For future reference that building is the “Tocho” meaning the Tokyo Prefecture govt. Shinjuku’s city hall is in Kabukicho, a sort of red light/nightlife district.
I’m figuring your first picture there was taken in the underground walkway between Shinjuku station west exit and the Tocho building area, possibly near the Keio Hotel rather than the Tocho Mae station directly beneath the Tocho buildings.
But Barney told me “Sharing is caring.”
I think this is just a viral ad for Gieco.
“I deleted my dying friend’s browser history.”
“That’s not how it works.”
I stand corrected on the identity of the building. As to the location of the subway, it was my impression that I was directly under the Tocho, but I was underground and possibly I got turned around as I ascended. A D&D dwarf I am not.
Great linked video. Learned something.
What a strange and interesting (although deeply tinged with tragedy) way for a very real part of the Japanese cultural aesthetic to be recognized by an outsider.
Thank you for sharing that observation!
I have a similar friend, but she’s into collecting–any chance that dude’s stash is gone?
Good to know things are being done. When I lived in Tokyo it was 2005, around the time the wsj article says the population was 4x higher. In any case I’d say that generally the social safety net isn’t as comfy or reliable in Japan as it is in the West.
I believe the tunnel you’re talking about is the one that runs under Shinjuku Sanchome (near where the 430 is on this map). When I lived there the homeless people would sleep there every night during winter because the tunnel remains open all night.
It’s good to know from Israel_B’s comments that the government now gives somewhat of a shit about them, but I can tell you first hand that these people are almost entirely ignored by the salarymen walking past. Source: I used to walk through this tunnel every day on my way to work.
Collecting magazines or what? There’s (obviously) a shit-ton of video online.
This pr0n will likely have been incinerated already, the standard garbage-disposal technique for “burnable” garbage. I use quotation marks as the list of things that are supposedly “burnable” includes things you should not burn.
edit: ha… I just remembered that my flatmate and I found two neatly-packaged bundles of manga pr0n on the way home one day. One of them featured a guy being converted into a toilet (like… his body contorted somehow into the physical form of a toilet) and then the rest of the story was him being periodically used as a toilet. Some Japanese erotica is like “Dayam dat hot”, and some of it is “well, I didn’t know that was a fetish one could make a feature-length pr0n movie out of… also pass me some bleach for my eyeballs”.
Just being snarky, but thanks anyway. I don’t know that I’d be all too happy about someone dumping half a ton of anything other than dirt, swingsets, or sod, onto the parks near my house, just for the fact that someone will have to clean it up.
And yeah, being the master of one’s domain with magazines is just old hat.
Don’t feel bad about that, even lots of Tokyo residents find Shinjuku station and all its associated passages, tunnels, transfer points, exits, etc to be deeply confusing. With so much of it underground it can be hard to develop a real mental map of ground level vs station levels even if you know both of them quite well.
I won’t feel bad about it, if you don’t feel bad about the following. 
Re-examining your map and mentally re-orienting myself, I remembered that I was actually staying at the Central Hotel opposite Shinjuku Sanchome, and that while I may have been confused about the exact location of those homeless, I was definitely over the west side of Shinjuku Station when I took those photos, and not within a stone’s throw of the hotel. Looking at the time-stamps, I have a photo taken inside the Tocho about five minutes before, and another taken at the big T-junction south of the building five minutes after. So, I think I was right the first time and I was either under the building or perhaps the next building over.
(It was bothering me, so I had to check.)
The Tocho is on the west side and I do recognize the location of that photo and it looks very different from the Sanchome station area. Since Sanchome is on the eastern side of the station, it is safe to say that it wasn’t there.
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