Welcome back to the weekly column “Tap This,” where our editors report on their top picks of the week. Untapped editor Daniel has one week left in Japan before he returns to New Orleans. Here’s how he’s been savoring his time in Tokyo:
What I’m reading: I really need to catch up on my RSS reader backlog, but I’ve enjoyed the web journal Neojaponisme lately. In the past couple weeks, David Marx has written about the lens-less glasses trend and the influence of “jimusho” artist management companies on the Japanese music scene.
What I’m listening to: I’ve kind of rediscovered Beck. I’ve always loved Odelay, Mutations, and Sea Change, and I listen to them often, but great songs from The Information and Guero have been popping up on shuffle recently.
What I’m watching: Breaking Bad Season 4. Louie Season 1. And I need to go check out the newest Studio Ghibli anime movie “From Kokuriko Slope” before I leave Japan.
What I’m eating: Lots and lots of ice cream. I’ve been slowly going through the frozen section of the local supermarket. My favorite so far are the waffle bars that have vanilla ice cream and sweet azuki beans inside. Green tea ice cream is also cheap and plentiful here.
Most Untapped Thing I did this week: Last Saturday I went on an all day pub crawl to check out the Baird Beer Taprooms. I took video of the trip:
Baird Beer Taproom Pub Crawl from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.
Most Untapped Thing I’ll be doing next week: Tomorrow I’m heading up to Nishiaizu, Fukushima Prefecture to visit the town where I lived for three years on the JET Program. It will be my first trip there since the earthquake this past March. Fortunately Nishiaizu is very far inland, so they were safe from the tsunami and earthquake and relatively unaffected by radiation, but it’s been pouring rain and there have been landslides the past few days!