Smoothies, Gashapons and VR, oh my!
My name's Ren, and I'm the founder of Senspace, a Web3 creator network built from me and my team's local community in Tokyo. Copped in Tokyo is a content series chronicling the stories behind the merch and knick knacks that I collect in my every day life.
Sorry, it's been a while since I put the last Copped in Tokyo out! For those who were watching on Warpcast, our first Farcaster-built project, /ball blew up (quick flex lol) and so was deep in it for a while! Excited to come up for air and tell you about the fun things I've copped in Tokyo lately!
Meta x Lacoste Polo from Tokyo Vitamin Party
These are not three brands that you would ever expect to be in the same sentence, but today they were, for a Friday night reception in Harajuku. Meta and Lacoste, maybe, but add Tokyo Vitamin and you go from preppy golf bros to Tokyo club kids in what seems like an incongruous mishmash of brands.
But sometimes, from mishmash comes beauty. Seeing a bunch of kids you would typically see at a late night club show in Shibuya putting Meta Quest headsets on to play VR golf and enjoying themselves while doing it was an unexpected and fun experience. You can check out what it looked like below.
I even got the Meta and Lacoste polo at the end of it! I personally like this take on fashion more than Zuck's first Meta Horizons take. I primarily wear tee shirts for the most part but I look forward to wearing this this summer.
Cosmos Juice Tomigaya with Dub
Cosmos is a relatively new (maybe a bit over a year old) smoothie and cold press juice shop run by Lono and Mao in the Tomigaya area of Tokyo, about a 25-30 minute walk from Shibuya. Last December, I threw an onchain drawing event there for Senspace and broke their single day sales record.
I recently moved to a new neighborhood, Yoyogi Uehara, which is not too far from Cosmos and thought I'd take my dog, Dub, there for her first trip. It'd been a busy week and it'd a nice, lazy way to start my Saturday. Japanese stores won't typically let you bring your dog inside and Cosmos is one of the few places that does, which meant I could kick it for a while while I had my smoothie.
I got the "green smoothie," which is my go-to which has kale and other healthy stuff in it (forgot to take down what else was in it haha). It is very good and fairly filling too and I would highly recommend it if you hit up Cosmos.
We were lucky enough to make a new friend at the shop too, Leila, to make it a fun trip for Dub too :).
Gashapon Badge from Osteoleuco Art and Live Concert Event
Osteoleuco, was one of the first rap groups that I became friendly with in Tokyo. A rapper and keyboard duo, of KSK, originally of MGF, and Shimon Hoshino, Osteo as they're known for short, throws down unique combinations of jazzy lo-fi hip-hop beats and sometimes melodic, sometimes hard-hitting, always introspective raps.
I've put together a few projects with Osteo to date, starting with A-Team's Fables in 2019, a basketball-inspired hip-hop banger that was my first-ever Japanese hip-hop release, followed by Beyond the Long Night with Kaina and Taste Like it Smells (Remix) with Sen Morimoto and finally they were featured on our launch project from Senspace, New Funk Technology, where we made Osteo into Kepi La Wiwi and Pentatonic, Jr. in our fantasy world.
Osteo are always great performers. Whether the venue is big or small, they know how to put on a show. Today's show was at Up Side Down Gallery, where they put on a show last year and just so happens to be an event venue that is run by my mom's company in Daikanyama. Along with music, KSK also creates art as a way to "create something that he knows he's not good at" as he feels he's too much of a perfectionist when it comes to music and today, the venues walls were lined with his art.
I've probably been to upwards of 20 Osteoleuco shows but this was the first time I'd seen Ryo-z and Emi Okamoto perform Mantle with them and it was truly a treat. Catch a peak of that below.
Also, what serendipity, Osteoleuco had created their own Gashapon machine as merch for the event, just after we'd launched ball, our onchain take on a Gashapon machine.
Of course I had to immediately play and grab some tokens for myself and the friends I was with!
I ended up winning the pin below! I have a crewneck sweater with this drawing on it, which is actually made by my friend KJ's brother, who originally introduced me to KSK of Osteo.
We come full circle.
And that's all for this week! Sorry for the hiatus. Have a lot of fun stuff on the docket next week so hope to have another article up for you soon!
Until then...saynorara :)