adam rocks tokyo

today katzu took me to roppongi. we waited at the bus station and the specially designed bus came completely decorated with the work of takashi murakami . now this was particularlly exciting for me, because my friend adam scott , who is a very prominent up and coming artist in chicago, had one of his pieces bought by this famous artist. adam's work is amazing and i've been teaching him & his wife yoga for a couple of years in exchange for his artwork. he is also in a great rock band called the peelers , as he is performing in the picture. rock on, adam, rock on!

we began at roppongi hills mori tower, which overlooks the entire city of tokyo which you can view at the top. the coolest thing is the tokyo tower, which is a replica of the eiffel tower and is painted red and white. that was our next stop, because we wanted to go to the wax museum to see jimmy page in his original pants. so we cabbed it to the tower-roppongi is kind of hilly and curly, so it's hard to find your way around. it kind of reminds me of san francisco. and entered the totally unflattering tokyo wax museum. we got lots of laughs in there, because the museum is very old, long before they perfected the wax figures, so everyone looks horrible, but horrible in a good way. we began with basic hollywood stars, madonna, greta garbo, marilyn monroe, marlon brando & james dean, jodie foster, in through the historical figures, mother theresa, gandhi, tom edison, albert einstein, and on into the "torture never stops" room with chinese water torture, "the rack", "the wheel" and, of course the ever popular iron maiden, all with a soundtrack of a song playing "the torture never stops" on into the full-on room sized "last supper" and into the rock room. hendrix, beatles, various german bands i've never heard of, zappa...but where's jimmy page? we came all the way here to see jimmy page! "jimmy is under maintenence" "he is being re-waxed". the memorabilia rock store was awesome, selling collectables such as a jimi hendrix incense burner, with jimi on knees in his classic guitar burning posture, you insert the incense into the burning guitar, the sex pistols "never mind the bollocks" coffee mugs, an impressive collection of beatles dolls, tshirts, stickers and other very odd collectables. the large flat screen was playing old ac/dc concert footage that i could have watched in it's entirety. just watching the crowd back then was so awesome.

i talked katzu into walking to shibuya from tokyo tower. i explained to him that i am a tourist, and i like walking because it's the best way to see things. it did take awhile, but we made it, tokyo getting darker and more cool looking. tokyo looks best in the dark because of it's extravagent neon landscape and massive building televisions usually showing the newest japanese rap artists. and searched for the cheapest chinese that was open on new years. alas, we settled in for a chinese spread, and parted ways. tomorrow we discover shimo kitsazawa, a hip place i've been told, and daikanyama. tokyo is huge. looking down at it from above really gave me a sense of that. it can not be seen in a week. or a month. or 3 months. i have 7 more weeks to try, though.