Shibuya Without Moving

I’ve never been to Tokyo, which feels like a genuine failure at this point. I wanted to go when I was young enough to think travel just happens to you if you want it bad enough. Life got in the way. So now I visit through music that was basically designed for travelers stuck at home.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has this digital giddiness that hits like a drug—cuteness as an assault, perfectly polished synth-pop that takes itself completely seriously when nothing about it is serious. Capsule is the opposite temperature, all surgical precision and ice. Perfume lives somewhere between them, that Tokyo impulse where weird and cute are somehow the same thing.

A mixtape called Shibuya Connection crossed my path and it was doing exactly what the title promised: neon, arcade glow, perfect synthetic sleekness, that version of Tokyo that only exists in music videos and late-night internet scrolling. You put it on and you’re there. Or you’re in the version of there that your brain built from watching Japanese television at three in the morning, which is close enough.

Still haven’t made it. But I’ve been plenty of times already.