Possibly going to japan for a week in May

No father in law, uncle, aunt husband or grandmothers on this trip (family issues I care not to discuss). As for if I can communicate, nope. Though I can talk with my wife's uncle (mother's brother) as he can speak reasonable English (he spent some time in Hawaii).

I really need to get my butt in gear over learning Chinese. =/

Do you mean we will spend a couple of hours just looking around or do you mean we will spend that much time trying to get there?

If we go, I think avalible flights would put us there past 4-5pm. Which is why I was thinking a day & half in shinjuku would be good so we can walk around the near by parks a bit as well.

 

Yeah, what I meant is you can kill a couple hours seeing what's there, it was a 20 min walk from my hotel, I was always passing through there early in the morning like 7:30 - 8:00am so while I didn't get access to the museum, school or anything else. I did get to see the priests do their morning ritual at the shrine which kicked ass !

Also you are practically/technically in Shibuya at this point, another 20 - 30 mins walk and you'll find yourself at Shibuya station

Shinjuku Goyen is the original Imperial gardens (I may be wrong on this) from what I understood/read. It's a very nice park with great gardens etc.., it'll cost you 200 yen each but it's worth it !

I'm thinking you could kill about 4-5 hours depending but considering it would be your first time I'd budget a day, you are are going to see things you will want to examine closer

 

If your flight lands at 5PM don't expect to do anything that day other than drink. If you're coming into Haneda, you have a chance at doing something, but I generally clock from tarmac to destination at about 3 hours from Narita.

Shinjuku Gyoen, as I understand, was obtained by some rich family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku_Gyoen

I concur though that both of those sites are probably the best in the area.