It's Saturday night at Bar Shampoo, one of the roughly 200 tiny watering holes crammed into the Golden Gai district of Shinjuku, and Takashi Goto is setting up for G10 Sake Night, the popup event he's hosted every weekend since June.
Bottles of premium brews sit chilling in ice buckets as Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" blasts from the speakers.
Goto stands behind the counter, dressed in a blue yukata (summer kimono) and a white scarf, examining the labels through a pair of square hipster frames. He is tall and wiry with a mane of long, black hair, and this colorful attire seems at odds with his otherwise goth-like appearance — the lip, cheek and ear piercings joined by a silver chain and chunky rings that cover half of his fingers.