Tokyo Damage
Report is one of the best and most well-known weblogs published from Tokyo&#160– written up in Boing Boing ^[1] and in countless other places. But it’s now at serious risk of coming to an end. Find out why and find out how you might be able to help save it.

About Tokyo Damage Report ^[2]
How you can help ^[3]

About Tokyo Damage Report

Tokyo Damage
Report has been self-described this way:

This page is about interesting (meaning, fucked up) things that one can do in Tokyo. punk, visual, cosplay, s/m, gothic, street trends, capsule hotels, bizarre magazines, random subcultures, and bad Engrish. . . . .also it is about tokyo’s urban legends: square watermelons, Sanrio condoms, politically incorrect vending machines, etc.

Another part of the site describes certain pages this way:

These pages are ’safe for work’ . . . provided that you work as a pornographer

In short, it covers some unusual things. Things that certain types of people might find disturbing. And a few things that, well, actually just about anybody would find plain disturbing. If you are prudish or easily offended or consider yourself politically correct, it is not the site for you.

On the other hand, if you’re interested in the freakier aspects of Japanese pop culture (to use the word culture in its broadest possible sense), you’ll find plenty to keep you interested at TDG. In fact, on your first visit, it may all seem overwhelming. Though it does have a Google-powered search form ^[4] to help,
TDR’s idiosyncratic site design can make trying to navigate through it a bit of a disorienting experience. But time spent on a journey through it will pay off bigtime Here are just a handful of examples of what you’ll come across there:

• Underground Tokyo Guidebook ^[5] – a goldmine of info about weird and otherwise off-the-beaten-track places of interest in the city
• Hentai dictionary: Japanese perversions, fetishes and AV slang ^[6]
• a report, with photos, from a sewage trade show ^[7]
• a book that appears to be a photo-illustrated how-to sex guide from the 60s ^[8] but may in fact be something much weirder
• a genuine “adult english” textbook ^[9] from 1980, which somehow manages to be both quaint and disturbing at the same time
• odd pocket games ^[10] – Digital Drugs, Pocket Breeder (horse breeding)
• a cheat guide for a pornographic video game ^[11]

What really makes the site unique is not just the massive amount of weirdness gathered there, but the commentary about it all from the guy who maintains the site. For example, the following:

apparently for some guys, not only is it too difficult to have sex with living human females, it’s ALSO TOO DIFFICULT TO SCORE WITH THEM IN X-RATED VIDEOGAMES TOO

And here’s a comment about a visit to a cosplay hostess club:

I would heartily reccomend this club to guys who find that blind dates are not awkward or expensive enough, end in sex too often, and do not generally have enough lasers

How you can help

Tokyo Damage Report is the product of the mind of one person: Steven Schultz.. He found all the bizarre stuff assembled there, took most of the photos, scanned in all the weird magazines, and wrote every word of the smartass commentary on it all.

Well, unfortunately, it seems that after coming back from a trip abroad a while back, he was informed by the Immigration authorities that he can no longer legally stay in Japan unless he gets an official visa of some kind&#160– work, student, cultural, whatever. (He had been going back and forth on a tourist visa).

And despite spending most of his time over the last few weeks
urgently trying to make arrangements for a way to get permission to stay here in Japan, he
has not yet found a way. He hasn’t yet been able to land a job that provides a work
visa, and not been able to arrange for a visa of any other kind.
And he’s now at quite serious risk of being forced to leave the
country. In fact, unless some miracle of God happens, it appears
he’ll have to leave by January 24th, and not be able to come back,
ever, unless/until he gets something other than a tourist
visa.

He has a running log about the experience ^[12] at his site.

So, if you’re reading this and you happen to be in the position
of being able to help arrange something that might provide him
with a proper visa – say, employment that would come with a
work visa – or if you have even a remote idea of someone
else who might be, please contact him.

His e-mail address is on the Tokyo Damage
Report front page (the right-hand side of the page, in
Japanese). There’s another address that he also checks, which is
near the
bottom of the site-map page for the site.

If you can help, contact him. Soon. Because if Steven goes, Tokyo Damage Report
goes with him, and we will have lost something impossible to replace,