Gitadora Switch
20200306 - Gitadora..DrumMania - Drummer player and spectator at cabinet in Japanese arcade - Konami - 1999 - Sega Akihabara 3-Kan - Akihabara - Resized.jpeg

Gitadora: Guitar Freaks and DrumMania. True companions – the point of each other. (Since 1999, so Rock Band didn’t invent the rock band.)

From space, Tokyo’s mush. Far enough and anything is. And all the music’s white noise. All the jazz bars and nightclubs and opera halls cancel out into one endless scrape.

And you’re mush like the rest – not even a dot.

And your life is mush. Kidhood on jungle gyms beside sixlanes and skyscrapers. The same one school in every anime and videogame. Cram the weekend. College contest breaking into pain-paid aimlessness.

Everything drumming you down.

So get in the dark, blank out the facts. Imagine, be the star – be the sun. Switch off the blues and play the upside game. What’s the point? Got someone to watch you then you’re set for life.

How to survive one moment in the metropolis.

Photographer and writer covering Tokyo arcade life – the videogames, the metropolis and the people