Godzilla, king of Shinjuku

Starting a new week and still some Japan posts left to share, yay, right?

Today we are going for a short quick walk around Shinjuku, the famous Godzilla head neighborhood. This is our second time visiting Shinjuku, it may be surprising to read, but the first time we only got around Shinjuku Gyoen park and (by lack of awareness) we left out the northern area where the buzz of Shinjuku is more tangible.

So we knew that because third time is a charm, we specifically had to include Shinjuku in our planning to be able to finally see the Godzilla street in person. In addition, we decided to visit it during night-ish time so we could also see all the lights from the streets signs.

This area in Shinjuku is called Kabukicho and it’s actually considered a risqué area in Tokyo. I don’t want to use the word dangerous, because in Tokyo everything called dangerous is an overstatement. It’s an area with a few erotic establishments that are usually run by people that might try to rip some of the possible customers off with prices and such. As long as you are not interested in those places, you’ll be completely fine. In fact, we felt as secure as in any other part in Tokyo, only that I didn’t enjoy some of the girls photos they use as decoy. A part from that, there are also a lot (a lot!) of restaurants here, which is why this area is so busy!

Omoide yokocho

The famous Robot restaurant is just around the corner, but it’s something that has never raised our attention too much. Instead, we went for a walk to Omoide Yokocho, a small alley known for the little izakaya shops. One of the characteristics of this alley is that they change decoration every season, we found the sakura, of course! It’s so eye-catching to take pictures with all the red lanterns, but please mind the “no photo” signs on some stalls to avoid making the restaurants owners uncomfortable, nobody likes to see places like this ruined by rude tourists, right?

We didn’t have dinner here, we just (respectfully) peeked around to see how it looked like, maybe you have a good recommendation for a stall here? As a general suggestion, I would make sure to check out how clean the kitchen is, always a good advice for food in the street. Japan is always super clean, but hey, it won’t hurt to make a closer look before eating.

Do you like Shinjuku? I am more a Shibuya/Harajuku gal at heart, but again, one of my favorite places in Tokyo, the Gyoen park, is in Shinjuku.

Would love to read your thoughts!