...I tell Katsumi about the Survival Research Labs show in Tokyo, and we go back to his office and pull up the SRL web site to see what it's all about. They have live video on the site (www.srl.org) and we can see them setting up equipment outside Yoyogi stadium.

I've loosely planned this segment of my trip to Japan around the SRL show, but judging from the line of people I can see on the live feed it seems I'll need to arrive early to get in. I leave Katsumi, stop at the hotel to change my shirt and socks, then catch an express train to Tokyo: one train change at Yokohama station, then again at Shinagawa, for a total of just fifty-five minutes of travel, including the walking. Cost: less than five dollars one way. Once you understand the train system (I'm getting better at it), you can get around in the larger metropolitan area very efficiently.

I get to Yoyogi Stadium two hours before the scheduled start time and the line stretches for nearly a kilometer already. Toward the front of the line, in rock concert style, young people have set up small homes for the day, with picnic lunches, blankets and games to play. I buy a bowl of yakisoba and an orange juice from a street vendor and take my place in line. Fortunately the line, at the point where I join it, stretches along a waist-high wall so I have a table of sorts and something to lean on. But my back is starting to feel very sore by the time sun goes down and the line starts to move.

The "performance" (I'm not sure what else to call it) is held in a parking lot in front of the stadium. For reasons that I don't understand until later, there is a large vacant (fenced-off) area behind the "stage", and only a limited amount of space for the audience in the front. In fact, there are as many people outside the iron fence of the stadium lot (some of whom have climbed up into the large trees that line the busy street outside) as there are inside. I take a position toward the rear of the crowd, standing on a four-inch high curb to get a slightly improved view over the heads of the others, while avoiding the mad crush at the temporary perimeter fence (a six-foot high chain link fence) that encircles the performance area. Behind me is a hedge of azaleas and small trees. Behind the shrubs (a meter or so back) is the iron fence, the sidewalk and the street. On the inside of the iron fence, a few people have brazenly pushed through the hedge (crushing the plants) and have found perches on the fence itself. Outside the fence, people on the sidewalk have also climbed up for a better look. A security man with an armband and megaphone bellows at them to get off the fence, but he is universally ignored and finally gives up.

The crowd is mostly young, mostly twenty-something. There is plenty of wild and colorful hair, multiple piercings and hipster clothes, platform shoes, B-girl makeup, dangling cigarettes, torn denim and black leather... On the left side of the stage, just before the performance begins, I see one man, perhaps twenty-five years old, climb the chain link perimeter fence and scream triumphantly, his fists raised when he reaches the top. He is completely naked, and a moment later he is gone.

The floodlights dim, the "music" (loud machine sounds backing a repeated and paranoid monologue), and the show begins.

The cast of "characters" in this abstract celebration of destruction include automated and remotely-controlled machines with suggestive names like "People Hater", "Air Launcher", "Pulse Jet", and "Pitching Machine". The latter is a weird rust-colored contraption consisting of two large rotating wheels and a feeding mechanism that, in combination, fire large pieces of lumber at various targets hung on the sheet metal back wall of the stage. (The reason for the large, vacant area behind the stage quickly becomes obvious: the Pitching Machine is not terribly accurate, and the force with which the wooden projectiles are fired comes close to punching holes in the wall.)

The rear half of the cyclone-fenced performance area features a sort of alter (subtly reminiscent of a shrine). To its left there is a tall (perhaps 10 meters) construction of plywood panels and lights painted to represent a house of cards. Just behind the shrine-like object there is an elephant-sized metallic creature with four legs and a star-shaped head that looks like a junkyard mutation between Godzilla and Sony's Aibo robot dog.

Well to one side of the performance area there is a large and rusted canon-like machine that swivels and tilts (apparently in response to control inputs from visitors to SRL's web site), occasionally firing concussive rounds of air that blast over and through the crowd.

In front of these larger machines and icons, various smaller machines spew fire, cause enormous sparking explosions and do battle with each other, soon causing the ignition and destruction the shrine-like building. Flames, smoke and sparks fill the air, loud industrial noise blasts from multiple speakers, and the huge elephant-shaped creature comes to life, walking on four legs toward the center, eventually standing atop the still-burning wreckage. Other machines soon approach the creature and start battering and burning it. The effect is that of Godzilla amid the burning wreckage of Tokyo, swatting away the other bit players of old Japanese monster movies.

I start looking more at the crowd itself, rather than at the show. Moving to one side, I can look back over the heads of the audience, toward the iron fence and large trees beyond. I notice that there are two fire trucks parked on the street, lights flashing, and I watch as a ladder is leaned up into a tree. Curious, I push my way back to the rear and see that someone has fallen out of the higher branches the tree and is lodged, unconscious, in the tree's crotch. The firemen are trying to extricate the man (who looks pale, like a corpse, in the strange light of the event). The man moves slightly, grimaces, then appears to pass out again. As the firemen winch him upwards using a block and tackle I see him vomit on himself. One leg is swinging in an unnatural way, obviously broken. There are dozens of people in the trees around, and hundreds more on the sidewalk below, but none of them watch the rescue. Instead they are staring ahead at the weirder spectacle of fire, noise and destruction of the machines in the show. The noise is deafening; many audience members have brought earplugs -- something that hadn't occurred to me.

In the final minutes of this orgy of destruction, the large card house moves forward, under its own power in a staggering way, and is then toppled in a fiery heap by the smaller machines. The crowd eats it up, jumping and screaming as the structure falls with a crash. The show is over.

The few security people in attendance, looking a bit overwhelmed by the crowd, start yelling through bullhorns, telling people again to get down from the fences and trees and leave in an orderly way. One young woman with bleached hair and platform shoes leans over the fence and leers at a security guard, taunting him as he yells directly at her to get down. She reaches out and swats away his bullhorn, laughs, then jumps down and runs away.

Rather than try getting on the train at the same time as three thousand wild young people (I'm suddenly feeling rather old and out of touch with popular culture), I take a walk through the Yoyogi and Harajuku area toward Shinjuku. It's a nice roundabout walk of about an hour. Harajuku in particular seems a pleasant district, with many small shops and trendy restaurants, and quiet back streets. (It is said often that Tokyo is not Japan, and it seems to me equally true that the famous urban districts -- Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza, etc. -- are not really Tokyo either. It's on the back streets, around the minor stations, that you find more of what Tokyo is really like as a place. Against the stereotype, most of Tokyo does not feel overly crowded, and in fact in the smaller districts it is not as noisy and traffic-clogged as in similar districts of much smaller American cities.)

There is some problem with the Yamanote line, which is the major ring line around Tokyo: I have to wait forty minutes for a train, then find at Shinagawa that the express train to Yokohama is not running either (the announcement on the PA seems to be saying there's a signal problem at Ueno, but I can't be sure). Finally a local train takes me to Yokohama Kannai. In total it takes over an hour and a half to get from Shinjuku back to my hotel. I call Satomi, then go out for a plate of spaghetti and some wine at a 24 hour second-floor restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. Exhausted, I sleep well.