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Shinjuku Snack Quest?
If you're set on Okubo, walk five minutes south instead to the 7-Eleven on the Shinjuku side of Hyakunincho. The truly odd stuff there rotates weekly, so what you see depends entirely on timing. I've caught things like canned bear meat from Hokkaido, horse sashimi vacuum packs, and a whole shelf of "challenge" snacks aimed at Korean tourists: wasabi KitKats next to dried scorpions in little plastic cups. What surprises most visitors is that the hot case is where the genuinely strange items live, like curry-stuffed buns shaped like cartoon characters, and those sell out by 11pm. Go around midnight on a weekday, that's when the night stock crew puts out the limited-run stuff they don't bother with during the day.
Okubo's the right area but you're looking in the wrong direction. The 7-Eleven on the north side of Okubo-dori, just past the Korean supermarket, is where the genuinely odd stuff lives: canned whale bacon, whole dried fugu fins for making hire-zake, and these little cups of fermented squid guts called shiokara that smell like a low tide in August. My honest take is the Family Mart two blocks toward Higashi-Shinjuku has better weird inventory because it caters to the late-night host club crowd, so you get energy shots next to fish sausages at 3am. Either way, don't skip the hot case, the weird stuff is rarely on the shelves.
ngl everyone's pointing u at the shelves but the actual Okubo 7-Eleven people hype is tiny and gets picked over by like 9pm. what nobody mentions is the freezer case, thats where the real odd stuff hides. i've seen frozen taiyaki you microwave yourself, cup ramen that comes with a raw egg sealed inside, and these ice cream bars coated in miso caramel that sound gross but work somehow. go on a tuesday if u can, thats when the truck comes and the good limited stuff hits before the resellers do.
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Where can I find crispy, pan-fried bacon similar to a certain international style?
if u have a costco membership the kirkland thick cut is the move, 4 packs of 500g for around 2500 yen and it crisps up proper in a cold pan. for smaller runs, precce in azabudai hills & the basement at isetan shinjuku both carry imported US & danish brands in the chilled case, just read the label for "thick cut" or "smoked" and not "loin". also worth knowing japanese bacon is often wet-cured so pat it dry before frying or it steams instead of crisping
kaldi coffee farm is hit or miss but their smoked bacon from denmark shows up pretty regular, the 200g pack runs about 600 yen. what actually works better for me is asking the butcher counter at peacock or life to slice the block bacon thick, like 5mm, they do it for free and it crisps way better than the pre-packed stuff. also fwiw cheap bacon crisps faster, the fatty supermarket kind at 300 yen a pack works fine if u cook it from cold in a dry pan and pour off the fat as it renders.
tbh the gyomu super store brand bacon is surprisingly decent for crisping up, its not thick cut but if you cook it low and slow it gets pretty crunchy. the key is the dry cure vs wet cure thing, wet cure steams. also check hanamasa if you have one nearby, they sell big packs of american style bacon thats actually smoked and firm.