So
I hit like an Edison, which is the largest, coolest visual rock shop.
(I actually went on Sunday, no Tuesday, but whatever!)
There's
also Mari's Rock ("Just Like A Rock'n'Roll!") and Club Indies
(a store, not a club) and Rock Love (the smaller Shinjuku branch).
Each of these stores had a very cool selection of new stuff. I didn't
see Dir en grey's Missa... or Gauze, come to think of it... but they
did have all Madeth Gray'll's stuff as far as I could tell.) Mari's
Rock had a lot of visual kei clothes as well -- which tons of girls
in this are were wearing -- and also a cool selection of VERY expensive
promotional videos, plus a small and uninteresting used CD section.
This
is where I met Rob, who sings for Secret Secret, a goth band based
in San Francisco that's aiming to do some dates in Tokyo. He was passing
out little flyer-things with some success (half the girls - there
were NO guys around, btw -- were interested, half ran away screaming).
Check out denkitiger.com for details! I just walked up to him (he
was holding a Like an Edison bag), and I was like, "Ah! Gaijin!
Likes Visual! Gah!" I sounded like a bloody caveman.
Rob
was here with Cameron, the only gaijin (besides me) into visual. He
loves the indies -- once they get too big, he stops paying attention,
which is the exact opposite of me, since I'm of the notion that if
they get big, they're probably really good, and so are only then worth
my attention!
He teaches and does some writing, and has a website on communities.msn.com
called GlamJapan/home.html in English that is pretty friggin' informative.
He's gonna be quite the source for me!
Last
but far from least is Yuuji, webmaster for www.worldwide-bishop.com,
his brother's band's very pretty site. And Bishop needs a drummer.
Hmm! I jammed a "i need a band" flyer into his hands right
quick.
Anyway,
so we all hung out for most of the day, then later that night met
up with more of Rob's friends and hit Il Fiore, where I, for one,
drank way too much, but Baba, who owns a Harajuku clothing shop called
Yellow House, was very cool and spunky as hell, and had lots of stuff
to say about her frequent customers, like Yoshiki ("friendly
but businesslike") and Hide ("always complaining in a jokey
way about everything!")
She's
also done stuff for Luna Sea and Malice Mizer (which, I learned, is
pronounced 'Malice Mee Zay', following the French tradition. I always
thought it was "Miser", as in Scrooge McDuck).
Anyway,
'twas a very cool time! We strolled/stumbled around for a while afterward,
but everything was closed, so we parted company. (Yuuji, thanks again
for helping me not miss my train!)
I ended up catching the second-to-last train home. The last few trains
that run out of central Tokyo each weekend night always have a very
spooky atmosphere, like time is leaving you and you're being left
behind. Everything is urgent and temporary.
Oh!
"PS" -- Like an Edison is named after the punk shop Edison,
the visual rock shop came later, hence "Like An"... just
a neat little side-thing.
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