Laptop Battle Tokyo Vol. 5 at Super Deluxe was far more incredible than I was expecting it to be. There was a fairly wide range of interesting performances and music styles, such as Taishin Inoue and Back in Tokio. But more than anything, I got to hear some wonderful breakcore by JaQwa, so good that I would put it up there with Venetian Snares, the genius himself.
Unfortunately, JaQwa got beat out in his second round by the dance party antics of DJ Take. I felt pretty let down by this since DJ Take was just spinning other people’s music, like Chemical Brothers and Fat Boy Slim. It was a little interesting to see him sample himself beatboxing, then scratch it on his digital turntables, but this could have been executed much better, and the crowd was far more into it than they should have been.
Thankfully, DJ Take was beat out in the end by Plapla Pinky, with whose performance I was pleased. One of his pieces had a reggaeton feel to it and made my eyes watery (the second time of the night — the first by JaQwa), but I neglected to get a recording of it.
I went back to Super-Deluxe for this UltraSuperTube event, where they play YouTube videos throughout the night. I enjoyed it, but they didn’t play any of the videos that I submitted.
I talked to a technology recruiter and his British friend. The recruiter told me that the armpit hair fetish is gone, as a result of some changes in the censorship policy (when I first came to Japan in 2002 I remember seeing an erotic magazine that just had a woman holding up her arm so you could see her shaved armpit, with a close-up). I talked to his friend about old British music, and he told me to check out this movie Quadrophenia, about mod culture, and this band The Cardiacs. (Movie looks interesting, but the music ain’t for me.)
I also met a woman who lives in East Asia (can’t remember which country) and was in town for a gem and mineral fair. She goes all over the world. She spent a long time waiting for her friends to show up, and then they didn’t quite seem to understand the whole UltraSuperTube event when they finally did.
Minutiae
I got the wiki up and running on my new domain, JasonCRomero.com. Now to set up the blog and the forums.
Saw Teru from Glay in an ad on the subway to get tested for HIV.
I saw a man on the subway in a gray suit digging in the pocket of his Moleskine.
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