Japan's club scene continues to divide itself into smaller niche events like cells undergoing mitosis. Each new party differs slightly from the others and together they cater to almost every genre and micro-genre imaginable; if it has been blogged about, then there's a night for it.
This new state of affairs has been a challenge to many organizers and promoters, but monthly event Waradise Garage seems to be bucking that trend, pulling in a diverse crowd for the past five years. Its premise: domestic content only.
"We mostly play 1970s and '80s Japanese, disco-influenced music that even the locals have never heard of," says Kazunao Nagata, a veteran in Tokyo's dance-music scene and the man behind Waradise Garage. He mentions that the name itself is a play on the legendary Paradise Garage venue in New York.