What Makes Shinjuku Eki (Train Station) a Great Place?
The train station is open to all streets. Imagine a spider web with Shinjuku Station in the middle and Tokyo streets connected radially from it. You can access the station from many parts of the downtown (Shinjuku) and the trains obviously connect Shinjuku station to the whole city. Wayfinding is easy, because there are signs every 10 feet, and the signs are in Japanese and English. There is a direct passage to the Tokyo Municipal Government Building, as well as all adjacent high rise offices. You can do your shopping at the department stores right in the train station, or have a quick dinner at one of the take out soba places, or grab some toiletries at the small drugstores in the station. Plenty of public rest rooms, which are relatively clean and provide both the Western style (toilet seat) and Asian style (squat). The place is amazingly clean considering the 100,000s of people that use this space everyday, and the fact that there are no litter receptacles (due to the terrorist atta
