Shinjuku

What Shinjuku is for

Shinjuku is the district for a garden, a free high view, and a dense evening. The places here are Shinjuku Gyoen, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Omoide Yokocho, Kabukicho, and Golden Gai. The station is one of the city's largest, so the useful fact is which exit matches the stop, not a single “Shinjuku exit.” Each place guide names the approach. This page is the order, not a second timetable.

Use Shinjuku when you want that mix, or when the next morning is a Hakone or Kawaguchiko departure from the Shinjuku side. Do not use it as a synonym for every west-side neighborhood. Shibuya has its own guide. The hotel decision is where-to-stay, with the head-to-head on the Shibuya versus Shinjuku page.

A practical order

Give Shinjuku Gyoen the daylight. It sits southeast of Shinjuku Station, not inside the station complex. The garden's English site lists gates served by Shinjuku-gyoenmae on the Marunouchi Line and Sendagaya on the JR Chuo-Sobu Line. Exiting the main station at random is how that walk gets longer than the map suggests. Follow the garden access page.

The metropolitan building is the free observatory in west Shinjuku. Read its place guide for the entrance you are allowed to use. It is the backup view when a paid deck is weathered out, and it is not the same product as Shibuya Sky or Skytree. Do not expect a sunset reservation system, and do not expect the guide to invent a ticket price.

Omoide Yokocho is the alley of small counters near the west exit, sometimes called Memory Lane. Golden Gai and Kabukicho are the evening cluster. Go after the garden, not before it. The Shibuya versus Shinjuku page repeats the Tokyo police warning about touts in entertainment districts, including Kabukicho. Read it before you follow a stranger into a bar. This guide does not book those bars.

How Shinjuku fits a Tokyo itinerary

On the 3-day plan, Shinjuku's evening is attached to a Shibuya day, which is why Golden Gai shows up there and the garden does not. The 4-day, 5-day, and 7-day plans give Shinjuku a day of its own so the garden, the observatory, and the lanes can happen in that order. If you are playing the 5-day route, this is that Shinjuku day.

If Hakone is the point of the trip, the day-trip guide and the Hakone page explain the Romancecar from Shinjuku. Do not add the mountain loop on the same day as the garden and Golden Gai. Swap a different city day, or stay an extra night. The 7-day page says which days are the easiest to swap.

Read the place pages before you lock the order. Shinjuku Gyoen publishes its own gates, and the metropolitan building publishes the observatory entrance. The lanes do not share one closing time, because each counter is its own business. If the evening is the point, leave the garden while you still have daylight to spare. If the garden is the point, do not start in Kabukicho and hope the light holds. The 5-day route plays this cluster as written. The 4-day and 7-day pages give it the same job without adding a second neighborhood.

Where to stay in Shinjuku

Shinjuku hotel-area adviceTokyo neighborhoods mapShibuya vs Shinjuku

Frequently asked questions