The Gaijin Ghost

Fans of the animated films of Studio Ghibli will find that both the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo and the new Ghibli theme park in Aichi are integrated into existing metropolitan parks. The museum is next door to a tennis court, while the main area in Ghibli Park — Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse — is next door to an ice-skating rink.

This goes along with the recurring environmentalist themes in Ghibli’s films and Japanese culture in general, the idea being to exist in harmony with nature and the community rather than upset them.

The Ghibli Museum is located on the edge of Inokashira Park in Mitaka, Tokyo. Much of the building is covered in vines, so that when you’re circling around from the “box office” (manned by the studio’s mascot, Totoro) to the entrance gate, you almost can’t tell where the museum ends and the surrounding trees begin.

As the museum’s website notes, tickets are only available in advance, starting from the 10th of each month. They do sell out (as do the ones for Ghibli Park), and no photography is allowed inside the museum except on the roof.

As a result, in contrast to the balance of descriptive text here, most of the 140 photos in this gallery are actually from Ghibli Park, which is part of the one-time World Expo site at Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park. You can read more about what the experience of visiting Ghibli Park is like in my review and photo tour of the place for /Film.

Kyoto has a number of nightly illuminations during cherry blossom season. That includes places like Chion-in Temple, Maruyama Park with its weeping cherry tree, Gion Tatsumi Bridge and Shirakawa Lane, and Nijo Castle. You can see all of them lit up in the 105 photos below.

First up, though, is the geisha district of Gion during the day. (No actual geishas, or geiko, as they’re known in the Kyoto dialect, included).

Beyond that, we’ll explore Yasaka Shrine, Yasaka Pagoda, and the Ninenzaka Yasaka Chaya branch of Starbucks, which is in an old wooden house that blends right in with all the other traditional, Japanese-style shops on the sloping street of Ninenzaka, between Kiyomizudera and Kodaiji Temple. It’s the only branch in the world (per The Japan Times) where you can sip a Frappucino in your sock feet on a tatami floor.

The Skyway in Kyoto Station offers a nice elevated view of Kyoto Tower from straight on. You’ll get a similar elevated view of the city skyline from Mount Inari if you hike to the top through the famous tunnel of torii gates at Fushimi Inari Shrine.

It’s not all Starbucks coffee in this gallery, thank God, as our spring 2023 journey around Kyoto ends with a return to Heian Shrine (last visited in 2017) and an afternoon snack of matcha and warabimochi at Hourandou.

One of Kyoto’s best cherry blossom viewing options is the Philosopher’s Path, from the temples of Ginkaku-ji to Nanzen-ji. There’s so much to see that I split it up across two blog posts:

Ginkakuji Temple and the Philosopher’s Path in Kyoto

Bricks and Sakura at Nanzenji Temple and the Keage Incline

As the first post explains, the Philosopher’s Path runs about two kilometers along a canal with hundreds of cherry trees hanging over it. You can start at Ginkaku-ji, the Temple of the Silver Pavilion, and work your way down to Nanzen-ji, climbing the massive temple gate there and seeing the brick aqueduct.

Tenjuan is a sub-temple of Nanzen-ji where one can escape the noise for a while. On the way out (via Keage Station), you’ll come across the Keage Incline, where a set of defunct railway tracks lined with cherry trees now draws plenty of visitors.

The 95 photos in this gallery come from a four-day trip to Kyoto and Nara from March 30–April 2, 2023. We’ll look at the second half of the trip in “Part 2,” but in the meantime, you can also see Fushimi Inari Shrine and its famous torii gate tunnel at night here.

Before Tokyo or even Kyoto served as Japan’s capital, there was the city of Nara, once known as Heijo-kyo.

This gallery of 65 photos expands on the ones seen in my recent blog post, “Deer and Cherry Blossoms at Todaiji Temple in Nara.” Here, you’ll see more of Nara Park, Todai-ji and its Great Buddha Hall, and the nearby Kohfuku-ji Temple.

Most of the pictures here are from our day trip to the Kintetsu Nara Station area in April 2023, though there are a few at the end that will take you back to my very first trip there in December 2010. There’s more to Nara than this one area, of course, and in a future return trip, we’d like to visit Horyu-ji Temple and the Heijo Palace.

Note: the five-story pagoda at Kohfuku-ji (also sometimes rendered as Kofuku-ji) will be undergoing an extensive eight-year renovation beginning in July 2023, according to japan-guide.com. While Todai-ji and the deer of Nara Park are still the main sightseeing attractions here, don’t be surprised if the pagoda is covered up and Kohfuku-ji looks a little different in the months and years to come.

Kamakura is most famous for its Daibutsu (Great Buddha) statue, which stands (or rather, sits) over 40 feet tall at Kotoku-in Temple, near Hase Station. The statue is hollow, so visitors can climb up inside it from the back, and if you get there just before opening time, you might luck out and be able to snap some pictures before the crowds roll in (as seen toward the end of this photo gallery).

On the way to the Great Buddha, you’ll pass Hase-dera Temple, which is a popular hydrangea viewing spot during the rainy season in June. The temple also has a small cave you can explore and a display of 1,000 Jizo statues, honoring the souls of stillborn children and those lost during pregnancy.

Back at Kamakura Station, one restaurant that comes highly recommended is Kantakun. Run by a local farmer, it serves vegetable curry—some of the best we’ve ever tasted. The restaurant is located just off the popular shopping street, Komachi-dori.

Nearby is Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, an important Shinto shrine with a long central pathway leading up to it, under a canopy of trees on the avenue of Wakamiya-Oji. Though not shown in these 75 pictures, the trees flower with cherry blossoms in the spring.

The Enoden electric railway, which links Kamakura and Hase, also runs to Enoshima, where you can see the Sea Candle, a lighthouse that doubles as an observation deck.

If you’d like to see a 60-foot robot bust a Gundam-style (maybe even Gangnam-style) move, you’ve come to the right place. Gundam Factory Yokohama is where a real version of the pioneering “real robot” can be seen striking poses while dwarfing humans on a daily basis.

Popular among sightseers, plastic model enthusiasts, and fans of Bandai’s mecha anime franchise, Gundam Factory Yokohama is open from now until March 31, 2024. This gallery of 60 photos explores the facility from just about every angle.

You’ll see the titular mech by day and by night, from down on the ground, and from six stories up in the Gundam-Dock tower. You’ll also see inside the adjoining Gundam-Lab exhibit and even glimpse an elevated view of Yokohama Bay Bridge and the Yamashita Pier site (where Gundam Factory Yokohama is located) from the nearby Yokohama Marine Tower, opposite Yamashita Park.

For more details on how Japanese engineers got a truly mobile, life-sized Gundam to work, check out my Inverse article, “How to Build a Gundam.” You can also read more about Gundam Factory Yokohama, the Gundam Cafe, and the evolution of Tokyo’s life-sized Gundam statues in my blog post, “Japan’s Life-Sized Gundam, Through the Years.”

This is the full gallery of 100 photos that served as the main image source for my /Film article, “Inside Super Nintendo World: A Holiday Mario Kart Tour of Universal’s Theme Park Land,” and its follow-up Gaijin Ghost post, “Mario’s Revenge: A Daytime Photo Tour of Super Nintendo World.”

There are also plenty of other pics here that weren’t featured in either of those write-ups. You’ll see Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan in the day and at night. That includes:

• Character greetings with Mario and friends

•. The queue for Mario Kart: Koopa’s Challenge

•. Both the queue and ride for Yoshi’s Adventure

•. Food at Yoshi’s Snack Island and Kinopio’s Cafe

• The inside of the 1UP Factory and Mario Motors gift shops

•. And much more!

This gallery expands on my photo tour of the Tokyo Station Hotel, doubling the number of pics to 80. It’s not just limited to the hotel facilities but also loops back on places like the KITTE Building and the Marunouchi Building, which respectively hold a 6th-floor roof garden and a 5th-floor terrace with a view of Tokyo Station’s brick exterior.

The Shin-Marunouchi Building has its own complementary terrace opposite the station’s North Dome, but that one was closed for renovations at the time of our visit. We did a one-night stay at the Tokyo Station Hotel on Monday, January 2, 2023 (New Year’s Day Observed), checking out the next day as sanganichi (the Japanese term for the first three days of the New Year) wound down.

This gallery also shows more of our room and the Marunouchi Illumination, along with some additional spots around the hotel’s halls and a rare night view of the North Dome floor (where the Tokyo Station Gallery resides) with next to no one on it.

The Kyoto autumn tour concludes with a half-day in Arashiyama and visits to four more Buddhist temples: Hogonin, Tenryuji, Tofukuji, and Toji.

In Arashiyama, mountains serve as a backdrop for the Togetsukyo Bridge and Hogonin, the latter of which is a sub-temple of Tenryuji—the area’s most important temple. A stroll through the Lion’s Roar Garden at Hogonin exposes the traveler to such striking fall colors that it almost steals the main temple’s thunder.

Tenryuji lets out right in front of the entrance to the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. From there, we move to Tofukuji Temple after braving a long wait for a chocolate BBQ burger at the nearby Dragon Burger.

Things wind down with the nighttime illumination of maple leaves and the five-story pagoda at Toji Temple. Back at Kyoto Station, you can grab a bowl of Akashi-style ramen at Ramen Koganeya, then work it off by climbing the “Daikaidan” Grand Stairway as it hosts a Christmas projection-mapping show.

Kyoto Tower is lit up blue in honor of the national soccer team, Samurai Blue, competing in the 2022 World Cup. We’ll return to Kyoto in cherry blossom season; until then, see what it has to offer in these 105 photos.

The city of Kyoto, Japan’s onetime capital, is especially beautiful during the peak of fall colors, though it tends to get even more crowded with tourists than usual. (This wasn’t always true, as the place was in the international spotlight less and still a relative ghost town circa late 2010).

In the fall of 2022, after Japan reopened to solo travelers from abroad, tourism in Kyoto quickly bounced back to what seems like pre-pandemic levels in spots like the Arashiyama district. That may not always be apparent from these 100 photos, which favor gaps in the crowd and the sight of vibrant koyo (autumn leaves).

You might see the occasional long line of people stretching back from a temple gate, however. Three of the temples shown here — Kiyomizudera, Kodaiji, and Byodoin — are ones we had previously visited in winter and spring.

New to this gallery, which shows the first half of a two-day autumn trip to Kyoto, is Bishamondo, a mountain temple located a bit outside the city center. If you do a Google Image search on “Bishamondo,” you’ll find some (photoshopped?) pictures of stone steps carpeted with brilliant red leaves. The actual steps are well-trodden during the daytime and mostly cleared of leaves, but this is still a nice spot for fall color viewing.

Food-wise, matcha is a must in Uji, while Nishio Yatsuhashi sells single-serving packs of the popular souvenir sweet. For accommodations, one option is The Blossom Kyoto, a new hotel that just opened in August 2022.

In recent years, Japan’s ancient capital, Kyoto, has regularly topped lists of the world’s best cities in travel magazines like Condé Nast. Anecdotally, this was the first place outside Tokyo people recommended visiting when I first moved to Japan in 2010.

Since then, Kyoto’s increased popularity has led to overtourism. This gallery of 115 photos might be evidence of that; it documents three trips to Kyoto in winter 2010, summer 2013, and Golden Week 2017.

Unlike Tokyo, where you’re more likely to be riding the train, getting around Kyoto involves a lot of bus transportation and walking. From the central hub of Kyoto Station and Kyoto Tower, city buses will lead you out to a network of thousands of temples and shrines.

The famous ones seen here include Ginkakuji (the Silver Pavilion), Kinkakuji (the Golden Pavilion), Imamiya Shrine, Kiyomizudera, Kodaiji, Ryozen Kannon Temple, Heian Shrine, Sanjusangendo, Byodoin (the temple on the back of the 10-yen coin), and Fushimi Inari Taisha.

You’ll also get a brief glimpse here of the Gion district, the gates of Yasaka Shrine and Chionin Temple, the camphor tree outside Shorenin Temple, and the city of Uji. Food includes New Orleans’ own Café Du Monde (since closed), warabimochi at Hourandou, and nikuman at local Kansai chain 551 Horai.

Stay tuned for galleries showcasing the autumn leaves and spring cherry blossoms in Kyoto.

A survey conducted by the travel agency JTB and reported by The Japan Times in 2015 showed that Aomori was Japan’s top festival destination, even more popular than Kyoto. After a two-year pandemic hiatus, the Aomori Nebuta Festival returned in 2022 with a slightly reduced number of parade floats and less of the traditional bell-throwing and crowd participation.

The Nebuta Festival is hundreds of years old—so old, in fact, that its exact origins are unknown. The spectacular floats it features have frames with washi paper fitted around them in the shape of ancient warriors, zodiac animals, and even yokai (supernatural Japanese creatures). Lightbulbs illuminate them from inside.

In these 70 photos, you can see some of the floats undergoing work in the tents of Nebuta Rasseland prior to the night parade on August 3, 2022.

Along the parade route at dusk, goldfish lanterns decorate the gate of Hirota Shrine, where hydrangeas are still in bloom this time of year. In the parade, you’ll see haneto dancers and taiko drummers accompanying the floats.

Among the corporate sponsors for this year’s Nebuta were NTT, the Kuroneko (Black Cat) Yamato delivery service, Kirin, the JR (Japan Railways) Group, and Dydo. Nebuta Rasseland gives a neat backstage experience after the parade, when you can see the teams hauling the floats back into the tents before they go dark.

Aomori is most famous for its summer Nebuta Festival, but if you’re in the city during the day (or on any of the other 359 non-festival days per year), you may be looking for things to see and do beyond the nighttime parades. These 100 photos will showcase some of the best tourist spots.

Riding the Hayabusa Shinkansen train to Shin-Aomori Station, you’ll be welcomed by a sampling of parade float styles from other cities in Aomori Prefecture, such as Hirosaki and Goshogawara, which have their own summer festivals.

You can admire some of the floats from the previous year’s Nebuta Festival inside the Nebuta Museum Wa-Rasse. The atmosphere is quieter than the parade and you won’t be looking over as many people’s heads.

The museum occupies the wavy red building next to Aomori Ekimae Beach. You’ll sometimes see tsugaru-shamisen players performing outside it among the food vendors.

On the other side of the beach entrance is the A-Factory shopping warehouse, which offers apple juice, galettes, and plenty of other snacks and souvenirs. Aomori Bay Bridge looms large over the whole boardwalk and waterfront area.

On the Hakkoda-Maru, a person can go back in time on a museum ship tour. The triangular ASPM (sometimes rendered as “ASPAM”) building allows one to go 360 in an observatory with a view of the city and Aomori Bay. “ASPM” stands for Aomori Sightseeing Products Mansion.

Finally, no trip to Aomori would be complete without a bowl of miso milk curry ramen. Pro tip: you can get a combined ticket for three of these places, taking in the Nebuta Museum, ASPM observatory, and Hakkoda-Maru Memorial Ship for only ¥1,380.

In Tottori, you can have a real-life Dune experience without ever leaving Earth—or even Japan.

A person might forget where they are for a second as they look out over the rolling Tottori Sand Dunes (locally identified by the Romanized version of their Japanese name, the Tottori Sakyu, in some English bus stop signage). Trudging up the steepest of the towering dunes will give you a good little workout — as if you’re training to climb Mount Fuji — but the top rewards you with a commanding view of the Sea of Japan.

On the way there, you can catch a hundred-yen photo op with a camel. The landscape is almost like that of Egypt or a desert planet, which may be why the nearby Sand Museum has hosted sand sculptures of Star Wars droids in the past and is currently running an Egypt-themed exhibition.

This is the museum’s 14th “Travel Around the World in Sand” exhibition and it lasts until January 3, 2024. Sculptures of pharaohs, Cleopatra, the pyramids and Great Sphinx of Giza, Nile River scenes, the bazaar in Cairo, and more, are all on display—as seen in the 100 photos below.

Around Tottori Station, you might catch glimpses of the mythical kirinjishi (giraffe lion) or the colorful umbrellas used in dances during the city’s summer Shan Shan Festival.

Tottori is worth at least a one-night stay, but it might also be doable as a day trip from Kobe or Himeji via the Super Hakuto limited express train.

Atami is a popular seaside resort town that rests at the junction between the JR East and Central parts of the Tokaido Main Line, which starts at Tokyo Station. At Atami, the local train and parallel Tokaido Shinkansen both bend toward Shizuoka Prefecture. If you look out the window, you’ll see the city sloping down into Sagami Bay.

The name Atami means “hot ocean,” which seems appropriate, given that it’s known for its hot springs and is, per Brittanica, built on an extinct volcano crater, which has long since slipped into the sea. Onsen drew the aging parents in the classic film Tokyo Story (1953) to this place, while the mountaintop Atami Castle served as the location of the final monster battle in King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962).

In July 2022, Atami was the destination of our first trip outside Tokyo since before the pandemic. You’ll see the castle, which holds a sweeping panorama of Atami, in this gallery of 55 photos, though it was built as a museum and tourist attraction and is not a historical castle.

We stayed at the far-flung New Tomiyoshi, a hotel with private onsen facilities and generous seafood meals. The view wasn’t the best since it was partially obstructed by power lines. However, the sunset was still beautiful, and the hotel is within walking distance of Nagahama Seaside Park.

The postponement of the Summer Olympics from 2020 to 2021 is just one example of how the pandemic impacted Tokyo on a citywide scale. When the opening ceremony finally took place in the new National Stadium, it would be fenced-off from the general public.

Across the street from the stadium, outside the Japan Olympic Museum, you could still see people lining up to take pictures of the Olympic rings. But when it comes to the actual Olympics, even Tokyoites were forced to watch the event at home on TV like the rest of the world.

During this time, movie theaters could be as empty as the stadium, even for big-budget films like Dune. As such, this is a less eventful photo gallery that’s more oriented to the suburbs than the metropolis.

The second half of 2020 and 2021 were a transitional time for me personally, as I moved closer to the city, from Tama to Chofu, and went from teaching online to writing full-time. I also underwent a brief hospital stay for throat surgery at the National Center for Global Health and Medicine in Shinjuku.

Aside from those big life changes, my activities during this 18-month period (you can see highlights from the first six months of 2020 here) were mostly limited to seasonal events in Chofu. In these 75 pics, you’ll see fall colors at Jindai Temple and Taishoiji, the rose garden and greenhouse in Jindai Botanical Gardens, a New Year’s visit to Fuda-Tenjin Shrine for the Year of the Cow, and cherry blossom viewing along the Nogawa River.

We did venture out to go furniture shopping at Ikea in Tachikawa and Nitori in Tama-Reien, and to hit up the Thanksgiving buffet at Trader Vic’s in the Hotel New Otani again (as we did in 2018). I found a new favorite Mexican restaurant, Frijoles, in Azabu Juban, and walked from there to Roppongi Hills on more than one occasion.

The Gaijin Ghost has been based mainly in Tokyo since mid-2010, venturing out from there on occasion to explore other parts of Japan and Asia. No sooner did I close out a decade of travel in 2019 than the spread of the coronavirus effectively put a moratorium on travel for most people around the world.

This gallery of 150 photos includes a few side trips from Tokyo (namely, to Fujinomiya and Saitama). The pictures at the very end also carry over into the first half of 2020, when I was in #StayHome mode in the suburbs. Obviously, sightseeing was not an option during this time, but a person could still take pleasure in simple things like a beautiful pink sunset or colorful neighborhood hydrangeas.

Highlights in this gallery include:

Mount Fuji from Fujinomiya, Shizuoka, on New Year’s Day 2019 and 2020.

Mori Art Museum’s 15th-anniversary exhibition, “Catastrophe and the Power of Art.” (These pics feature select captions to identify several installations of note).

The teamLab Borderless digital art museum on Odaiba, with breakfast at Bill’s beforehand and a ride on the Palette Town Ferris wheel afterward.

Cherry blossom viewing in Seiseki-Sakuragaoka, including a day in 2020 with snow falling at the same time the flowers were in bloom.

A return trip to the Godzilla Head in Kabukicho, to coincide with a screening of Godzilla: King of the Monsters at Toho Cinemas Shinjuku.

The inside of a suburban storm shelter during Super Typhoon Hagibis.

The Tokyo Ramen Show and Thanksgiving dinner at Soul Food House.

U2’s first concert in Japan since 2006. The venue was the Saitama Super Arena in the Greater Tokyo Area.

Star Wars Identities: The Exhibition.

And more!

The Gaijin Ghost has a big backlog of Tokyo photos to work through; some date as far back as 2010. However, 2018 is the year when I switched over from a Pentax X-5 to an iPhone X as my main camera.

In this gallery, you can see 125 pictures of Tokyo in 2018. Some of the major highlights include:

A trip to Joganji, a temple seen in the movie Lost in Translation.

An Aomori nebuta float and towering tachineputa float at Furusato Matsuri (the Hometown Festival) in Tokyo Dome.

The new Shin Godzilla statue in front of the Tokyo Midtown Hibiya building.

The new pedestrian plaza in front of Tokyo Station.

Hydrangea viewing at Takahata-Fudoson Kongoji Temple.

Odaiba’s new life-sized Unicorn Gundam statue.

A visit to the Ghibli Museum, where the long-armed robot from Castle in the Sky stands sentry.

Fall color viewing on Jingu Gaien Ginkgo Avenue, in Showa Memorial Park, and in Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens.

The Thanksgiving lunch buffet at Trader Vic’s in the Hotel New Otani.

And more!

Construction has been going on around Shibuya Station for years, with new observation decks and towers popping up as the area undergoes extensive redevelopment. This gallery of 75 photos shows some of the most recently completed projects, like the 590-foot Shibuya Stream and 749-foot Shibuya Scramble Square.

In late April of 2018, the Crossing View deck opened on the rooftop of Magnet by Shibuya 109. This tenbo-dai directly overlooks Shibuya’s famous scramble crossing, while the restaurant floor below it holds Japan’s first Fatburger and Onigiri Bar, a counter that serves Okinawa-style Spam rice balls.

September 2018 brought the opening of Shibuya Stream, where greenery and glass and a nominal “river” (more like a canal) collide to provide visitors a more open walking and dining atmosphere. Restaurants here include the Great Burger Stand and Barcelona’s XIRINGUITO Escriba, which serves better paella than the one Spanish restaurant on Shibuya’s somewhat deceptively named Spain Slope.

Finally, in November 2019, Shibuya Scramble Square opened, overtaking the nearby Cerulean Tower to become Shibuya’s new tallest building. The main draw here is the open-air observation deck, which offers a sweeping view of the Scramble and Tokyo.

No image signifies Tokyo in the popular imagination better than that of pedestrians crossing the Shibuya Scramble. It’s where the herd of Homo sapiens looks more like ants on the ground as the stoplights turn red in all four directions at once and people fill the intersection.

You can begin people-watching on the train into Shibuya Station, where colorful murals like Taro Okamoto’s “The Myth of Tomorrow” decorate the walls in and around the building. Outside, Hachiko Square — named for the statue of the faithful Akita dog — serves as a popular meeting place.

A towering video screen forms the façade of the Q-Front building, which holds the world’s busiest Starbucks. Next to it is the mouth of Center Gai, a street that comes alive with plenty of neon at night.

Duck into Yaro Ramen for soupless ramen. Round the corner, and you’ll find the Karaoke Kan where a key scene in Lost in Translation was filmed. You can eat paella at Vidrio, the one actual Spanish restaurant on Spain Slope, and sip hot plum wine at the Tower Records Skygarden.

This gallery of 175 photos also gives glimpses of Nonbei Yokocho (“Drunkard’s Alley”), the 109 building, Japan’s first Taco Bell, and the view from A bientôt and Shunsai, two restaurants on the 25th floor of the Shibuya Excel Hotel Tokyu. The former has a Western-style breakfast buffet while the latter serves Japanese cuisine.

After that, you’ll see places in Daikanyama such as Café Habana Tokyo, the go-to spot for Cuban sandwiches in Tokyo. Shibuya Hikarie was one of the first new skyscrapers to pop up around the station in 2012; these pics show other ones under construction prior to their opening in 2018–2019.

Finally, we take a look at some of the infamous Halloween street parties of years past, when costumes would converge en masse on Shibuya, turning it into a place as crowded as Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

This was before the pandemic and before the lack of open-container laws got so out of hand that revelers overturned a truck. Since then, there’s been a ban on public drinking during Halloween week and the police have cracked down more than when they were just there as “DJ cops” running crowd control.

While you might see the occasional rockabilly dude, cross-dressing cosplayer, or girl in Lolita fashion, don’t expect to see them on every street corner in Shibuya’s Harajuku district. Despite its global reputation as a street fashion mecca, the place isn’t a non-stop Gwen Stefani music video.

To alleviate the bottleneck of passengers ahead of the Olympics, the historic wooden building that once signified Harajuku Station gave way in 2020 to a new, modern glass building.

You can certainly head down the crowded Takeshita Street to go people-watching or window-shopping among any number of boutiques and novelty shops. However, for some people, Harajuku might just be a good place to go for food, be it crepes, ramen, gourmet popcorn, or pancakes.

The Laforet mall holds a museum that’s hosted more than one Pixar exhibition, and if you’re in the mood for some authentic Australian fast-casual Mexican food in Japan (?), it’s also where the first of Tokyo’s growing number of Guzman y Gomez locations opened.

Cross the street to Tokyu Plaza for a Western breakfast at Bills (with Japan being the first place outside Australia that chef Bill Granger opened one of his restaurants as well). Then, as seen in these 55 photos, you can go shopping along the tree-lined avenue of Omotesando, where Kiddy Land, the Apple Store, and high-end luxury brands mingle with interesting architecture.

Walk the other way out of Harajuku Station and you can take a trip to two more essential spots: the Meiji Shrine and Yoyogi Park.

Just around the corner from Harajuku Station in Shibuya, Tokyo, are Yoyogi Park and the Meiji Shrine (Meiji Jingu).

Built as a venue for the 1964 Summer Olympics, Yoyogi National Gymnasium hosted handball competitions during the 2020 Summer Olympics—which, of course, were held in 2021 because of the pandemic. You’ll pass it on the way into Yoyogi Park from the station. The building is rather hard to miss with its striking suspension roof design by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange.

The park itself is a good place to see the fall colors in Tokyo. There are momiji (maple) leaves and icho (ginkgo) trees that turn vivid red and yellow in autumn. In some spots, the ground can be as yellow as the foliage, but, while beautiful, the trees do shed smelly ginnan (ginkgo nuts).

In the 75 photos below, you’ll also see some street art, NHK Broadcasting Center, and the nearby shabu-shabu restaurant Shabuzen, where a scene from the movie Lost in Translation was filmed.

Meiji Jingu is a Shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji, who was enthroned in 1868 and ruled until his death in 1912. The shrine is set back in a sprawling evergreen forest that provides a respite from the din of Harajuku and a verdant oasis in the middle of the concrete jungle.

In recent years, the gates leading up to the shrine have undergone renovation, leaving formerly green roofs now sheeted with copper. Along the way, you’ll see decorative sake barrels with different regional designs.

According to Guinness World Records, over three and a half million people pass through Shinjuku Station every day. The place is always buzzing with life, and if it’s your first time there, it might be hard to tell where the station ends and where the adjoining department stores, shops, and restaurants begin.

Unlike Grand Central Terminal or even Tokyo Station with its rotundas, Shinjuku Station has no high, decorative ceilings, no magnificent main concourse or photogenic façade, from which all things flow. It’s a system of low tunnels and connected platforms, more a honeycomb than a hub. Signage can be confusing as you wind past ticket gates for various subway and train lines.

This gallery of 105 photos covers the area south of the station. In it, you can see construction progress on the New South Gate, which opened in 2016, along with Shinjuku Southern Terrace, which is known for its yearly winter illuminations.

The name Takashimiya Times Square and the look of the NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building evoke places in New York City, with the latter somewhat resembling the Empire State Building—except that it’s a clocktower, the world’s second tallest. Seeing the time on it and knowing that it’s over half a day ahead of New York, you might feel as though you’ve traveled forward in time and are now living in the future.

After all, what is Tokyo, with all its stacked high-rises and crowded scramble crossings, if not the urban jungle of the overpopulated future?

For its part, Takashimiya is a 14-story department store that holds the popular xiaolongbao (soup dumpling) restaurant Din Tai Fung as well as a 7-story annex, where Kinokuniya Books and its well-stocked English section are located. From the rooftop terrace on the main building, you can see Shinjuku Gyoen, which is within walking distance and which is a good place to go for fall color or cherry blossom viewing.

Back on the southeast side of the station, Dancing Crab is a restaurant that hails from Singapore, but it allows you to eat Louisiana-style seafood with your fingers—right off the placemat.

Though it’s west of the true city center, Shinjuku, Tokyo, thrusts a person into the heart of the metropolis through the world’s busiest train station. Among other things, it’s the terminus of the Keio Line, which brings commuters in from the western suburbs.

The Nishi-Shinjuku skyscraper district is home to the Park Hyatt Tokyo and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (“Tocho” for short), a Gothic microchip cathedral with free 45th-floor observation decks in its two towers. Along the way, the hypnotic Shinjuku Eye makes the city feel like a living organism: not just a setting, but the main character in some story your meandering footsteps will write.

Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower is the 50-story winner of a design competition that asked architects to think outside the rectangle box. The building holds three vocational schools—the idea being that the minds at work within it are like butterflies preparing to emerge into the professional world.

In these 110 photos, you can see the view from Tocho along with the Keio Plaza Hotel and the Sompo Japan Building, the latter of which once housed the Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Museum of Art. (It has since relocated to a new building next door and been renamed, more simply, the Sompo Museum of Art.)

Other highlights include the Shinjuku Terrace City winter illumination on Mylord Mosaic Street, a meal of motsu ni and yakitori in Omoide Yokocho, and a round of karaoke at the main Shinjuku branch of Karaoke Kan.

At the end, you’ll see a few restaurants in the Lumine basement of the station building. Only one of them, the Thai eatery Khao San, remains open.

The hotel where Lost in Translation was filmed, Park Hyatt Tokyo, occupies the upper 14 floors of the 52-story Shinjuku Park Tower. In this gallery, you can see 85 photos of the hotel and its restaurants and guest facilities.

These photos were taken over a four-year period, from September 2014 to September 2018. During that time, The Gaijin Ghost made several trips to the Park Hyatt Tokyo: visiting the New York Bar on two occasions, having Sunday brunch at the New York Grill, and dining in the bamboo-filled Peak Lounge, before going all-out and doing a one-night stay at the hotel.

This was the first of two mini-honeymoons, undertaken months before our main honeymoon trip to Florida. Usually, I try to be sparing in my inclusion of personal photos, but you will see my wife, Azusa, acting as a model in a few of these pictures.

While we were staying at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, we naturally availed ourselves of the hotel’s gym and pool. We also had lunch at Delicatessen, dinner at the New York Grill, and breakfast at Girandole.

For more on our experience at the hotel, check out this blog post.

Some New Yorkers have decried the "Disneyfication" of Times Square, which traded porn theaters for AMC Theatres as it cleaned up its image in the 1990s. Of late, a similar process has been occurring in the red-light district of Kabukicho in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Neon lights and a knock-off nickname would also seem to invite comparison. While New York is famously known as the City That Never Sleeps, Kabukicho has been called the “Sleepless Town.”

Though the area still retains plenty of seedy aspects, especially as you venture deeper in, the outskirts have become increasingly more touristy since Tokyo won its bid to host the 2020 Olympics.

This is where the world-famous Robot Restaurant is located, as well as the Shinjuku Toho Building, which opened in 2015 and immediately became a magnet for both locals and tourists alike, with its towering Godzilla Head and state-of-the-art Toho Cinemas multiplex.

Nearby landmarks include Hanazono Shrine and the dive bar maze of Golden Gai.

If you are new to the Kabukicho area, you can brush up on it in this Tweetstorm Travel Guide. Suffice it to say, while The Gaijin Ghost’s wanderings often conform to a certain geographic pattern, this Godzilla-sized gallery of 150 pics is a little different in that you will find it crisscrossing all over the place within Kabukicho.