Chapter 23: Far-East Conference

If you’ve ever seen Akira you will instantly feel like you are heading into the bowels of Neo-Tokyo to meet up with Kaneda for a secret mission to save Tokyo.  Fluorescent lit tunnels that seem to go on for miles, cavernous silos that fill up with water in emergencies -- it started out 12 years ago as the G-Cans Project, a series of tunnels and silos that are designed to deal with the overflow of water from the rainy season and typhoons.

The Kuumba incense factory resides silently without a sign in a small office/storefront between the Tokyo neighborhoods of Aoyama and Harajuku. There we interviewed one of the company’s founders about his history, philosophy, and life.

Island music is island music, but still, I am having a hard time realizing that the island of Japan is the home of a Reggae revolution. Believe it or not, Reggae music and Jamaican culture is wrapped up and packaged like sushi here in the streets of the TKO. From dreadlock extensions to Rasta colored shoelaces and reggae style bibles, there are many ways to be involved. One thing that is certain are the girls walking around in laced up thigh high boots representing their Jamaican brethren, shaking their asses harder than the Kobe earthquake. Having proven themselves in the homeland of jerk chicken and Marley joints, and even walking away with the Dancehall Queen title, the girls of Japan are shaking up a storm around the world. Check out www.oneandg.com to see what it’s all about.

In July of 2005, I was invited to witness a fight in Tokyo. This was not just any fight, but a K-1 Hero’s Fight. At the time, I didn’t know anything about K-1 fights or any similar kinds of fighting in Japan. The only kinds of fighting I had ever seen were Mike Tyson style fights and street fights. K-1 fighting is a combination of many stand-up fighting styles such as Karate, Kung-Fu, Kickboxing, etc. Now, if you’ve ever seen a New York City beat down, you should know exactly what a K-1 fight is like.