Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Beyond

I've already written about how we enjoyed cherry blossom season in Tokyo. I've written about the historic Asakusa area and its spectacular Senso-ji Temple. Not to mention wacky Harajuku and the equally manic must-see, Tsukiji Fish Market.

All that remains is to talk about the areas of Shinjuku and Shibuya, as well as a little-known tip for a quiet escape from the crowds that you'll definitely find there.

Shinjuku

Shinjuku is bustling, it's buzzing, it's vibrant - no, let's just call it what it is: really, really busy! But did that stop us from enjoying it? Nope. It probably helped that we explored it with the help of a local guide, a guy named Yu who spent most of his college years living in the area and knew maybe too much about its charms and its vices. Shinjuku is known for its neon, its 'host' and 'hostess' bars and its karaoke bars and arcades that never sleep. We got to see all this on our tour, which we booked through Air BnB here.

-We visited Memory Lane, the nostalgic alleyway crammed to bursting with tiny yakitori joints. Yakitori are grilled meat skewers: we managed to score delicious pork belly, chicken, and mushroom ones while dodging the slightly more dubious varieties such as chicken liver, heart and skin. By the time we'd finished in Memory Lane, we smelled like human BBQs.

-We then headed to 'Godzilla Road', in the Kabukicho area. This collection of streets is made up of about 95% neon, it felt like. At the end of one of the most brightly-lit streets we encounted a life-sized replica of Godzilla, which 'chimes' every hour with music from the film, flashing eyes and steam erupting from its jaws. Yu told us about a friend who made the poor choice of staying in a hotel next to Godzilla. Luckily, the monster only roars during the day!

-In the Kabukicho area we also learned about the nightlife of the city: the karaoke bars where businessmen take their clients to loosen them up before a big deal, the arcades where we watched teenagers compete with lightning-quick reflexes in games we didn't understand, and the loud and smoky pachinko joints, the pinball-like game that is the closest thing to gambling in this country where gambling is illegal.

-We then entered the mysterious world of the host and hostess bar. Photos of women scandalously baring their...collarbones and androgynous-looking young men lined the walls, a menu from which the lonesome choose their companions. But hosts and hostesses are only selling one thing: conversation. People pay big money to spend an hour with a young, attractive stranger, chatting - probably flirtatiously, I'm sure....but that's all it ever is.

-Nearby, you can't miss the Robot Restaurant (literally - you can't miss it - it announces itself with ten-foot high rainbow neon letters). Outside, you can find two giant futuristic robot people, which makes for a quintessential (and free) photo if you don't want to fork out on tickets to the robot show. We didn't have time for the show, but we've heard from everyone we met that it's completely worth it!

-Finally, in a strange change of tone, we arrived at Isetan Food Hall, the basement of a classy department store selling strawberries that cost a hundred pounds, and melons that cost nearly a thousand. You can get anything here, as long as you have the money for it: I wanted to scoff everything in the huge patisserie section, but sadly left with nothing.

Shibuya

Not far from Shinjuku (by Tokyo's vast standards) is Shibuya, known for its ridiculous pedestrian crossing near the station. Thousands of tourists assemble to watch the 'Shibuya scramble' every day...which probably doesn't help with the congestion, now I think about it!

For a couple of hundred yen you can enter a viewing platform high above the crossing, at a place called Mag's Park, which you can find in an off-beat department store called Magnet. We went for sunset to make sure the neon was good and lit as we watched people scuttling like ants below us.

We then accidentally got ourselves an even better vantage point to watch the scramble when we stopped at a coffee shop a few floors down at the same department store. We somehow scored the best seats in the house, with a view directly facing the crossing. If you can find it, I'd totally recommend it as an alternative to the busy Starbucks branch that draws hundreds of tourists looking for an aerial view.

Escape the crowds...

After an evening in Shinjuku and Shibuya, we were craving some quiet, so we took a 30 minute train ride into Setagaya, in the suburbs, for two adorable attractions.

1. Shirohige's Cream Puff Factory, where we enjoyed cream puffs inspired by Studio Ghibli's My Neighbor Totoro. I really struggled to eat them because they were so darn cute.

2. Gotokuji Cat Temple. A relaxing half hour's walk to burn off the cream puffs took us to this unique temple, known as the origin of the lucky beckoning cat. According to legend, a lord stuck in an intense thunderstorm was invited into the temple by the temple's resident cat. And so the lucky cat was born. At this temple, you can meet hundreds if not thousands of them, in many different sizes.

3. Finally, on our way back into Tokyo we conveniently made one final stop at the Hie Shrine, in the Chiyoda area. If you don't get a chance to visit the famous red torii gates of Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, the Hie Shrine offers its very own version! it's certainly a scaled-down experience, but the crowds were thankfully non-existent, too!