Shinjuku - Loops Around the West Side [ Panasonic GX7 ]

This weekend I had a chance to visit a part of Tokyo (the far west side) that I'd never been to before. I went to a concert my old band from college was having. It was really nice to see the band again and talk, and their performance was great.

Along the way I stopped off in Shinjuku to stop at a few stores I know and wander around a bit. The sky was grey and bleak and it was raining off and on, but I was able to hit all the places I wanted to see and take a few pics along the way.

So today I present another mini-slideshow of Shinjuku, possibly my favorite place to wander around in the world.




Go west from Shinjuku and you find a mass of skyscrapers around the Tokyo Metro Government Buiding. Click on the link to visit their website - it has hours open and a little other info, and looks like it was designed in 1998 (the website). It's not the coolest building itself, but the observation decks (in both towers) are free and give a nice view of the area.




Walk back SW from the skyscraper cluster and you find a maze of stores, like the cool restaurant on the corner here.




But it's not all food - here's the huge Ishii Sports shop on the corner of this old building. I love the sign on the 2nd floor that reads "mountain and ski supplies" in a very Showa style font. I would bet a million yen that sign is older than I am.




As is the case in a lot of places in Tokyo that have any age, you don't get the full picture unless you look back in the nooks and crannies, or up. I would've guessed by looking that there's an apartment on the top two floors of that building above, but I think it's been turned into izakaya.




Want to see a really, really old amusement parlor? Here's one. I like how the interior is just one step down from the street level. They also have a bunch of game machines on the 2nd floor.




Ah, here we are, my destination... or at least one of them. The huge electronics store on the right is just one of about 10 all occupying about a block's worth of real estate spread out in the area. Wait, this one's the multimedia store. I was looking for cameras. I better head onward.




OK, here it is - the Shinjuku Yodobashi Camera main camera shop. They've got about as many cameras as you can imagine for sale, plus lenses, tripods and anything else you'd need - the works. And if you wander up into the upper floors or in a few small shops right around here you'll find a lot of old used lenses for sale. I know many people who could spend days here just browsing, myself included.

Akihabara may be the place to go for gadgets in Japan, but if you're looking for camera stuff Shinjuku is much better. If anyone's interested, check out a map here - I've marked the main camera store on it.

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Why am I so drawn to Shinjuku? Why do I head there again and again and again? If you need to ask that you haven't been reading my blog enough. For those people, check out my other posts: Shinjuku Street Photos, A Day's Journey, or Shinjuku Side Streets.

Or better yet (if you can), go there for yourself, and if you do make sure to head back two or three streets behind the main roads.

If you want to see more of my photos, see any of the posts I mentioned above, or check out my Flickr Photostream.

For this post, I used my Panasonic GX7 with the 14mm F2.5 wide lens for most of the pictures, except the one of the curved building in the distance that I took with the 20mm F1.7 II lens.