"Tokyo Song"

Read it here.

Did I mention I went to Tokyo?

I'm not good at travelling. I've hardly been anywhere — opportunity and money never managed to coincide until just recently — and I've never really got the hang of holidays. Telling myself that I'd use these trips as research is my way of justifying the time and expense to myself.

I had the idea of writing something about Great Alex (the band who have been appearing as fragments — an oblique mention here, a sly reference there — in some of my writing for a while now) touring Tokyo even before I got on the plane and shared economy with a genuine touring group. Seeing them convinced me I was right. I do like it when fate gives me a clear sign like that. I also wanted to try out the voice of Matt, their drummer, in preparation for a longer story which I have planned (and which one day I may get to). Meanwhile, this gives me a chance to explore some of the themes which that will cover, while reusing my observations of the otherness of Japan — the surprisingly slight differences — pretty much all of which have been recorded elsewhere here in my travel notes. It also let me begin to flesh out the band's back catalogue of songs (or at least their titles), which is a part of the world building which I really enjoy.

Doing further research for this also gave me an excuse to trawl YouTube for 80s pop. The Graham Parker reference was added after I posted the first version of the story, after Brett Easton Ellis mentioned the song "Discovering Japan" in a tweet.