A Bathing Ape in Harajuku, Shibuya, TokyoRight after the beautiful madness of Arvika Festival, I found myself hurtling toward Tokyo like a man chasing the last honest hit of reality. The spark came from Danielle Del Gaiso — that involuntary Mormon fugitive from Chile — who hit me with the idea of hunting down the mysterious, overpriced, almost mythical A Bathing Ape stores hidden in the electric chaos of Harajuku and Shibuya.
He was the same maniac who first slipped me Brave New World, Kallocain, and Lynch’s Lost Highway, cracking open doors in my head I didn’t even know existed. When my art director Jörgen caught wind of the plan, he basically demanded to come along, convinced we’d get swallowed whole by the neon future without adult supervision.We holed up at a Kimi Ryokan — a proper little Japanese motel that felt like the calm eye in the storm. Days blurred into shopping frenzies: IDEA design magazines thick enough to stop bullets, Fruits street fashion bibles, a Japanese Monopoly set, the full weight of the Akira manga volumes, and the most deranged children’s books imaginable — one about the philosophical journey of conscious poop still haunts me.
We raided the giant Hello Kitty temple for cute Bemaní games, and I managed to score a PlayStation 2 before it officially existed back in Sweden. I spent the nights in the ryokan’s open lounge absolutely destroying people at Tekken 3. An elderly Japanese woman would shuffle by, point at my lanky, focused form, and cackle “Big baby! Big baby! Ha ha ha!” That one stuck. My companions still bring it up like war stories.
The crew was solid: Jörgen, lead art director at Lightyears Integral Communications, cover boy of Cap & Design, web design pioneer and creator of the legendary Pixy Books. Then David Lindberg — back then juggling Acne gigs, Game Boy apps, and experimental sound synthesis, now a proper architect. And Danielle, the Chilean cultural terrorist with a heart of pure gold.Somewhere in there I got handed a stack of “ASINC” (AttitudeWhore Sthlm Inc.) stickers from some Stockholm art directors who wanted me to infect Tokyo with them. Around 3:30 a.m., I climbed up to the rooftop as the sky started bleeding sunrise.
I slapped one on a big metal vent, smoke curling from the chimneys around me, and shot it with my old man’s Canon SLR. For a moment I felt like one of the street kids from Tekkon Kinkreet — small, subversive, running through a living anime.
At the airport on the way out, the other David spotted a big Japanese airline poster screaming “We Support Your Dream.” He just looked at it, deadpan, and said “Chill.” I took that energy home and printed my first real business cards:Monster New Media
We Support Your Dream.
