Scott Kowalchyk/Courtesy of Electric Zoo
On Labor Day weekend, a bustling sea of music fans in their late teens and early 20s were stuffed onto a grassy, open field in New York. One of them stood out, dancing in a sweat-drenched black T-shirt that read, "Sex, drugs and dubstep."
Obviously it wasn't Woodstock, but in between the neon sunglasses and hot pants, I saw remnants of hippie culture in tie-dye and plumes of weed smoke. Electric Zoo is a three-day electronic music festival held annually on Randall's Island in New York; this year 80,000 people walked through the gates. Earlier this summer, on the other side of the country, The Electric Daisy Carnival drew 230,000 people. Ryan Raddon, also known as DJ Kaskade, was one of the DJs that played there.
"People are like, 'This is the biggest thing happening in California," he says. "I'm like, 'Dude, this is the biggest thing happening in the world. I've got news for you: I've played Creamfields . I've played all these festivals all over the world. U2 doesn't do this!' That's why it's like, well, you can't ignore it much anymore.
Trip to Japan finds a nation pampering tourists
Travel within Japan:You can't beat the Japan Rail Pass, which offers unlimited travel on JR trains for 7-, 14- or 21-days. We paid $362 per person for the 7-day pass in regular class (first class was about $480 and offered no significant benefits). Our cost for the pass was just $35 more than a round-trip bullet train to Kyoto; had we bought individual tickets for our train travel, we would have spent a lot more money. Order your pass online (jrpass.com) and receive an exchange order delivered to your home in America before leaving for Japan; then trade it in at an exchange office at the airport or a major train station when you arrive. If you plan to use your JR Pass immediately upon arrival in Japan -- and you will probably want to use the JR Pass to get into the center of Tokyo from the airport by train (from Narita) or monorail (from Haneda) -- check the hours of the exchange office at the airport you're flying into (Haneda is closer to central Tokyo; Narita has more international flights) before booking your flight. Some exchange offices don't open until late morning and flights from the American West Coast can arrive hours earlier.
Thank God, I'm thinking, at least I'm not wearing skin-tight latex with neon green embellishments, or antennae hair bands with a cherry-red micro miniskirt. This is bad enough. I'm suffocating in a body-hugging, electric-blue sleeveless chemise;
On our way out of Kiyomizu-Dera we encountered a Japanese student wearing a University of Pittsburgh Panthers T-shirt. We asked him about it, thinking maybe he studied in Pittsburgh. Like most Japanese people we encountered, he did not speak much
It was an uncharacteristically balmy stroll for August, which is the heart of the Philippine rainy season, and along the way I stayed cool by drinking Cobra, an electric-chartreuse energy drink. The neon beverage, which was poured into a plastic bag so
