You Should Avoid Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station Like the Plague (Part I of II)

If you’re ever in Tokyo, you should be very careful to not ever end up at “Shinjuku” station.

I don’t mean “Shinjuku Sanchome” or “Shinjuku Gyoenmae” or “Shinjuku Nishiguchi” or “Nishi Shinjuku” or “Nishi Shinjuku Gochome” or “Higashi Shinjuku” or “Minami Shinjuku” or “Seibu Shinjuku” or any other station that includes the word “Shinjuku.”

No, I’m talking about pure “Shinjuku” Station that is the busiest station in the world, with over 3 million passengers per day.

The worst thing you can ever do is to make Shinjuku Station your rendez-vous point. I know a friend visiting from the U.S. who tried to meet up with a buddy at the “East” exit, only to wait for an hour without ever seeing each other.

My guess as to what happened? One person was waiting at the “East” exit while the other was waiting at the “Central East” exit.

My friend actually made a relatively wise choice. It turns out the odds of meeting up at the “East” exit was much higher than at the “South” exit, of which there are four: “South,” “Odakyu South,” “Eastern South,” and “New South.”

There are over 20 exits spread out through the station, but it’s not just the number of exits that makes Shinjuku Station so confusing. Unlike Tokyo Station, which was designed to be a hub from the very beginning, Shinjuku Station was never intended to be a major gateway. You can see what I mean from the pictures of the stations at the very beginning: here is Shinjuku Station at its origin while here is Tokyo Station at its birth.

Shinjuku Station has gone from serving 50 passengers per day in 1885 to serving 3.2 million passengers 140 years later. When a station goes through that kind of expansion, there’s no rhyme or reason to the design of the station, since they just bolted on more platforms and created more exits as they became necessary. Alas, if you end up at the wrong exit at Shinjuku Station and need to get to the right one, you’ll probably end up needing to go back to the platform, walk across half of it, and go through another set of stairs; exits are simply not easily accessible from each other.

Even if you’re only making a transfer, do your damnest to avoid Shinjuku Station. You’ll walk 15 minutes to get to the next train, and that’s if you don’t get lost. If you only do some research, there’s likely to be a far more convenient station to make a connection at.

(Continues to Part II)