Month: April 2004

First it was the Astro Boy theme song at the station to announce the arrivals and departures of trains, and now this: Tokyo’s Takadanobaba district will start on Wednesday using “Astro Boy” currency, which features the image of the famous “anime” hero, as part of local revitalization efforts, community members said Tuesday. Shops, organizations and…

This time it was someone else’s turn to come to Ikebukuro and show me a place. Robert was in the area last night, and we went to Caravan Books, the used book shop located on the west side of the station. I was really impressed by the huge selection of books they had there (I…

Got this from Boing Boing: This is an absolutely stellar video of Japanese guitar virtuoso KeiicHi performing a rendition of the theme from Super Mario Brothers, hendrixing power-up and coin-grab sound effects by wringing his axe’s neck with long and clever fingers. Tasty. Click here for the video.

Kaneda, can you give me a ride (here also)?

Momus’ new collaborative album with French artist Anne Laplantine, SUMMERISLE, is about to get released (official release date is April 16 – I hope I can find a copy in Tokyo), and he’s already hard at work on some new tracks, one of them available for download at his Click Opera blog. It’s called “Jesus…

On my way home from work tonight I picked up the latest issue of BRUTUS (545), which is a bilingual issue (warning: as with CASA BRUTUS bilingual issues, it’s only the cover feature that is translated, not the regular sections). The theme for the issue is “Kyoto Through Blue Eyes,” which takes us on a…

Pizzicato Five week continues with a new Readymade International compilation featuring tracks written by Konishi Yasuharu, KIMI NI NARITAI. I was listening to it today, and although I was familiar with a few of the tracks, most of them were new to me, and quite enjoyable. Patrick says: “Although I knew at least half of…

Recently, there is a growing trend for some young people to lean toward a spirit of something we may call ‘the dark.’ […] The taste of these young people for pathological and medical things is extraordinary. As if proud of themselves, they announce they’ve slashed their wrists (cut only deep enough to draw blood) and…

Famous porn king Chocoball Mukai (he’s featured in a chapter from Karl Taro Greenfeld’s SPEED TRIBES) just got arrested because of a performance at a Happening Bar. For more on the arrest and the Happening Bar scene, check out the MDN article.