A Saturday in Shinjuku, Tokyo

By Lucas Marquardt

Want to make someone love your country? Give them an umbrella when they’re soaking wet and shivering and it’s still pouring rain outside. Don’t sell it to them; actually just give it to them out of thoughtfulness. I mean, I really liked Japan before this happened, but deal-sealers don’t get more absolute. 

On Saturday morning, I had decided to do a little tour of the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, where I’ve been since Tuesday without having had a real chance to explore. I had tried Wednesday, but heavy rain thwarted the effort. So I did some poking around online and found some recommended stops–some obvious, some not–popped in my headphones and set on foot. 

I’d gotten about halfway to the first destination, Pan-ya no Don Suke, a tiny bakery on a narrow sidestreet in northwest Shinjuku, when it began raining. Again. Light at first, then heavier, so that by the time I got there, sans umbrella, I was drenched. The shop was small, maybe 10 by 10, with rows of baked goods on three walls. A door on the back wall led to a kitchen, and a petite young lady in a blue head scarf emerged with a tray of fresh-baked baguettes. I motioned to her, asking in mime if it was ok to take a few photos around the shop. A few minutes later, as I was receiving my change from the cashier, she came out from the kitchen again, this time with an umbrella. In broken English, she said, “I give this to you.” 

I mean, c’mon, really? I’m not a particularly sentimental person, but this was just about the cutest, nicest thing a person can do for another person. I protested and said I couldn’t take her umbrella, but she insisted, and sometimes you have to let someone do something nice for you. 

I suppose it’s possible she wasn’t trying to be magnanimous and just didn’t want me dripping all over the other stores in the neighborhood in the same way I was dripping all over hers, but… 

Anyway, what I wound up buying–I wasn’t sure until I bit in–was a potato-filled roll of sorts. It had a thin-but-chewy crust, similar to what you’d find on a good bagel, and stuffed with mashed potatoes and a little cheese. Great stuff. 

The next stop on the itinerary was the Shinjuku Batting Centre. I think I’ve been to a batting cage only once before, maybe 10 years ago. I haven’t played organized baseball since Little League, and am a fan of the sport only in the loosest sense. But going to a batting cage in Japan seemed like fun, and I was still cold and wet and needed to move around. Located outside, but with an overhang above the batter’s box to keep things dry, the cage was empty but for a young couple a few stalls down. I put ¥300 ($2.52) into a machine, which got me 22 balls, and selected from three speeds–100km/hr, 90 or 80. I chose 80…a pretty tepid 50 mph. Regardless, I didn’t exactly look like Big Panda out there. Or maybe I did, but not for the right reasons. Foul tips, no tips at all. Things started to click in my third go-round, though, and any time I was able to get one to the back netting a shower of rain splashed down. I decided to stop before things went south again. 

With that particular adolescent itch scratched, I decided to class it up some with a trip to Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. Carved out of 144 acres of some of the most expensive real estate in Asia, the garden was completed in 1906 as an imperial garden. 

It was almost completely destroyed during World War II, but after was rebuilt and opened to the public. Today, it costs a nominal sum–about $1.65–to tour the grounds. 

“It’s so beautiful I want to stab my eyes out.” That’s what Trish, a friend of ours, said to my partner Ada one time while driving around Washington State. I kind of feel the same way about Shinjuku Gyoen. 

My first stop was the greenhouse, which is currently–and maybe always, I don’t know–hosting a display of orchids that is nothing short of awesome. There are dozens of varieties there, most or all individually potted, with names like Volcano Trick, Trianae the President, Andean Fire, Pirate King, and Love Call Sophia. A small rock pond runs through the greenhouse, with an elevated bridge looking down over several large lily pads. 

Outside, Tulip trees, Himalayan cedars, Japanese maples and weeping cherry trees line paved pathways that progress through more than a dozen ponds and water features. A French formal garden abuts a traditional English landscape garden, and all of it is framed by gray silhouettes of skyscrapers in the distance. 

On this day, families and young couples kept out of the rain in large stone gazebos. As I took some photos, an elderly couple sat next to me, eating hot dogs on sticks and drinking sake they’d brought with them. 

That made me hungry, and thirsty, and so I found my way out of the garden and walked north again. Up 10 blocks, on another bent sidestreet–Tokyo has to be one of the most impossible cities to navigate, with no semblance of a grid system and few street signs–I found 2-Chome Tsukemen Gachi. The place was rough around the edges. Not much matched in terms of furniture or decor, the latter of which consisted primarily of the odd Guinness or Budweiser sign, strange since the place offered neither. A few locals sat at a counter that overlooked a tiny, sunken kitchen that sported a makeshift corrugated-steel range hood. 

Tsukemen is a type of ramen, but instead of the broth being poured over the noodles, dry noodles are served with a thick dipping broth. This was not only my introduction to tsukemen, but also to paying for food at a restaurant via vending machine. 

Put your money in, choose one of the nine dishes on offer, take the ticket that shoots out and bring it to the gentlemen at the front counter. At Gachi, there were five drinks options, too: Coca-Cola, Corona (bottle), a lager called Kirin Heartland (bottle), Heineken (draft), or a highball, which in Japan is an actual drink (in this case, Four Roses bourbon and soda, though it sounded like it varies) and not just a type of glass. I got the Heartland. 

My Sio DX was delivered soon after the drink, and if you enjoy large portions, this is your place. On the noodles sat an enormous deep-fried chicken breast, a soy-sauce-marinated soft-boiled egg, and something else, also deep fried, that I couldn’t identify. Putting aside a general dislike of eating noodles in public, I dug in as a Michael Jackson-only soundtrack was piped overhead. I’m positive I’m not qualified to judge the vagaries of ramen, but it tasted pretty terrific to me.

Twenty minutes later, with my blood-glucose level at dangerous extremes, I thanked the staff and hit the streets again. 
By now the rain was gone and the late-afternoon sun was being reflected by the westward-facing windows of the buildings overhead. The streets were becoming more crowded by the minute. It was a good time to go home for a nap.