The day of many noodles
You wouldn’t get up at 6 a.m. in Chicago and just wander around the city, right? Somehow, in Shinjuku, it seemed like a good idea this morning. As day turned to night, though, it seemed like a poor decision, as it felt like I’d fall asleep if I held still. It’s still hard to tell if Golden Week—a rare time of year where most of Japan gets paid time off from work and, like me, goes on vacation throughout Japan—has really started. At 6 a.m. there’s still a fair amount of people out and about. Maybe I wasn’t as nuts as I thought. After all, KFC was open!
Plus, as long as I had been up, it didn’t seem quite as long as a group of people I saw camping out in front of one of three pachinko parlors near my hotel, simply called “Pachinko & Slot.” This easy-does-it titling of stores seems to be omnipresent. I also saw “Amusement Karaoke,” three “Starbucks Coffees,” and one “Krispy Kreme Donuts” (which smelled absolutely delicious, even with a sign posted outside that there would be a 15-minute wait, which did nothing to deter the consdierably longer line out front). Come on, Japan! You can’t come up with a better name than Starbucks?
Something else I noticed: There are vending machines just about everywhere. It seems you can’t pass two city blocks without also passing two vending machines, selling all kinds of drinks we don’t have back in the states like C. C. Lemon (the televised ads of which prominently feature a space family with lemon-looking helmets), various iterations of the Boss coffee brand, and countless others. I eventually broke down later in the day and tried a Mitsuya Cider. It tasted a lot like a Brisk Iced Tea, though the labels assertion of being around since 1884 clearly puts it ahead of the game. Plus, the label was also correct in saying the drink is “refreshing and sparkling.”
As the morning progressed I finally gave in to my growling stomach and stopped in a nearby noodle shop. America could stand to take a cue from places like this: Rather than place your order with a cashier, get a ticket, take a seat, and then wait to be served, it was mostly automated. Simply punch in your selection from the dishes preserved in plastic outside on a machine located right as you enter, pay, and then give the receipt to the sole employee in the restaurant: the cook who immediately prepares your order and hands it over. The udon, a dish I have over and over again in America, was on par with the best I’ve ever had.
Exploring more, I found a store called Gamers. Best I could tell, it was a pornographic manga shop where people selected a book they wanted to “borrow” for a spell and then wander into a private booth. All I know for sure was that it smelled like sweat, was intensely warm, and had multiple ash trays, and one microwave. I’m kinda glad I wandered around more, then, and stumbled upon Shinjuku Central Park, a small green area to the west. There was a sizable playground but it was mostly empty, save for a man practicing his croquet swing.
It was peaceful, but not as peaceful as the Meiji Jingu Shinto Shrine I stumbled upon. Alas, I didn’t have time to enter the shrine (hey, I had nosebleed Yomiuri Giants tickets), but I did wander the small forest around it, which was the cleanest and crispest air I’ve ever had the pleasure to breathe. 
It got more serene the more I wandered in, but I had to head to the Tokyo Dome and watch the Chunichi Dragons slay the Giants 9-0 after a grueling three-hour game that was over before it started. I kinda figured when the Giants missed a pre-game pitch thrown out by a kid there wouldn’t be much of a game. (However, the Big Dancing Egg Festival advertised outside sounded pretty enticing—even though I’m not sure if it’s the dancing, the egg, or the festival that’s big. I’d like to think it’s all three: why else advertise it?)
While the game wasn’t too riveting, the Tokyo Dome was sweltering. It felt great to file outside with the masses and be exposed to the cooling air. Nightfall came quick, which also meant it was time to find dinner. Eventually. Kyle, Sally, and I wandered Shinjuku, which got more and more crowded as the night went on. One place mysteriously turned us away, claiming to be full, even though they obviously weren’t. There was a Tex-Mex place, a Wendy’s, a Sri Lankan restaurant, and another KFC—none of them really what we were in the mood for. We also passed an especially spooky and spiky merengue prominently displayed in a shop window before finally hitting another noodle shop (which seems to host some sort of online game) which thankfully had a menu in English. Well, only technically. There were pictures, but none of them seemed to sync with the item names, most of which had the word “tendon,” in them, making us think the word meant something else to them. Vegetable Tendon? I don’t know how that’s possible. I settled for the humbly named Excellent Tendon, a large bowl of white rice with shrimp, pumpkin, and sweet-potato tempura. It was so delicious, and incredibly cheap at $5. Did I mention that the tempura is somehow better here than in America? It’s crisper and more buttery. Again, service is super-fast, and it came with a complimentary coffee-flavored green-tea concoction. All I know was it was edible, so I ate it. The Aretha Franklin MIDI files piping over the PA did nothing to deter me from enjoying my warm sake. Oh, how it warmed my heart when I ordered sake and the waitress asked me in broken English: “Hot? Cold?” My answer is always, always hot sake. 
The air was cool and comfortable on the walk back from the restaurant, so we took a different path back to the hotel. There was some sort of music school whose mascot was apparently a duck playing a Wood-brand keytar, but I don’t think I’ll have time to become a keytar prodigy in the next week, so I’ll have to keep it in mind for my next visit. Same goes for this store:
Goodnight, Japan.
