Shinjuku in the rain...

I headed down to Shinjuku today to visit one of the English-language bookstores and pick up some reading materials.

Shinjuku Station is huge. In Boston, the largest number of lines to cross at one station would be two. Three if you count the commuter rail. At Shinjuku Station eight subway lines meet and connect to each other. Two million people a day pass through one of its fifty entrances. For all intents and purposes it is an underground city within a city.

It is truly enormous, so it is no surprise that my guess as to the proper exit was not correct and I ended up on the opposite side of the station from where I wanted to be. It was raining, but I had my umbrella so this was not a problem.

Time for a small tangent on umbrellas. Everyone here uses them. Most often it is for the rain, but for many women it is also to protect themselves from the sun. Pale white skin is considered the ideal of feminine beauty. In some ways the exact opposite of the Western standard.

You are also expected to leave your umbrella in a drying rack when you enter most stores or buildings. That could never happen in most Western countries because the odds of your umbrella being there when you returned would be next to nil. In Japan, people regularly lose their wallets on the train, only to return to the station then next day to find that someone has turned it in at the ticket desk completely undisturbed, all money and credit cards still in place.

In Japan, even the criminals are organized (and can receive government pensions when they retire) and rarely stoop to petty crimes such as theft. The yakuza run the prostitution, extortion and gambling rackets. There is usually one outside of every pachinko parlor who will exchange your prize for yen.

Back to the story at hand

It was kind of cool that I did exit where I did emerge was preparing for some kind of festival. I don't know exactly what it is called, but there was a large mini-shrine, designed to be carried on the shoulders of several men, that was waiting to be picked up and marched around. I snapped a few pictures and went on my way, working my way through the main streets until I found the bookstore I was looking for, Kinokibuya. After deciphering that foreign books were on the seventh floor I made my way up and did some shopping. I picked up a Tokyo guide book, some kana and kanji guides and a few other books.

One was Dave Barry Does Japan, which I did not particularly enjoy. It seems that he came here simply to make fun of Japan. While he states his appreciation for many aspects of Japanese culture, it did not seem like he every gave himself the opportunity to appreciate and respect Japan for the differences it has with the West.

Another was Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which I have just started. I'll offer an opinion on it once I have finished it.

Mercifully I tracked down a second hand book store that sells English books. I spend almost \10000 in Shinjuku. Since I have no television and all of the television available is in Japanese (which I do not yet understand) I am going to be reading a lot more than I did in my first year of school. Which is a good thing.

Here is a picture of a portable shrine that was being prepared to be walked around the streets of Shinjuku. The police had started blocking off streets when I arrived.















And here is a blurry picture of what might be Japan's next equivalent to the Backstreet Boys. They were performing to a crowd of about thirty girls, but it was an enthusiastic crowd. They even had the hand gestures and faux hip hop attitude going.