This event I was particularly excited for. This was my first time at clubasia, though I had heard of the venue for many music events in the past. The club is divided between 2 floors, where the bottom floor contains a circular bar with a DJ booth inside it for the lounge DJs, a door to the main floor, and upstairs is a second bar with a small dance floor and another DJ booth.

The levels across the club were pretty well managed, and I was able to comfortably hold a conversation outside the main floor while still not having the music from the DJ booths drown out any sort of conversation. On the flip side, the levels were still loud enough to enjoy the sets from the lounge DJs if you wanted to, especially from the booth on the 2nd floor.

DE DE Mouse and Moe Shop killed it on the main floor. DE DE Mouse is an artist I’d recently started following at the time, as they had recently had their song “Silly Love” featured in the newest version of Beatmania IIDX a month before. After staying around for the countdown, I enjoyed a bit of has x batsu x アンテナガール and some sake! As part of the New Year’s celebrations, they held a small sake barrel breaking ceremony next to the stage, which meant free sake for everybody! I managed to get a very blurry photo of the sake barrel, but I figured it was worth including on the left!

I wandered upstairs to see some friends who were hanging out up there, and got caught up in the energy of LADY’S ONLY playing the 2F lounge. This set ended up being one of the highlights of the night, despite me being unfamiliar with their work a the time. This set highlighted a lot of what I enjoy about the Japanese club scene, where the spaces tend to be quite small while the people are all really passionate! We were all packed shoulder to shoulder but everyone was still really respectful, plus they were breaking out a new bottle of champagne and passing it through the dance floor, which is another fun tradition I picked up on over the years at these music events in Tokyo.

It was a fantastic New Year’s Eve, and in hindsight one of the best last hurrahs I could’ve asked for before COVID lockdowns stopped us in our tracks 2 months later.