新宿 (Shinjuku)

Some of you are probably surprised to hear that I spent two whole days here without visiting any toy stores.  This morning I took care of that and visited the Fewmany shop in Shinjuku.  It was really tiny; what you see here is all there is. I've purchased things from them over the internet and was happily pleased to discover that the woman there recognized my name.

I also visited a HUGE (6-story) comic book shop around the corner.

The main reason I decided to go to this store today is that Shinjuku has a park, Shinjuku-Gyoen, that is famous for its sakura (cherry blossoms).  And they were amazing!

You can see, the petals are just starting to fall...in a few days, they will be over.

I've never seen cherry trees this large...notice how this one tree dwarfs the people under it.

I got a nice plate of yaki udon (stir-fried noodles with vegetables) and a bag of sakura rice crackers (they were pink and looked vaguely like sakura but tasted like shrimp) and sat down under the trees to enjoy a little quiet time.

It was really hard to believe that all of this was just a couple of blocks from the skyscrapers of Shinjuku.

One of the things I like about Japan is that you never know what you'll find.  Walking back to the train station, between one of the busiest streets in Tokyo and a parking lot, was a tiny Shinto shrine.

It was guarded by kitsune (foxes) with red bibs.  This, I learned thanks to Wikipedia, means that the shrine is devoted to Inari.

This guy wasn't caged like the others, and has a cub.

It was a fun trip.  My classes start tomorrow.  Unfortunately, I have afternoon classes, not morning as I was hoping for, which means that doing other things on class days will pretty much be impossible.  Oh well!!