WOMB: a guide to Shibuya's four-floor disco-ball room

WOMB occupies four floors in a basement building two minutes from Shibuya Crossing. The signature feature is a 2,500-pound mirror ball hanging over the main floor, which moves up and down across a long warm-up to closing run. The room opened in 2000 and has been the city's marquee dance club since.

Programming runs Friday and Saturday almost every weekend, with Thursday and Sunday programming on big-booking nights. House and techno hold most of the calendar, with bass music, drum and bass, and trance nights filling the rest. International bookings rotate through weekly.

The door

Open door, ticketed in advance and at the door. Staff check IDs at the entrance, scan tickets, and run a coat-check style entry on most nights. The door is friendly compared to the marquee Berlin rooms but firm on the basics.

What works at the door:

• Tickets in advance through the WOMB site or Resident Advisor. Advance is cheaper.
• Photo ID. They check.
• Cash for the door if you forgot to buy in advance. The card readers can be slow on busy nights.
• Knowing which floor and which night you came for. The staff will direct you.

What does not:

• Showing up under 20. The legal drinking age is 20 in Japan and they check.
• Visible drunkenness on arrival.
• Big group bachelor energy.
• Trying to bring in outside drinks.

Bigger international bookings sell out in advance. Local resident nights usually have door tickets available.

When to arrive

Doors open at 11pm. The first trains stop running around midnight in Tokyo and the next ones do not start until around 5am, which means most clubbers commit to a full night. The floor peaks 2am to 5am. The closing set runs to 5am or 6am, timed to the start of the morning trains.

For the main floor with the disco ball low, aim for 3am. For the smaller floors, the warm-up sets in the first hour after doors are the most interesting selection of the night.

Inside

Four floors, each with its own DJ booth and bar. The main floor is the bottom: a high vaulted ceiling, the giant mirror ball overhead, a Funktion-One rig tuned for the depth of the room, and a balcony at the back. The second and third floors run smaller systems and house the side bookings. The top floor is a lounge.

Programming character: international house and techno headliners on the main floor, plus a steady run of Japanese residents. Names that have held the room: Jeff Mills (regularly), Carl Cox, Richie Hawtin, Maceo Plex, Ben Klock, Octave One, plus a deep bench of Tokyo residents.

Phones are allowed in most areas. Some nights post a no-photo policy at the booth. The staff will ask you to put the phone away if you point it at the DJ.

What it costs

Door is usually ¥3,500 to ¥5,000 with a flyer or advance discount, ¥4,000 to ¥6,000 without. Drinks are ¥800 to ¥1,200 for beer and cocktails. The cover usually includes one drink ticket. Water at the bar is free.

Rules

No flash photography on the main floor. No aggression. No harassment. The staff are quiet and firm. Anyone who makes someone uncomfortable gets removed.

The club allows: switching between floors freely with a wristband, sitting at the upstairs lounge between sets, staying through to the first train at 5am, moving between the main floor and the smaller rooms as the night progresses.

Why it matters

WOMB has been the city's working main floor for 25 years. The room held through the post-2006 fueiho-law crackdown that flattened most of Tokyo's larger clubs, kept the international booking pipeline open during the difficult years, and remained the room that touring DJs treat as their Tokyo stop. The Funktion-One rig and the giant disco ball are the obvious draws. The deeper reason is the booking team's consistency: a clear house-and-techno direction held for a quarter century in a city that has cycled through dozens of rivals.

Jeff Mills has played the room more than any other venue in Asia. That alone says enough.