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Above: the art for Togawa’s debut album Tamahime Sama   I’m standing outside a convenience store in Shin-Ōkubo, dressed as a stag beetle   For a while now, my friend M and I have been working on a film made up of various short snippets, stitched together to recreate the experience of flipping channels in a very strange hotel, or floating through the galaxy and tuning into different alien frequencies Today we have been shooting footage for one such snippet: a karaoke video to a song by the artist Jun Togawa, called ‘Mushi no onna’ [Insect Woman] M is a seasoned filmmaker who has come up with most of the ideas for the various snippets, but this is one that I’ve dreamed up – an idea, in fact, that I’ve been wanting to realise for some time Living in Japan, karaoke has become one of my favourite pastimes, and I’ve spent a lot of time watching karaoke videos – marvelling at the various features that define the genre and, particularly, at the peculiar brand of wistfulness that is a hallmark Now we are trying to reproduce this wistfulness within an insect context, creating a karaoke video for a song I have become obsessed with The video tells the story of a boy and a beetle who were once together but are now apart and pining for one another, each continually passing the other by without noticing   To transform myself into a beetle, I have constructed a big, horned headdress out of cardboard, painted brown, with an open hole in the centre into which my face slots M is wearing a purple sweatshirt and shorts, socks and sandals on his feet He is also carrying a four-foot long insect-catching net, which I bought at a DIY shop where I live in Osaka and carried down on the bullet train to Tokyo Travelling with it, wedging it into the overhead luggage rack, along with the oversized headdress wrapped up in a bin bag, earned me lots of strange glances   What I love about filming with M is all the improvisation We decide little in advance about the shots we