The above photo by Basile Morin is of Maison Hermes in Ginza. Yup, it's the building for the Hermes company in Tokyo and I actually taught classes there for a while. The glass blocks used to create the exterior were all shipped over right from Italy. And one benefit from teaching there was that I could get a nice brand wedding present for my brother and his wife.
But the point that I actually wanted to make is that for newcomers to Tokyo, seeing architecture like Maison Hermes and a lot of other buildings can be really dazzling. And the Japanese megalopolis was just as dazzling to me back in 1981 when I was on that graduation trip for a month. Elevator girls, plastic food displays and the Toyota Asteroid (nope, it doesn't look as great as I remember it) concept car....got to witness all that and more. It partially explains why I'm communicating with you right now in 2026.
I think that's why the band Satellite Young is communicating with us through their June 2019 single "Shin Sekai Banzai" (New World Banzai) as they entice us to join the world of the digital and neon. The music video's setting is Shanghai, China and I've noticed that there are a few cities in the People's Republic that could be very enticing to futurists. Satellite Young's technopop style is perhaps the ideal music to get folks to escape from the gray and mundane to the colorful and exciting. My question is whether there is a soul within all that crystal.
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