Tokyo Drifter:

Albert on a giant video screen in Shibuya.



Albert’s first show in Tokyo was a launch party for his Japanese Label – Rough Trade Japan. They held the party in the exclusive salon above the Louis Vuitton store in Harajuku, It was incredibly tastefully decorated and, as one might expect from a LV store in Tokyo, very high-end. So much so that one of the label reps was dispatched to sit with us in our “dressing room” (an unused floor of the closed store) to make sure we didn’t fuck with any of the clothes; a smart and at the same time slightly patronizing Japanese way of treating us. The audience seemed like a very cool Tokyo crowd, but at the same time, they didn't seem so grating to me as they would have had we been in LA, London, or New York. Maybe it's because it all went over my head?

Wandering around Harajuku is interesting. I walked around a store called La Foret – a six-storied department store catering to twenty-something girls about town (it was suggested to me as a place to go to check out the Harajuku vibe – I don’t normally hang around girls clothes shops. Not since my conviction, anyway). The clothes were great – I didn’t see anything naff at all. Not like the other “famous’ department store I looked in--Shibuya 109--which caters to younger girls and had a load of nasty clothes, the sorts of things Bai Ling and Paris Hilton would wear. The girls were much younger there too. I left very quickly, as I felt like I should only be in there shopping for my imaginary niece. Strangely, across the road near our hotel were lots of porn shops advertising, surprisingly enough, young girls. I only have two rules / maxims that I haven’t been proven wrong on yet. The first is – and this is the most important – Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ever, ever, ever, ever trust a hippy. Not for a second. Not with anything. Not even with an ant for a nanosecond. (And I have friends with hippy tendencies but they’re not hippies. Real hippies are wankers--I’ve never met an exception to the rule yet, ever. I’d rather talk to a Nazi – at least they’re up front about being tossers… anyway, I’m digressing) The second maxim I hold onto is that you can gauge a nation by it’s advertising and its pornography. Japan has some weird-assed porn, so to speak. Lots of young girls being forced into humiliating sex. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s interesting to note. And not particularly erotic, so I'm told.

This is a girl being photogrpahed outside of La Foret. It looked liked an amatuer photo-shoot but for all I know she's # 1 in the J-pop charts. (Although I suspect she's some kind of Japanese sub-Kelly Osbourne..)



And this is a great example of Japanese fastidiousness. At night, these roadworks are very busy with workmen. During the day, everything is stored neatly until they need to use it again. Can't imagine seeing this kind of attention to duty on the M1 or the I-95.






I visited my favourite-named bookstore in Harajuku. I wonder if they know what this really sounds like in the west – I suspect not. I was looking for an English language section in a bookstore to try to find a copy of Shakespeare’s King Lear (of course I was, what else?). Stupid as that sounds it’s good to have a mission when you’re shopping abroad- it makes it more interesting, otherwise I find I wander around aimlessly looking at things I don’t really want and feel bored. I got close – there was an English version of Macbeth. There was also a couple of good English titles: Teaching Infant and Pre-School Aquatics, A Pictorial of English Coastline from the Air, and Roland Barthes- Empire of Signs, which I ended up buying as I can’t leave a bookstore without buying anything. I like bookstores, even when the shelves are unintelligible to me, as they were in Book Off.


We visited (twice in three days) the Park Hyatt Hotel to go to the bar on the 52nd Floor, made famous by Lost In Translation. It’s one of the best views of a city anywhere – even rivaling Sugarloaf Mountain. Tokyo goes on forever, like LA, but it seems as dense and as built up as Manhattan. The photo below doesn’t really do it justice, but it seems every building has softly flashing red lights on it, as far as the eye can see. The main drag below is Shinjuku, which is one of the dodgier areas of the city...




The food was some of the best food I’ve eaten anywhere. For seom reason their steak sandwich is absolute perfetion-- everything you could imagine a steak sandwich to be. And while that sounds wanky, if you ever go there and try one you’ll know what I mean. I suspect it’s like eating human flesh in that sense…..and we're doing that later on tonight in Osaka. I'll let you know....