Sunday, October 26, 2008

"Shinjuku - Music Town?"

Over the years I've seen street musicians performing in Shinjuku, but lately there seem to be a lot of bands there - every night! Last Friday, there were even two bands set up side-by-side, each taking turns playing three songs each - back and forth. I was already beginning to think of Shinjuku as a sort of "music town" before I put a DVD in the machine to watch the Nana-2 movie, and the movie features an outdoor performance in... Shinjuku!

So it must be official. Shinjuku is Tokyo's music town. Ginza for class, galleries, and classy (overpriced) nightclubs, Harajuku for middle-school fashion, Shibuya for high school wild-side bipeds, Roppongi for hard core night life on the one hand and new-found class on the other, Ueno for museums, Chigasaki for the Shonan Beach, and Shinjuku for movies and music? Why not. Japan likes to assign things to areas - it's good for tourism and makes things much more interesting than having everywhere looking the same.

Anyway - for a look at Shinjuku at night in October 2008, this video was taken by the eminent Lyle H Saxon (cough-cough) one evening a couple of weeks ago:

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://uk.youtube.com/lylehsaxon

1 comment:

jyamamo said...

Hi, Lyle. Thanks for that. There's a lot of live music in and around the Metropolitan Plaza at Ikebukuro, as well!