When we got our bearings straight, I looked up the directions to the airbnb on the google maps. Our host suggested that we take a taxi, but because I am cheap and have a little bit of an ego that makes me confident that I can handle anything, I figured that we could just walk it. As we exited the ticketed area, showing our JR passes and squeezing through the turnstile lane. People typically gather to ask questions, but we assimilated into the rushing crowd with luggage and baby in tow. We followed the signs for the exit, then took a long escalator down to the ground level. Shinjuku is famous for its nightlife, made up of themed clubs, arcades, and karaoke bars. Everywhere we looked there were bright signs lit up and LED screens flashing around us. We kept our heads straight ahead to power through the crowd toward the apartment.
It was one of the few times since we arrived in Japan that it wasn’t raining, so I didn’t have to worry about carrying an umbrella and wiping water drops from my phone screen. While it would be fair to describe Shinjuku like Time Square in New York City, I might be more inclined to describe it as Time Square with a bit more Disney Magic on steroids. The streets were full of people, while cars zoomed by on the main street right outside the station. We turned down a road that was filled with lots of cool brand stores. Then walked down a dark street which had lots of trees lining the sides of the road. It almost felt like a park that was blocked off from cars and only had a few pedestrians. This quiet space in the otherwise bustling metropolis gave me the feeling like we were lost in the woods on a moonless night. Beyond the trees stood a tall building completely covered with LED lights. As we got a closer look, we found out that it was a multi-story karaoke bar.
When we arrived at the street ahead, we saw that it was lined with cool looking restaurants and karaoke bars, and also some American classics like KFC and Burger King. When we crossed the street, we saw a Don Quixiote discount store, decked out to the gills with halloween costumes for the holiday ahead. In front of the door,they had a display with full sized Star Wars and superhero statues, namely Boba Fett and Superman. The walk was seeming endless and especially so, when I started seeing lots of places that I wanted to go inside. The roller bag was getting heavier and more wobbly, and I couldn’t wait to just put it down, then go back out to take some pictures.
We turned right at a corner and saw a sign that had a statue of King Kong in American Flag boxing shorts above a bar, then we turned to the left to continue down another narrow street lined with bars. All of the streets that we were going down at this point seemed so narrow that maybe only one car could fit between the two sides of the building safely. And if you decided to drive down the street, there was so many people that you’d never be able to get through. We thought about how the apartment host recommended that we take a taxi, but how would a taxi be able to maneuver through this mess of narrow streets filled with people, with any sort of ease.
The further down the street we went, it seemed like the crowds of people were dying down. There were only a few people here and there standing on corners and drinking alcohol. All of the signs on the places went from being video game or robot themed to just displaying young women and men like menu items to be purchased. Of course, we had entered the red light district. Elizabeth questioned whether or not these were strip clubs or whether they were in fact full on brothels. I tended to lean towards the latter. Just before we got to the street where our apartment was supposedly located, there was a sign that said something like, “Hunks” or “Boyz” with a bunch of teen to early 20’s men on it. I tried not to think about who the patrons of this place were, but Elizabeth decided to use this sign as a landmark, in case he got lost.
While some of the exteriors of the clubs looked really seedy and sketchy, where there was probably more going down than sex trafficking, others looked tacky in an elegant way, with fancy crystal chandeliers and bluish-purple lighting in the entryway. We weren’t fooled, we knew that they were all not appropriate to enter with an infant. We arrived at a Lawson store, beyond that point appeared to be darkness. All of the businesses were behind us. It was like we were standing in the middle of a black and white movie, where everything was gray and colorless. At least that’s how it felt to go from an excessive amount of light and color to just a normal amount.
According to the GPS map that we were following, we needed to make one last left, then the apartment complex would be on the right. We turned left and couldn’t find anything resembling the address. On the left side of the road was the side of a building followed by a fenced in parking lot. On the right side of the road was an oddly placed restaurant and countless numberless buildings with no distinct features. “It’s supposed to be right here,” I told Elizabeth. She started hassling me about not looking at the directions right. She basically said that we should ask some questionable looking gentleman for directions, but I stopped her and said that I would pop into the restaurant.
I went up about 10 feet of stairs to this restaurant and then showed him the address. And in a confused way, he pointed me down an ominous hallway. “It’s right up here,” I told her. Then we lifted the stroller with the baby in it, up the stairs to the floor above. Then I went back down to drag the suitcase up the stairs behind me. While in most of my previous Airbnb experiences, I usually met up with the owner of the property to get the key, however with this one I was instructed to go to the mailbox. I turned the dial combination lock to find the key inside the mailbox. How novel? You buy an apartment in a slightly undesirable area, in an expensive city, then you charge a lower rate than what’s around. You don’t even have to show up, you just leave the key in the mailbox.
As we walked towards the elevator with the stroller and the luggage, a heavy set, unkempt, Japanese man walked along with us. We all squeezed into the small, rickety looking elevator together and took it up to our floor. I wondered if this guy lived in the building, and if he did, what did he think of us staying there? Our room was right next to the elevator. We keyed in and entered into the dark apartment. When we turned on the light, it was like a rose in the desert. It wasn’t a massive place, but it was decorated in a really fun way. There were stuffed animals and nice blankets which made it feel very homey. The whole apartment had hardwood floors, and the kitchen took up almost half the space. To the right as you walked in was a bathroom painted bright pink, with a full tub, sink, and toilet with fancy toilet seat.
In the back as you walked through the kitchen was the living room/bedroom area. There was a leather couch with a coffee table in front of it and next to it was a double bed, with a box spring instead of a mattress. Across the room was a tv on a stand, along with a small closet. The room had a pocket wifi that was included with the room, so it would be nice if Elizabeth and I got separated, we’d still be able to communicate. There was a small heater/air conditioning unit above the small closet. We turned it on to warm up the space a little. When I sat on the bed and noticed that it was just a box spring, I was a little disappointed. Even in Yudanaka, where we had just slept on the floor, it felt softer and more comfortable than what we were provided. I couldn’t sleep that night either, so maybe it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
We pulled all of our wet clothes out of our bags to dry off a little and changed into clothes that were still soaked from the day of walking through the rain. I only had a two of each garment, so I just put on whichever was the least wet. Time seemed to have passed rather quickly. We were hungry from our travels, so we got our things together, put Escher in his stroller, and headed out the door. We took the elevator down to the main floor. While we could’ve just gotten dinner at the restaurant on the first floor, we opted to take a walk down the street, so that I could take some photos and get a feel for the area. Now that I wasn’t carrying a bunch of luggage and looking for the apartment.
We continued past all of the brothels and started to get more into the bar area again. There was a restaurant right next to the King Kong statue and Elizabeth and I went in. We asked if they had an English menu. They brought one over and after Elizabeth looked it over we followed the host and walked in pushing the stroller. He lead us to a staircase that seemed to spiral into the floor. It seemed just narrow enough for one person to walk down at a time. Elizabeth looked at the stairs in disbelief, and said, “We can’t make it down those stairs with the stroller.” I looked at the confused host and just shook my head, shrugged my shoulders as we backed out of the restaurant.
We continued down the street, but didn’t see any place that would be suitable for us to enter with the stroller, sit and eat. We walked all the way down to the end of the long row of clubs and bars. When we reached the busy street where the karaoke bars, KFC, and Burger King was located, we looked around and noticed that our options were limited. A restaurant that caters to the couple with a baby,one of which is a vegetarian isn’t going to be as easy to find as we’d like to think. We went over to the next street, then turned the corner at the Mister Donut. After I joked about just getting donuts for dinner, Elizabeth spotted the place next door called Torikizoku and thought that we should give it a try.
It was a cool little restaurant that allow smoking on the first floor. When we entered and wanted a table however, the host started to take us to the back, wanting us to go down a staircase to the basement. I guess that this was a typical convention in Japan, where since smoke rises, you can’t have the smoking section in the basement or it will just go upstairs anyway, and you don’t want the kids/babies to be around the smoke, so you have them sit down there. But by the same token, if you have kids, especially in strollers, who are sleeping, you can’t very well pull them out, fold up the stroller and take it down the stairs easily. So, after bringing up the sleeping baby in the stroller, he seated us in the very front of the restaurant, next to the door.
There were a few people around us, but I didn’t see anyone close by that was smoking, so I wasn’t really bothered. The tables were really close together, however, and we were squeezed into a section where one side of the table was booth style and the other had chairs.there were there was a couple sitting between us and the wall, and there wasn’t anyone sitting in the table next to us, so we were able to put the stroller between the tables without anyone being bothered.
This was another iPad style restaurant, where you pick the language, then you can order what you want, without having to really talk to the waiter in Japanese. You also can’t ask questions, so basically whatever you see on the menu is what you are going to end up with. We scrolled through the pages on the tablet and ordered some of our favorites, hot sake, edamame, miso soup, and then ordered some entrees. I ended up ordering something that wasn’t very filling. After eating it, I saw that the couple next to us had ordered chicken wings, so I got out the tablet and ordered a few for myself. Elizabeth ordered a vegetarian rice dish, and as usual, I was more impressed with her food when it came out.
The whole time, I was trying to get Elizabeth to go to a karaoke bar or an arcade that night, but she was too tired after carrying the baby all morning in Nikko and being up with him the night before. It was already about 11pm and we had woken up at around 7am, so it was probably okay that we wrapped it up after dinner. I was feeling pretty exhausted myself. I wasn’t sure how fun it would be to sing and drink with someone that was falling asleep, just to say that I had done karaoke in Tokyo. So we paid the bill at the counter, then went back outside, heading towards the apartment. The streets looked even sketchier than before, with more people standing around drinking, but I felt pretty confident that nothing would go down.
We had planned to see the New Japan Pro Wrestling event the next night and on their website, it said that the only place that you could purchase tickets outside of the day of the show was at a TicketPia machine in a 7-11. I watched a video on youtube of a guy purchasing tickets on TicketPia, but the video basically showed an older American man, who barely looked like he could operate an ATM in English, asking a Japanese 7-11 attendant to run the machine for him. I went over to the counter to ask the clerk behind the counter if he could help. He was a young man, in his early 20’s, who looked like Arabic might be his first language, then English, and he could maybe say just enough Japanese to be able to work at a 7-11.
The young clerk took me over to front of the store where there was a touch screen computer system, where you could run the copy machine below, maybe send a fax, you might have been able to play the lottery, but you could also by tickets to events. The clerk asked me what the event was, and I told him, then he arrived at the event ticket screen and tried to type it in. Unfortunately, he couldn’t really read Japanese and would sound out a few characters before trying a different way.
Eventually he gave up and told me that he couldn’t help, then walked away. I wondered if there was a way to google my way through it, but it didn’t look promising. There was an Asian man behind the counter and I thought that maybe he could read Japanese, so I asked him, if he could help. Then he called over a second gentleman, whom I assumed spoke English as a second language and Japanese as a third, who in turn called over the gentleman that was helping me before.
The three of us stood there flubbing through the machine’s screens, then eventually Escher woke up from his nap and started crying. It was a pretty frustrating experience, that these gentleman work at a store where it’s sort of their job to be able to help people with the machines, but they were unable to. Perhaps, they had never helped anyone purchase tickets? Perhaps they never had to purchase tickets themselves for any events? It all seemed a little ridiculous, and now the baby was crying. I shook my head in disappointment, then Elizabeth and I walked out of the store. We continued passed the brothels and strip clubs, until we saw the underage looking, male, sex slave sign, and Elizabeth knew that we were close to the apartment. We carried the stroller up the stairs and took the elevator back up to the apartment.
While I was busy messing around with the machine in the 7-11, Elizabeth had asked one of the clerks which was the best sake they had for heating up, and they presented her with what looked like a smaller mason jar of sake called One Cup Ozeki. Elizabeth opened up the jar and we each split the contents in the cups that were provided by the host. The alcohol was pretty strong and while I spent a little time watching TV, I was starting to get pretty drowsy fairly quickly. Laying on the box spring, however, was incredibly uncomfortable. Escher slept on the oddly shaped designer leather couch. I was actually sort of jealous, because it felt softer than what I was sleeping on.