In the event that you find yourself up in Edogawabashi, be aware that the northern Shinjuku neighborhood is not completely off the map, art-wise. Two very pleasant spaces occupy a building just a few minutes walk from its eponymous station -- the Uplink Gallery and La Galerie des Nakamura.
The third-floor Uplink gallery/cafe is operated by Takashi Asai's movie distribution company of the same name. Asai is a vigorous supporter of the creative community -- in 1994 he published a monograph of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs in Japan, and is still involved in a case (now at the Supreme Court) challenging the government to revise its definition of obscenity.
Now showing at the Uplink is the promising conceptual artist Makoto Ishiwata. The 27-year-old, based in Kanagawa, first garnered attention with his "Vacuum Packing" project, which involved shrink-wrapping gallery visitors. After donning a baseball catcher's mask and stepping into a telephone boothlike structure with thin, translucent rubber walls, the participant would strike a pose. The air was then sucked out of the booth, leaving the person inside looking -- and maybe feeling -- like a piece of meat in a supermarket (which was one of Ishiwata's inspirations for the project).