Street performances may or may not be legal in Japan, although I suspect that at the very least they are restricted. Especially in regards to busking. But whatever the ruling on such matters, it is possible to see the odd band or singer every now and again. Acts generally comprised of harmless youngsters knocking out bland and inoffensive pop music.
However occasionally it is possible to see something a bit different. Like the chap pictured below for example. A man who put on quite a performance. And one that was enhanced with a bit of electronic trickery that produced an ear-splitting backdrop that had many confused onlookers covering their ears for fear of them bleeding.
But being considered neither harmless nor inoffensive, it wasn’t long before the proceedings were (perhaps predictably) brought to a swift and officious end.
Which was disappointing to say the least.
Elyse says
Just wanted to give the writer some props: fantastic blog!
gtc says
Yeah, thank you for the blog Lee. But one thing that would be a huge improvment would be the ability to click on the picture for higher resolution shots…I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen hunkabutta.com back in its tokyo glory days but, the shots were really awesome to look at.
…at the same time, if you don’t want to look like a gawking tourist at all times I understand.
Lee says
Thank you both very much.
Funnily enough gtc, I’ve just bought a decent digital camera to get better shots (and used it for the pictures above and the nationalist and Harajuku girls a few days ago). At the moment I’m using the “save for web” feature in Photoshop which keeps the load times down, but at the same it diminishes the image somewhat.
I’m not sure how to do a “click for higher resolution” but I’ll look into it, as I agree, it would improve the site. But if anybody can point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.
quaisi says
You could just use Flickr and link to your picture stored there?