rainfall, you can expect local news outlets to send a camera crew to check on conditions at one of the capital’s major rail hubs.
Last night, a team sent to Shinjuku Station brought back footage of all the things viewers have come to expect from such reports. The camera’s lens capturing soaked commuters caught without an umbrella and concerned travelers watching the display boards for word about whether their train lines were still running…oh, and also a crazed, sunglass-wearing guitarist who insisted on being heard and in-frame.
Cosplay has certainly become of Japan’s most well-known and loved subcultures, exploding on the world stage partly thanks to the Internet and partly thanks to the ingenuity of many of its most fervent participants. Despite this, it can still be difficult to find and make friends in the cosplay community if you’re coming in alone, as with any other subculture. But it doesn’t need to be that way! The Japanese cosplay community is just that — a community — and some of its members are working to make sure people can get together and cosplay as often as possible.
Perhaps the most relaxed way to join the fun is to take part is Shinjuku CosKara, or Shinjuku Cosplay Karaoke! While singing in front of others might set your nerves on edge, the events are organized so that people can come, have fun, take lots of cool photos, and make friends. You needn’t worry about your warbling offending anyone either; half the fun of karaoke is doing it badly with a giant grin! So, come along as we take a look at the event and talk to some local cosplayers!
You could make a long list about all the ways Japan is uniquely awesome (and as a matter of fact, we just did), but it’s not like every aspect of life in Japan is more enjoyable than in other countries. For example, taking care of paperwork at city hall or other government facilities is as boring as it is anywhere else in the world.
So why is it that this week people have been voluntarily visiting the Shinjuku ward office in the heart of Tokyo? Because they want to get a copy of the official residency document of the district’s newest resident, Godzilla!
Spring is a time for new beginnings as well as a great time to open new shops and businesses, and people are eager to escape from their apartments where they spent most of the winter season. Luckily, there are plenty of grand openings everywhere you turn this time of year, which is why our intrepid writers were met with a 100-plus-person line at the new Hooters location near the West Entrance of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station on May 18.
They couldn’t make it into the restaurant on opening day, so they decided to go back the next day, with a twist! What better way to enjoy the newest Hooters restaurant in Japan than by cosplaying the Hooters costume?
Is it just me, or are cakes these days starting to look less and less… cakey? With all sorts of techniques, tools, and ingredients at their fingertips, it seems like bakers can now turn cake into pretty much anything, as we’ve seen before from this cake shop in Shinjuku, that sells cakes disguised as Chinese food (you can even learn to make a bowl-of-ramen cake yourself here).
Now, that same shop, called Maplies, has come out with yet another tricky treat that looks exactly like maguro-don, a rice bowl with slices of tuna sashimi on top!
When we reported a while back about the giant Godzilla head that has taken up residence atop a Shinjuku skyscraper, we also mentioned how a nearby hotel, the Hotel Gracery Shinjuku, has been quick to set up special Godzilla Viewing Rooms to cash in on its proximity to the fanged monstrosity. Naturally, we headed over there as soon as we could to get a good look at that ugly ol’ head up close and personal!
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