If you ever have a hankering for nikka-zubon and jika-tabi, the outre puffy pants and split-toed booties rocked by Japanese carpenters, construction dudes and painters, supply store Mannenya in 3-chome (district 3) of Nishi Shinjuku has got you covered. The building is hard to miss: it's acid yellow, decorated with old hard hats, and has a four-story turtle climbing up its side (a painted one). It's also, incongruously, just around the corner from the sleek Park Hyatt in Shinjuku, the hotel where much of Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" (2003) was filmed. But nothing gets lost in translation at Mannenya; the manager speaks fluent English.

"Foreigners come in, try on some pants and tabi, and then they often just walk back to their hotel wearing the stuff. That slays me," 39-year-old Masatomo Taguchi says, laughing. I'm listening to this as I try on a pair of white cho-cho zubon (butterfly pants), an extra-wide and vaguely rebellious style that's seductively comfortable, like wearing air. "Go ahead," Taguchi coaxes, "you know you want to keep them on." I do, actually, but I'm on a job, and I'm not sure it's best done in bloomers. I dig ¥4,000 out of my purse, though, and buy them.

When I ask Taguchi what's the most interesting thing hiding in Nishi Shinjuku 3-Chome, the pocket of nondescript low- rise buildings behind his store, he leads me to Nemoto, a standing bar with one spindle table and a gaggle of kids hanging out. "Aren't they a bit young to be drinking?" I ask 56-year-old proprietor Kuma Ino. Ino explains that Nemoto's tipplers arrive after dusk, but during the day, his mother, when she feels well enough, runs a dagashiya (penny-candy shop).