Shinjuku-ku

Shinjuku-ku is allot like midtown Manhattan, except less noisy and the people are smaller. As promised, everyone is very helpful and friendly.This section of Tokyo has skyscrapers (even one that is supposed to look sort of like the Empire State Building – or maybe the Chrysler building – I think: a series of receding platforms topped by a spire with a clock, and decorated with angular elements meant, I suppose, to suggest flying buttresses, It is a kind of post-modernist mixture of gothic, art-deco, and Stalinist contructivism. It houses the national TV network, and it overlooks a big park (as does Paul’s apartment), which used to be reserved to the Imperial family, but is now open to the public. There are also lots of big department stores and a huge, one of Tokyo’s biggest railroad stations.

My destination was an enormous department store devoted entirely to electronics, a kind of Godzilla of Radio Shacks.

On the map, Shinjuku-ku looks pretty tiny as a region of the city, but then one has to remember the vast scale of this city: about twice as big as LA and eight times the size of the Twin Cities! The same area as LA but much denser. Neck-and-neck with Mexico City as the world’s biggest. I took the elevator – to the sub-basement to find an adapter form my three-pronged computer power-plug. (Only old-fashioned two-prongers here).
Then I headed out for lunch, which today was a very delicate breaded chicken breast, with the usual accompaniments of miso soup, tea, rice, and some kind of pickled veggies. The sauces are fun. In three meals out, I have now twice encountered a ketchup-like delight. Not as thick as hoi-sin, but that color, with a strong admixture of cloves. And today there was also a lychee preparation, which was hauntingly good. (At least, I THINK it was q kind of lychee custard – maybe it was in fact desert and not a sauce at all, come to think of it! And all for under $10.

Unfortunately, no one in Shinjuku-ku cares for sushi, apparently: I have walked up and down the main drag, where every other storefront is an eat-shop of some kind, but NO SUSHI. I am not complaining – exactly – because what I have found has been delicious and affordable. In fact less than I would ordinarily pay for lunch in MPLS. So, with the move to free accommodations, I should be OK in Japan.

Everyone will cheer to learn that I have been walking a good deal more than I do at home. So far so good, although I feel like I’m in training. Takashi made dinner last night and today he said something about a visit to Rapongi (another part of town), but I think I will decline in favor of a quiet dinner around here.

Poor Takashi is like the wife in Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, who9 is desperately ill, but goes to work anyway, then comes home to die. Her family arrives, wondering about dinner, so she rises from her death bed, prepares and serves it, and THEN dies. Takashi gets up to study at 4:00am, then commutes about an hour to school, another hour back, and then cooks dinner! Last night, he was ready to take me sight-seeing, but I suggested just dinner.
It turn out there is a fine fish-restaurant right on the street floor of the bui8lkding, so we went there for shahimi and grilled filet of something. The shahimi included tune, mahi, yellow-tail and sea-urchin. The grill was a work of art. Scored cross-ways first so it would curl up under heat, then lightly grilled so that one end of the coil was dark, shading gradually into the white of the other end, and all covered with a very subtle, glistening, golden-hued glaze – probably from the oil. It is good it was so pretty, because there wasn’t much of it. The only large size at this restaurant is the bill. (Don’t ask. It will suffice to say that I finally found out why people think Japan is expensive.)
Over the weekend, Takashi is going to drive me to Kamakura (Big Buddha, sea-coast)) and the mountains (Fuji, hot-springs, traditional inn .)