Saturday: The park surrounding the Meiji Jingu shrine is well known for attracting scores of teenagers from the provinces around Tokyo, who dress up in outlandish fantasy costumes and congregate here each Sunday. Less well known is that it's a good place to sleep when your trying to save money and can't find a hostel. Waking up shivering in the bushes is made all the more surreal by the fact that only a few hours ago I was getting free drinks at a Tokyo club's lavish birthday party. My back hurts.

Tuesday: Coming to Japan ? Rule number one: bring a business card. No-one will take you seriously without one. I print off twenty at an internet cafe. Perhaps I should ask for them back after handing them out.

Friday: The great deception continues. Since I spend all my time talking to people in the music industry, I keep getting invited out to fancy events. The only problem is that at around $10 a drink, buying alcohol in a club would lead to my financial ruin. Tonight it's a party to launch a new collaboration between Comme des Garcons and ultra-hip Parisian boutique, Colette, and I'm definitely the only person here who's smuggled in a bottle of Sake in my pocket. Pour it into a martini glass and nobody knows the difference.

Monday: No money, no gigs, nowhere to stay. Just as I'm contemplating throwing myself under a train, a chance meeting at a party organized by a multinational cigarette company in a desperate attempt to make smoking look cool, changes everything. I find myself talking to the head of Escalator records, Japan 's top electro label. The business card, in combination with the free mix CD, seems to do the trick. We spend the next day at his cafe-record shop, where I find myself showered with free records, free drinks, and then taken out for a meal. He's full of plans for the future – collaborations, remix work, DJing. Things are looking up.

Friday: I'm DJing at Vanity , an electroclash night where the real attraction isn't the music, but the strange, beautiful creatures that dress up for the event. The balcony is full of people from the fashion industry drinking the free Champaign , and I'm reminded of just how objectionably most of these high-flying people actually are. An Italian, working for a major fashion house, spends fifteen minutes telling me about himself in detail, and fails to ask me a single question. He spills my drink, and I smile and say nothing. “Well I'm not buying you another,” he yelps. Thanks.

Sunday: I decide to try to make some cash playing records in clubs where white foreign men dance badly to Hip Hop in an attempt to pick up Japanese girls. “So what kind of music do you play,” the man on the telephone asks me. “Sorry,” he replies, “it's not really our thing. We play a lot of Romanian music now.” I almost drop the phone - it looks like there's no escaping the Romanians abroad. Rather worryingly, most of it seems to be girls coming here to earn money in Tokyo 's sprawling, insatiable sex-industry.

Tuesday: Drinking might be prohibitively expensive, but eating great food in Tokyo is cheap. It's six in the morning, and having just DJed I find myself in Tokyo fishmarket, where you'll find the freshest Sashimi - raw fish. If you like, they'll take the meat off the fish while it's still alive. Rather unsettling, but tasty.

Thursday: It's my last day in Toyko, and I still haven't got to see the Imperial Palace - usually number one on any tourist itinerary. Coming to a city to try to earn money, rather than spend it, has been incredibly liberating – you don't feel obliged to visit as many things as possible in an attempt to have fun. The best way to see Tokyo ? Bring a box of records and not very much money. Oh, and maybe a tent.