Our destination for the day was Shinjuku. We arrived at Isetan (department store) early enough to experience the store opening. It is something to be experienced at least once. All high-end department stores have a tradition and custom where at the opening, the employees open the doors and greet the customers as they enter.
We spent several hours in the store. I wandered about the men’s building (they have a smaller, separate building just for men’s goods) for a while, but didn’t see anything that 1) I could afford, 2) willing to spend money on, 3) was even remotely close to my tastes in style. The womenfolk wandered about the other areas. I went to the main building and looked at some of the kitchen goods and Christmas decorations (yes, it’s already beginning to look a lot like Christmas in parts of the stores). After we got back together we rode the elevator up to the rooftop and perused the garden there. We went down one floor and browsed the restaurant selection and chose to have lunch at a tempura restaurant. The ladies had a vegetable tempura set (2,100 yen + tax) and I had a tempura and sashimi set (2,800 + tax). Total lunch bill was close to 10,000 yen – by far the most expensive single meal so far. It was pretty good tempura.
From there we made our way towards the Tokyo Metropolitan government building. The building has two observatories around the 45th floor, free of charge. On the way I stopped at an electronics store (Bic Camera) to purchase a new digital audio recorder to replace the 10+ years old one that I’ve been using. I got a new Sony 3 mic model that records directly to MP3 as well as uncompressed linear PCM audio. I suspect the audio quality will be better than what I’ve been getting with my old unit.
From there we tried to find our way from the East side of Shinjuku station to the West side. I looked at the maps and couldn’t figure out how to do it. We went down below street level and wandered the maze of corridors (lined with shops, of course) and eventually came up on the other side of the street from where we started. We decided to just follow the surface streets and after many minutes finally ended up at the Metro building. We rode the elevator up and spent a little time looking out over the Tokyo cityscape.
It was then a search for Krispy Kreme in Shinjuku – the location of the first Krispy Kreme in Japan. We walked back to the station, then south until we saw the familiar sign. We purchased a dozen assorted donuts.
Then we crossed over the rail tracks to Tokyu Hands and spent another hour or so there before heading back to the station for our return home.
Photos are views from the observatory and a frame showing Krispy Kreme.
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