I’ve always been fascinated by how subcultural communities can help people with unorthodox interests or approaches to life to awaken their most authentic selves and find a sense of belonging. Every summer for the past decade I’ve helped build Ephemerisle, an experimental, temporary floating city in the Bay Area without tickets or centralized leadership, eventually becoming a captain of the event’s largest island and helping to create the event’s first enthusiastic consent policy. Over the years I’ve also been involved in creating weird online diaspora Jewish communities for cultural Jews like myself who don’t necessarily connect with traditional organized Judaism. In Tokyo, I’ve done in-depth research into the city’s many subcultures, and how the Japanese capital’s unusual cityscape helps the like-minded to find each other and build community together.