Day 24 : Seeing Shinjuku in a Different Light

I didn't have any clear idea of what I wanted to do today, so I basically decided on the spot to visit one of the very last remaining items on my list of places to visit, [Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden].

Sorry to get side-tracked after literally one sentence but in my research afterwards to do my write-up here, I found out that "Gyoen" in "Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden" actually means "Imperial Garden", so if that had been translated as well, the name might be "Shinjuku Imperial Garden National Garden" which is kind of silly and I feel like is a contender for being a tautological place name. It's not in that list of places in the linked wiki but since a "tautological place name" is when two parts of the name are synonymous, maybe someone (me?? you?!?!) should update the wiki. One of the more famous examples of this is the Sahara Desert since "Sahara" means "Desert" in Arabic.

Whew. With that out of way, I ended up in Shinjuku around 2:30 PM. Since I had become addicted to Sushiro by this point, I set my course there first so that I could grab some lunch. However, the door had a sign mentioning that Sushiro was closed on May 9th and 10th in order to do some construction. At least according to Google Translate, but at least I could tell it was closed and the dates were right so it seemed plausible to me.

Well no big deal, Shinjuku actually has 2 Sushiro stores. "I'll just walk to the other one and still be to the park with plenty of time to spare".

Wrong! The other one was also closed! If only I had checked the Sushiro Twitter before walking out of my way. Dejected, I grab a couple onigiri from the convenience store and headed to park. I had wasted 30 minutes getting to the park and I still hadn't actually eaten. Luckily, getting into the park was hassle-free. I just tapped my Suica card on an entrance gate and the ¥500 was seamlessly deducted.

The park itself was well maintained and pretty busy near the entrances and in a large grassy area that was ripe for lounging. As it got closer to closing time and long shadows began to fall over the lawn, these areas thinned out as well.

One of the more immediately striking places at the park was the Taiwan pavilion, a gift from the Japanese people in Taiwan to celebrate the wedding of then Crown Prince Hirohito. According to the plaque by the building, the pavilion is a "rare example of authentic Chinese-style architecture in Japan".

On the East side of the park, I found some nifty avenues of really straight, tall trees flanking the "formal garden". Walking down the path here felt kind of majestic actually.

The formal garden appeared to mostly be different varieties of roses, some dating back like 100 years. I took a ton of pictures here, but I think this was my favorite rose. I forgot to get a picture of the variety, so I guess the picture will have to suffice.

Although most of the flowers were roses, not all were. Like these ones I took a selfie with because they were about as tall as me. I actually don't know, maybe they actually are roses but I'm not botanically inclined.

By this time, the sun was about as low in the sky as the top of the NTT Docomo tower, so I knew it was almost closing time.

The one thing I saw on my park map that I wanted to make sure to visit before it closed was the greenhouse. It looked pretty big so I was excited to go check it out. However, by the time I got there, it had closed since it closes 30 minutes before the park itself closes. Although I was a little sad, it was a problem I had created for myself by not doing any research ahead of time. Maybe next time.

Although I couldn't see the greenhouse, I did make sure to get a photo of another captivating subject I came across.

There was also a small museum on the park grounds, appropriately named the "Shinjuku Gyoen Museum". It mostly consisted of a few small, digital exhibits. This was pretty nice since you could change the language on the exhibit to English if necessary (it was necessary for me lol).

Since the park closes at 6 PM, I had decided that I would quickly walk to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building since it has a free (!) observation deck right in Shinjuku. I think this is one of the most popular observation decks in the city, so I was hoping I would be able to make it to the top before sunset at 6:34 PM. After speed-walking to the building, I was actually immediately struck by its scale. Not only is it tall, but it has a massive pavilion right outside.

People for scale

To my surprise, even though it was like 6:15 PM, and Shinjuku itself had been very busy, the observation deck had literally no line. I basically arrived and went straight up after a quick bag check. Since there was no line, it would be a while before the sun set and I wasn't sure if sunset time was impacted by building height (they're not tall enough to matter), so I decided I would at least stay until the sun went down.

Although there weren't actually that many people, the majority of the people that were there crowded around the windows on the west side of the building, all hoping to get the best photos of the sunset possible.

This is basically as good as I was able to get.

It ended up turning into one of those sunsets that is completely obscured by clouds on the horizon, so once people realized that, they began to disperse. I didn't get any better photos of sunset, but decided I would wait to see Shinjuku at night from above. This observation deck is open the latest out of all of the ones I know of as it closes at a pretty late 10 PM. While I waited, I found a Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building stamp that I could add to my stamp book.

After another 20 or 30 minutes, it was pretty dark out. The observation deck is dimly lit from the center dome so there isn't too much glare on the glass. While I did personally manage to enjoy the view, I was unable to take good photos due to my phone camera either being too light or dark. I don't know anything about ISOs or that stuff so the advanced settings didn't help at all.

In reality, I felt like the sky was darker and the building were lighter

Here is one facing the station (you can see the Lumine on the left)

I don't even know lol

After taking in the sights for a few more minutes, I descended the 202 meters back to street level. I headed towards the brightly lit shopping streets and towards the station.

Some of the flashy and bright signs did manage to catch my attention so I stopped by a few shops. I didn't get much other than a couple small posters, but I was glad they were flat because I am really starting to get afraid about my luggage situation.

Once I made it home, I decided I would make one final journey to the coin laundry so that I could really begin sorting out my packing... tomorrow.