Article “24 hours as a Tokyo Internet café refugee” has just gone up on CNNgo (HERE). I originally planned to spend a full week living as an Internet café refugee, a real chance to do some endurance reporting with a few nod’s to 70′s endurance artist Chris Burden. But i fell victim to serious abdominal pain after the second night requiring a short hospital visit. Perhaps the burden of punishment for using 70′s performance art techniques as a substitute for real journalism. I asked the Doctor: “Did i catch it in the café’s?” He said: “maybe you caught it in the café, maybe you caught it in the conbini”. Then i read THIS and decided i should abandon the week long project, temporarily, at least until the internet cafés install better ventilation. After a few more feeble attempts the week was downsized to a more comfortable 24 hours in the claustrophobic bowels of Tokyo’s internet cafés.

Images above are very grainy digital photos i took while inside the café’s (the top photo shows the Manboo! where i likely contracted said illness), it was impossible to shoot film; the ‘clack’ of the mirror slapping attracted too many “tsk’s” and “tut’s”.