Japanese pop culture expert Patrick Macias takes you on a illustrated tour of astonishing people, places, and things found inside Tokyo's underground art, music, fashion, and otaku scenes.
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At the end of the Taishomei era... we don't know what will come next. We can only crawl around at the base of several thousand construction sites, led by the batons of men in caution blue uniformed rimmed with blinking lights. They usher us with care and kindness, like parents we never had, through the catwalks and traffic cones, but to where?
I work for Counter ESPY now. And I have become one of them: a scuttling creature watching the clock for hours and half hours telling me when to sprint at top speed through the crosswalk.
They play videos at the intersection, on a giant screen framed by steel girders and paper cranes. A sumo wrestler comes on a cartoon background says I have to pretend I don't know you anymore. How does he know my name and why is he only talking to me?
I will disobey them all. I will send you DMs and private messages in my mind, wondering where you are, who you are with, what's taking you so long to respond, are you at a zoo or an aquarium, what's that you are eating, and does it taste good?
But if I see you sprinting towards me in the other direction, then I'll shake my head hard so hard to eye contact as to break my neck, my double, myself, coming out of the vacant lots like a missile to crash into our rusted, always delayed, unfinished structures.
