Last Day in Tokyo

I stopped in Tokyo for 3 days after leaving Hong Kong. As I was just getting to know the city, I had to leave.

(Nagi left, Iri right)

My last day began with a meeting with Iri and Nagi, two young women who run the Asian Queer Film & Video Festival in Japan. I was grateful for them as they were the first people who showed a feature of mine in Japan. As I asked them about how the festival went, they said that "Ethan Mao" was very popular. It had been almost 3 years since it was made and it was finally shown in Japan.

They said that it was difficult for them to put together their first festival, which was originally supposed to have happened in 2005/2006. They had to scrape every penny they had to get it going and finally found sponsors to put up the festival in Tokyo and Fukuoka. 2007 was their first year. They planned to have the festival every 2 years.

I was particularly happy to find that they were very sincere and nice people. The festival was entirely their passion. They distinguished themselves from the Tokyo Gay and Lesbian Film Festival as they were only interested in showing Asian or Asian-themed short films and features.

After meeting Iri and Nagi, I wanted to do some last minute shopping from Aoyama to Harajuku. There were just so many stores from Prada to local small Japanese shops to underground artist galleries that it was so overwhelming that I didn't even know what to buy or where to begin. I literally just browsed around and got exhausted.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/v/QP5lKur0TNM What made my day were the Japanese street artists performing outside the Shunjuku. I always get moved watching street artists perform, especially young street artists so full of unbridled passion. For me, it wasn't as much how great their music was... their simple passion to put themselves out there was enough to touch me.