24 hours in Shinjuku, Tokyo
Tokyo is Japan’s capital city and the worlds most populous metropolitan area. The metro area of Tokyo has over 37 million people. Simply put, Tokyo is huge! It’s a high-tech, modern, and wealthy city that is separated into several districts. One of those districts is Shinjuku. Obviously, you can’t see all of Shinjuku in just a day or even a weekend, but we only had one day in Shinjuku. This is how we spent 24 hours in Shinjuku Tokyo.
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Surprisingly, this was our first “real” time in Tokyo. We’ve transited through Tokyo, and even had lunch at Tokyo Station but I wouldn’t really count that as a visit. When first coming to Japan we told ourselves that when we do international travel, we’ll tack on an extra day and explore a new district of Tokyo. But then Covid happened and Tokyo was restricted to us, so we never really had a chance to visit until now.
For 4th of July weekend, we hiked Mt. Fuji, and before departing back to Okinawa, we had a whole night and day set aside to visit Tokyo. By researching Tokyo, we wanted to stay in a busy district, a district that represents the Tokyo you see on television. The huge skyscrapers, flashing lights, noisy and annoying sounds, hoards of people crossing the street, and oh yes, the food! Based on this, we chose to stay in the Shinjuku District of Tokyo.
We arrived at Shinjuku Station (According to Guinness World Records, this is the world’s busiest train station), hotel check-in wasn’t until 1500, so we had a couple hours to kill. We made our way to Meiji Jingu, which is a Shinto Shrine by Yoyogi Park. Technically, this area is in the Shibuya District, but it was within walking distance from the Shinjuku Station.
Yoyogi Park and Meiji Jingu
Yoyogi Park is one of the largest parks in Tokyo. This park is expansive with many open spaces, gardens, trails, and it’s next to the Meiji Jingu Shrine. The Meiji Jingu Shrine is a Shinto Shrine that was built and dedicated to Emperor Meiji and his wife.
After a visit to the shrine, we walked over to the Meiji Jingu Gyoen Gardens. The garden was so peaceful, it was hard to believe the hustle and bustle of the worlds largest city was just beyond the trees. The garden was quiet as we walked the many paths to the pond. Once at the pond we saw a snake soaking up the sunlight. I believe it was a rat snake, but so surprised to see a snake and other reptiles in the middle of Tokyo.
Kabukicho - Entertainment District
Kabukicho is the entertainment and night life district of Shinjuku. Tokyo’s largest red light district is here as well. Compared to the red light district of Amsterdam or the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, Germany, the red light district here was pretty mild and relaxed.
When you picture Tokyo – the flashing lights, skyscrapers, and huge pedestrian zones, this area is that image. We walked around here both during the day and night and the people watching and window shopping did not disappoint. We didn’t really have a plan here other then walk around and experience Tokyo as a pedestrian.
Unfortunately, because of Covid, restaurants and bars had to close at 2000, so it wasn’t as crowded and noisy as we expected. Because of this, it didn’t really feel like the Tokyo we expected, which could be a bad or good thing!
Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden
Another surprise, was the amount of parks and green spaces in Tokyo. I thought Tokyo was supposed to be a huge concrete jungle with not a tree in sight. I was wrong, as streets were lined with trees and there were parks everywhere.
The morning of our departure back to Okinawa, we visited Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. For ¥ 500, we walked around this park for a solid three hours. The park is 58.3 hectares or 144 acres and has more then 20,000 trees and several large ponds. There is a green house here as well with several tropical and subtropical plant species. There is a beautiful Taiwanese Tea House here called Kyu-Goryo-Tei, that was so picturesque.
I love wildlife and the garden was home to many interesting turtle species. I love the softshell turtles, below is a photo of a softshell turtle and a photo of me taking a photo of a turtle!
Jill spotted this spider while I was taking photos of some carp. No idea what type of spider this is, but I like the creepy shadow he made.
- Interested in spending more then 24 hours in Tokyo? Check out this post by Joey on How to Spend Four Days in Tokyo.
Food and Restaurants
Finding delicious food in Shinjuku is not a difficult task. There seemed to be thousands of restaurants lining the streets. Don’t forget to look up, as most buildings have restaurants on multiple levels. With the variety and amount of restaurants in one place, how do you even decide?
Honestly, we tried not to think to hard about it. When we first arrived, I was in the mood for ramen, so we popped in the first restaurant we saw, Keika Ramen. I had a miso broth ramen that was delicious. Jill got a bib because she had a white shirt on!
For dinner, we were craving pizza. Looking at Google Maps, there was a pizza restaurant nearby named Kuroneko which translates to “Black Cat.” The pizza’s were tiny but man they were delicious!
Kuroneko’s pizza were very satisfying, they also had fun cat decorations around the restaurant including the bathroom. Here is a photo of their menu, we got a good laugh from it.
For breakfast, if our hotel doesn’t have breakfast, we usually try and find a local bakery. The Bakeries in Japan are amazing. They have a good mix of savory and sweet pastries. The only negative thing is most don’t open until 9 or 10 am. Luckily we found a cute bakery down the street called Little Bakery at 3-chrome with tasty treats, they opened at 8:00 am.
There was an Ikea near the hotel, so for second breakfast, we couldn’t resist a plate of their famous Swedish Meatballs. By the way, they taste the same everywhere you are.
Finally, before heading to the train station, we found an Izakaya serving up great local Japanese set meals. These are our favorite meals here because you get a main course, with rice, soup, and veggies. All this for under ¥1000 a person!
Skymark Pikachu Aircraft
We flew Skymark, which is a Japanese budget airline. The company has an event called Pokémon Air Adventures and their goal is to make people happy by seeing Pikachu in the sky. We were lucky enough to be on one of the Pikachu Jets on our return flight. At the airport, the ticket booth, even the tickets have Pikachu on them. The airplane is decked out with Pikachu. While inside, the headrests and even the stewardess aprons had Pikachu on them. The best thing was that Pikachu spoke through the intercom after announcements!
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