JR Shinjuku Station — the gateway to Tokyo’s busiest district, where countless journeys converge.

Colombin Connecting Taisho Romance and the City’s Gateway

Shinjuku has always felt like a kind of gateway to me. The moment you step above ground, there is light everywhere, sound without pause, and streams of people moving in every direction.

But the charm of this district is not simply its scale, nor only its energy. Different eras overlap here and quietly lead into the Tokyo of today. Shinjuku carries that kind of threshold-like feeling.

In the middle of my Tokyo, Connected journey, what I found in this part of the city was a baked sweet that suited that atmosphere perfectly.

Colombin’s “Fours Sec.”

It feels classic, yet never old-fashioned. Each piece has its own expression, and yet inside a single tin they rest in quiet harmony. In that way, it felt a little like Shinjuku itself.

Place where I traveled: Shinjuku, a gateway to many worlds

Shinjuku is not a place that can be described in a single color. There is light reflected in the glass of tall buildings, but also old signs tucked into side streets, and the presence of shops that have remained there for years.

With people flowing outward from the station in every direction, this neighborhood truly deserves the word gateway. People heading to work, people heading into the night, people moving on to another part of the city. In Shinjuku, it feels less like things are ending and more like things are always about to begin.

And that sense of being an “entrance” exists in culture too. New things arrive, mix with older ones, and little by little become part of the city’s landscape.

That is why Shinjuku feels suited to sweets that do not offer only one single note, but many flavors side by side. One piece does not quite end the experience; it naturally leads you toward the next. That also overlaps with the flow of Tokyo, Connected—from station to station, from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Snacks I found in the journey: Colombin’s Fours Sec

That day, what I found along the way was Fours Sec, a signature baked confection from the long-established sweets maker Colombin. Officially, Fours Sec is introduced as one of Colombin’s representative gifts: a luxurious assortment of baked sweets made generously with richly flavored butter.

When you open the tin, the first thing you notice is the sense of order. Small baked sweets, each with its own shape and shade of golden color, arranged neatly together.

The aromas are not all the same either. The soft, toasty fragrance of butter. Some pieces a little sweeter. Some with a more distinct aroma. There is a pleasure in how the atmosphere seems to change with each bite.

And the flavors are different too. 

Some melt away lightly. 

Some are crisp and fragrant.

 Some leave behind a gentle sweetness.

The simple act of choosing which one to try next creates its own small rhythm.

Shinjuku also changes expression with only a short walk. From the speed and brightness of a main street, you suddenly find yourself in a quieter place. This assortment of Fours Sec carried that same kind of urban shift within it.

Colombin and the Taisho era: when Japan and the West began to blend

Colombin “Fours Sec” — a quiet assortment of classic butter cookies arranged in delicate order.

When you trace the story of Colombin, this baked sweet begins to feel like more than simply a “Western-style confection.” Colombin was founded in 1924, the 13th year of the Taisho era, as Japan’s first full-scale French pastry shop. Its founder, Kuniteru Kadokura, traveled to France in 1921, learned confectionery techniques at a pastry shop in Paris called Colombin, and later opened the business in Japan with permission to use the name.

What existed there was not simply the act of importing Western confectionery culture into Japan as it was. It was a process of learning, receiving, and then growing it into something new in Tokyo. That feels deeply connected to the atmosphere of the Taisho period itself.

Japanese and Western. Long-held sensibilities and newly arrived aesthetics. Not colliding, but gradually blending together, quietly becoming part of the culture Japan has today.

As you eat Fours Sec, you can feel a small trace of that layered time. It is Western in spirit, and yet it settles naturally into Japan’s culture of gifting. It feels proper, yet never distant.

If Shinjuku is a gateway to many worlds, then Colombin may be one of the gateways through which Taisho-era Tokyo first encountered the West.

How to enjoy: opening up the differences slowly

Fours Sec is best enjoyed in a way that lets you notice the differences one piece at a time.

Start with a simple black tea. It makes it easier to sense the differences in aroma and sweetness from one biscuit to another, allowing each one’s personality to rise quietly into view.

With coffee, the buttery fragrance and depth of the baking become a little more pronounced, and the whole experience feels tighter and more defined. It pairs especially well when you want to enjoy it in a slightly more classic mood.

When paired with matcha, yet another expression appears. Even though these are Western-style baked sweets, the gentle bitterness of matcha softens and refines the sweetness, allowing the lightness of the cookies and the aroma of butter to emerge more quietly. Just as Japanese and Western cultures blended during the Taisho era to create a new landscape, there is something naturally harmonious in the pairing of Fours Sec and matcha as well.

Because there are so many different flavors, it is also part of the pleasure to choose which piece fits your mood that day. That, too, is one of this sweet’s charms.

Next station

With the aftertaste of golden-browned sweetness still resting at my fingertips, I set off toward the next part of the city. The journey of Tokyo, Connected is still continuing.