Today we say goodbye to a blog that has been by turns edifying, profane, funny, pornographic, punk, metal, hip-hop, drunken, and even poignant. Mr. Schultz is getting deported from Japan, having overstayed his visa, and so it seems that Tokyo Damage Report (latest post is NSFW) will soon reach its end. For at least a couple years and a half I've been reading his reviews of punk shows, reports from all the bizarre design/fashion/industrial food technology conventions they hold over there, rants about the opposite sex, freestyle rap lyrics about political figures, and analyses of innumerable other cultural phenomena that certainly seem like they could only exist in Japan. Let's not forget his occasional epic struggles with HTML--he's one of the few bloggers, especially popular ones, to not have made the move to a Content Management System, though I must admit his archive (scroll down some) has been pretty impressively well-maintained for a while now.

Schultz is a tireless journalist of the Japan experience. It's probably true that Tokyo is the easiest place to find crazy stuff of the kind he writes about, but it's still not that easy. When I was there it mostly seemed like another big city, one that I was ill-prepared for, and even when I found stuff that seemed interesting, like an all-vinyl record store or an all-night internet cafe, it was often intimidating (the common problem of trying to transcend being a tourist when I can in no way deny being one). His writing style is intense and direct, often hilarious, and in a way disguises its quality with its lack of pretension (a quality I'm in no danger of sharing, I admit).

I should also mention that Schultz has a band. They've managed to play a few shows in Tokyo, which I would love to have seen, since he is a connoisseur of live shows. Recently he made an album (by himself, as far as I can tell) and made it available for download. I've listened to a couple of the songs, and so far it's pretty rad punk-metal stuff, quite well-produced. The lyrics are all in Japanese.

First KindOfCrap goes, now this. Here's hoping this entry ends up in error and TDR somehow finds a way to continue. Otherwise, can anyone point me in the direction of a Japan (or anywhere, really) blog remotely as interesting?