Nineteen Ninety Never

Thanks to finding a bunch of photos from my time in Japan on a couple of recently-restored hard drives, I’ve been suffering from mega bouts of mega Nippon-nostalgia. Mostly, I’m missing Tokyo. That city is just so big and amazing, its hard not to miss. Nothing will ever really compare to it, and nothing can even really describe it.

That means I’m envious of Gejius, who’s living in Tokyo right now.

The kid dropped a free album of tracks that you can download on Soundcloud. He describes his music as funky space disco, and you know I love that style.

Gejius - TOKIO

The XX - Crystalized (SLYDE Remix)

SLYDE doesn’t have anything to do with Japan, but I was listening to the track when I was going through these old pictures and it worked, so there you go.

Read more about Life In Lotus Land here.

Slyde is on Twitter

so is Gejius. Say hi to both of them for me. Then follow 199X on Twitter.

When you’re finished doing that, grab more of The XX here.

I always figured that this shirt would be pretty neat, and as far as I can tell this exact design hasn’t been done before so I made it the other day. Oh, there have been similar ones but nothing with the combination of Romanji “I,” rising sun and Tokyo in kanji. I know it isn’t grammatically correct in any language, but I was going for style rather than accuracy here.

Britney Spears - Womanizer (Neo Tokyo Remix)

Pizzicato Five - Mon Amour Tokyo

Thanks to Color Overload for hooking up the t-shirt templates - I’m sure I’ll be using those in the future for more designs.

See more from Japan on 199x.

In order: my desk at the school where I worked (note the bottle of Pocari Sweat), a typical school lunch (bagged udon, processed squid-rolls, milk) and a bizarre building in my neighbourhood in Okegawa (Saitama Prefecture, just outside of Tokyo).

Just take a second and look at that last picture: what the hell is that structure on top of the building with the stairs leading to it? It can’t be an elevator mechanical room -that building is only a few stories tall, and I don’t think it had an elevator. Did someone live up there? If so, awesome apartment.

Anyways, here are some more sugary-sweet J-tunes from Pizzicato Five. I don’t actually think they are all that popular in Japan, but have a listen anyways.

Pizzicato Five - Nonstop To Tokyo

Pizzicato Five - It’s A Beautiful Day

And as a bonus:

SUITE CHIC - Good Life feat. FirstKlas

You gotta respect the amount of neon green on Pizzicato Five’s Myspace page

When I was living in Japan, I somehow came across this songstress named Takako Minekawa, and I especially like her track called Cloud Forest (and remember once hearing a really good remix  of it by, I think, Kid Koala - if you’ve got it, let me know).

Takako Minekawa - Black Forest

Enjoy it, then befriend her on MySpace and know that hers is the voice that you hear saying ‘Playstation’ at the end of the all the commercials for that system. How’s that for trivia?

More from Japan on 199X here.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I’ve got a ton of pictures from Japan that I’ve never really shown anyone.

Here are some from the Tokyo Auto Salon that my friend Datablend took me to. Apparentally it is the world’s biggest customized car show. That means that there are no stock cars, everyone single one has been modified in some way.

It also means that there are a ton of car babes.

To continue with the Japanese theme, here are some tracks that Takeuchi sent me. I really dig that Kills one because I listened to them a lot while I was living in Japan.

The Kills - Cheap and Cheerful (Hoshina Anniversary Remix)

Cut Copy - Heart on Fire (Hoshina Anniversary Remix)

Hoshina Anniversary - House Trance On Love

Digitalism - Take Away (Hoshina Anniversary Remix

Gambate!