Shinjuku - not only the skyscrapers
Half an hour walk. 5 minutes away by train. From 10 to 50 minutes, the car "driving through Hell" is separated from the other station Sibuyu known to the world pictures of "pushers", who pressed into the carriages of passengers to watch the "peak". 2.5 million people daily enjoy the giant transportation hub, which has become the Shinjuku station. Apart from her six branches of railroads, two subway lines and dozens of city and intercity bus routes.
Foreigners who lived in Tokyo and enjoyed countless times Shinjuku station, most of them and cannot understand all the intricacies of these colossal high-rise buildings. Several layers of underground parking garages, stretching a mile underground shopping mall, subway platforms and trains near and long distance trade halls of several large department stores, small shops, stalls, offices, police stations, information desk, trays, sellers of lottery tickets, souvenirs ... The upgraded version of the underground catacombs and the Tower of Babel crowned Gardens of Babylon - on the roofs of the station and shopping complex are arranged gardens with playgrounds, pubs and outdoor cafes. A hybrid of several wonders of the world attracts foreigners and tourists, "heartland", but brings little joy by the inhabitants of Tokyo, daily committing the tedious journey from the "sleeping cities" in the central districts of the capital.
Manoeuvring in the crowd of passengers rushing from one train to another, stumbling about sitting nap in the narrowest passages homeless, wandering in search of his car in the garage scary, it's hard to imagine the old Shinjuku, which existed prior to the opening in 1885, then the first railway platform. Rice fields and unfrequented villages, where on rainy days there was no sign of the soul - as described by Shinjuku just a few hundred years ago. Even at the turn of the XIX century and the present was interested in the teachings of Tolstoy, writers and philosophers went to these places from Tokyo to the peasant way of life. Shinjuku village awakened only locomotive whistles. But, once awakened, she was never asleep. |