Tokyo Realtime: Kabukicho. Guided By Voices

Recently, Max Hodges of White Rabbit Press has been pretty busy. With a camera and a microphone he started documenting the street life of Tokyo for Tokyo Realtime, a new series of English audio-guided walking tours of the city’s neighbourhoods that mix narration and interviews with music, sound-effects and sounds captured on the streets. The first audio CD is about Kabukicho, Shinjuku’s red-light district, that also includes a map and a booklet with tons of nice, glossy photos of the area. PingMag took the one-hour audio tour to get a first-hand experience and had a little chat with Max on location.

Written by Andrew Lee

I took the Tokyo Realtime:Kabukicho tour on a Saturday night around 7 p.m., and was instantly drawn into the surreal experience of navigating the bustling streets with a voice guiding me along. To hear Max talk is to fall under his spell and I was reminded a little of Ryu Murakami’s novel In the Miso Soup.

In the book, Frank, an American, visits Kabukicho and is shown around by a young Japanese guy who gives sex tours. The story meanders through the back streets of the area much as the Realtime tour does, and at times Max’s Texan-drawl made me feel like I was following in Frank’s footsteps, except that Frank, as it turns out, is a serial killer. Luckily Max is a much more reliable companion! Read the rest of this entry »