Could anyone put a name to this building?

After leaving Golden Gai, we made our way back to Yasukuni dori in East Shinjuku.  The far east side of this street is pretty tame, a lot of stores and nondescript buildings…. (well except for that one…)

But the closer you get to the station, the more interesting things get.  The signs become brighter, the noises become louder and more chaotic, and the smells from the food cooking….  Yeah, its kind of like that.

We wandered around here for a bit, gawking like the tourists we were.  We finally found the bookstore, Kinokuniya, and we were somewhat disappointed.  Inside are tons and tons of books, of course, but it was smaller than I had expected, even being distributed on multiple floors.

We also found our way to the “comics annex” and were overwhelmed.  We left empty handed, though, as we were looking for some Pokemon books for the kids.  The only ones we found were video game guide books, which doesn’t really help them much if the books are all in Japanese!

Also found were a couple of DVD stores.  I had considered looking for some genuine Japanese Blu-Ray movies, since they wouldn’t come with the (defeatable) troublesome region-locking junk, but zoiks!  The few I looked at carried price tags into the realm of ¥7000!! Which turns out to be more than $70!! No thanks!

<Insert 900lb Kitty Joke Here>

Downstairs we finally found a place to sit down, and replenished the water supply.  The Baskin Robbins wasn’t open yet, so we weren’t taking up anyone’s space.  The giant Hello Kitty statue reminded us that we had much to see yet, so we continued on.

We marveled at the Taito Game Station, ducked into what turned out to be some kind of cosplay shop (I think) or something.  Lots of t-shirts and socks, as well as wigs and other accouterments.

The signs on the buildings are a real assault on the senses.  For every floor of the building there seemed to be a different shop or restaurant, and for each there was an aptly place sign on the front of the building.  At night these lit up like a circus, which when you add all the people, wasn’t far from the mark.

Despite our brief stop in the shadow of the giant Kitty, we needed another rest, well a rest of a different kind.  And wouldn’t you know it, there just wasn’t any public facilities to speak of.

A descending staircase caught our eye.  The Shinjuku Subnade beckoned, and we figured, what better place to find what we needed than an honest-to-god shopping mall?

We decided at this point to forego exploring the “red light” district of Kabukicho.  Not that we’re opposed to anything we might find in there, just that we needed a bit of a respite from the humidity and rising temperatures.

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