The scent of miso and fried chicken drifted towards me the moment I stepped out of Takadanobaba station in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. It felt worlds away from central Shinjuku’s neon glare – with its stampede-level crowds and a giant 3D cat that springs out of a billboard every 15 minutes, meowing.
Takadanobaba is comparatively calm, its corners guarded by gently humming vending machines that dispense everything from matcha lattes to jiggly cheesecake. The only real overlap between the two areas is the queues that spill out of their branches of KFC.
