On Sat, Jan 11, 2003 at 04:51:25PM -0600, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I'd like to know if any list members have done some techno tourism
> in Japan and what it was like - I've always wanted to go there. Let
> me live vicariously through you....
I spent last October kicking around Japan (Tokyo mostly, but I got
down to Kyoto, Osaka, and Himeji as well). I tried to make it to a
bunch of events while I was there and failed utterly, from which I
draw these two sage bits of advice to any other would-be Japanese
techno tourists:
1. Make some friends there who know how to find the venues you're
going to, because the Japanese don't use street addresses the way
we do and the maps that they do use to find clubs take a while to
decipher (even if you can read Japanese).
2. Try really hard to avoid coming down with any major colds before
you spend two hours wandering around Roppongi and Aoyama trying
to find Luners. Also, knowing what night Jeff Mills and Claude
Young are actually going to be playing there helps a lot.
Part of the challenge and fun of being in Tokyo is that it's got one
of the most confusing street layouts in the world. You can have a
clearly labeled map that points you right to, say, that highly
recommended techno record store in Shimokitazawa (Time To Galaxy), and
you can spend hours crawling over the same three blocks looking for it
until giving up and asking a policeman for help, at which point you're
pointed to an alley you must have passed about a zillion times without
seeing. Even if you've got a good sense of direction and are good at
getting around in cities with lots of little back streets, Tokyo will
humble you the first time you're there (I had no problem getting
around in Kyoto and Osaka, so it's not Japan as a whole).
That said, the Tokyo club scene is awe-inspiring. The dance music
focus is firmly on disco / house / funk and (increasingly) progressive
trance, but there are club nights that cater to just about everything
(I went to a bar in Shibuya where one of the members of Pizzicato 5
was playing a set of straight-up bossanova), and there's a decent
number of techno nights as well. Luners, Maniac Love, Sugar High,
Milk, and of course the Liquid Room all have technoish nights
happening on a semi-regular basis.
There are a number of fabulous record stores in Tokyo, with the Disc
Union in Shinjuku being the best place for newcomers to start, but
beware -- most of the dance music sold in these stores is imported,
and even with import duties, imported music is cheaper than records
produced and made in Japan. If anything, Japanese imports are cheaper
in the States than they are in Japan. That said, the frickin' Virgin
Megastore in Shinjuku (also a fabulous place to take your wireless
laptop for some free (unauthorized) net access in the VM coffee shop)
had more stuff on Kanzleramt than I've ever seen in one place in San
Francisco.
Since the trains stop running at midnight and because Tokyo is so
large, if you want to go out and hit the town, you either have to have
deep pockets (for cab fares) or be willing to make a night of it. Go
out with your friends, check out a few of the thousands of tiny bars
in Shibuya (many of which will have amazing DJs and music selections),
take a cab over to Omote-Sando and spend the rest of the night at
Maniac Love, then at 5, when the trains start running again, head over
to the big fish market at Tsukiji and get some tuna sushi and sake for
breakfast before dragging your ass back to your cheap lodgings in
Minowa and passing out. You'll definitely feel like you've made a
night of it, especially if you've been hanging out with some Japanese
folks (who like to drink and act even drunker than they are).
People will tell you that Japan is expensive, and they won't be lying.
That said, if you save money on accomodations and food, you can save
the bulk of your money for important stuff, like record shopping,
clubbing, and buying exotic pornography / dating sims to amaze and
repel your friends back home. I spent about $40 a day on accomodation
and food _combined_, which is less than the door at Luners. Of course,
door at most Japanese clubs and bars gets you a couple drink tickets,
which takes the edge off a little (if you drink, which I don't). And I
ate a lot of Japanese convenience store food, which was tasty,
nutritious, and cheap, but probably took years off my life expectancy
what with all the preservatives and MSG.
All that said, I had the most fun being neither a techno tourist nor a
regular tourist -- mostly, I just hopped on the subway and went to a
neighborhood I'd never been in before and poked around in it. When you
read the guidebooks (recommended: the Time Out guide to Tokyo and the
Rough Guide to Japan; not recommended: the Lonely Planet guides to
Tokyo and Japan) you get a lot of cliches (Blade Runner, "city of the
future", etc), but the reality is a lot weirder and shares a lot more
in common with the decayed futurism that Juan Atkins was trying to
evoke when he first started making techno. Japan is a splendid,
inconsistent mess of a country, and anyone who wants to see what
unbridled growth and urbanization can do are advised to go check it
out.
If you're visiting to see what Japan's all about, be sure to budget
some time in Osaka, which is the LA to Tokyo's New York. It's prettier
and more relaxed than Tokyo, and is a hell of a lot easier to figure
out. It's also close to Kyoto, which is of course the historical
capital of Japan, and therefore absolutely crammed with beautiful and
historically important temples, shrines, and castles, but also a bit
cold and lonely and grimly industrial (like, say, Manchester). On the
whole, Osaka was more my speed.
I could go on all day, but I'll stop here. If you're going to go to
Japan, spend as long as you can afford and keep your itinerary as open
as possible; you'll find a ton to do once you get there. Japan's a lot
friendlier to people who keep an open mind and who don't mind a little
stress (ordering food at restaurants is always an adventure unless
your spoken Japanese is passable), and making Japanese friends can be
a challenge if you don't already know people there before you go.
That said, there's a reason I spent most of the trip there listening
to techno, and there's a reason I started planning to return almost
immediately after getting back -- no place I've ever been does a
better job of encompassing the simultaneously dystopian and utopian
impulses that created the Music Institute. Detroit isn't very
Japanese, but Japan can be very Detroit.
Forrest
PS -- I'd be happy to answer questions and provide more detailed
recommendations for lodgings, clubs and record stores to anyone
who wants them.
--
. . . the self-reflecting image of a narcotized mind . . .
ozymandias G desiderata [EMAIL PROTECTED] desperate, deathless
(415)823-6356 http://www.pushby.com/forrest/ ::AOAIOXXYSZ::
