Tokyo makes New York look like Delaware

Unit Tokyo is a 3 story basement mega club that hosts live music and dj's that play well into the morning. It is one of many in Tokyo. I caught the 6th anniversary of unit so the ordinary madness was an order of magnitude more chaotic. There were more than 500 people there. What impressed me the most was that there is a massive, young, energetic crowd so interested in cutting edge music (ie a scene), something ny desperately and shamefully lacks these days.

9-11 caught jah-light dj duo in the basement perform roots/dub/electronica with live heavily layered sampling . There wasn't one dead spot in the entire 2 hour set which is really unheard of with dub reggae.


11:15-12 Saw the legendary Boris give a flawless set in the mid-level. The show left me shattered. It was everything one would fantasize a bad-ass rock concert could be.

12-1:30 Went upstairs to the jam packed house music party, which went until like 8 am, also hosted by a very impressive dj duo.



1:30-2:30 Slid back down to mid-level and caught Cluster give an interesting ambient/dub/electronica set to a shoulder to shoulder, crotch to ass to crotch, packed and attentive crowd.

2:45-3:30 Caught Kenji Takimi give rad a noise/electronica set. At this point my buddy Charles brings to my attention that it is 4th of July so we took a break from the Japanese beer and ordered a Bourbon.

3:30-6:30 Wandered between the top and bottom stories for excellent electronica dance/ house music until the trains were back in operation.

Prior to the night in a conversation with Charles, we hypothesized that since there are no drugs in Japan they create music and an environment for music that simulates the drug experience. The theory was tested and proven: I went home tripping hard.

Toilet from the Future

The first time you come across a toilet in Japan you may observe that the toilet is plugged into an outlet. What!? Some of the features of Japanese toilets include seat warmers, bidet's with variable water pressure and temperature, deodorizer, and in some cases they have the a button that just makes the toilet flushing sound. My favorite is that the actual flushing handle can go in two directions: pushing forward is to just let water in for when you've just urinated, and pushing backwards is to flush the contents out. Very utilitarian and efficient. I'm very surprised that this has not caught on in America, since the archetypal American man is one with his toilet.




The name of the company that manufactures these is a Japanese company called Toto, founded in 1917. Supposedly, the most sophisticated toilet in the world is the Toto Washlet Zoe (wikipedia - Toilets in Japan).

Host Family

The JSPS's one week orientation program sets fellows up to stay with a host family for a weekend to get acquainted with Japanese folk.



Fujimoto Family: Chizu-san (mama), Yuji (25), Tatsushi (22), Shunji (19). Yokohama suburbs. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that all of them liked prog. rock, specifically King Crimson, and industrial, such as Autechre.


Crazy delicious home prepared sashimi (tuna, hake, salmon, salmon eggs, octopus), eel, sliced cucumbers, leaves, pickled ginger, japanese plums, ofcourse rice, ofcourse miso (not pictured), and fried lotus root (not pictured) ...





Japan's valiant effort wasn't enough for Netherlands.


Fermented soybean paste made every six months in the Fujimoto house as the essential stock for their daily intake of miso. Sugoi Oishi!!

We play hard and we grub hard.

Meishi's Matter

Entry one and I waste no time breaking my promise of a photograph-only blog, but I got a story to tell. I am seated next to a Japanese woman, a rather stunning one, on my 15 hour direct flight from jfk to narita. By hour 7 I find the courage to show this woman my meishi, mainly to see if her reaction would be that predicted by the dude who told me to get it in Kanji instead of the unimpressive katakana. Now with five days of Japan under my belt, I know hospitality and politeness is coded in the dna of Japanese women, but at that moment, man, I thought I had a shot. She excitedly pulled her Meishi out her purse. It turns out she is a news reporter and was in New York doing a piece on the broadway show In the Heights. I didn't think anything of it, but three days into Japan it occurred to me to show this meishi to a Japanese dude I befriended. He looks at it for about 10 seconds, then looks back to me with a confused face(head tilted, mouth frowned, eyebrows lowered) and says "what?". When I told him how I got it, he wanted to know everything about my interactions and observations of her. It turns out she's quite known in Japan, and my meishi with her supposedly poor penmanship, is my only souvenir.