Beautiful (and simple) site design featuring the illustrative work of Yorifuji Bunpei. Via Paul Baron.

Coming up at the Kakitsubata gallery in Nakameguro is the show “Kodai,” running from November 25 until December 6.

Satoshi Kon’s next film is called The Dream Machine, and unlike his previous complex and adult work (Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, Paranoia Agent), is being described as a family-friendly film. Here’s what Kon has to say about the film (taken from this interview):

On the surface, it’s going to be a fantasy-adventure targeted at younger audiences. However, it will also be a film that people who have seen our films up to this point will be able to enjoy. So it will be an adventure that even older audiences can appreciate. There will be no human characters in the film; only robots. It’ll be like a “robot movie” for robots.

The film’s official site now reveals a few images from the film, including the one pictured above. Via /Film.

Very nice to see Matt Alt and his wife Hiroko appear on the cover of this week’s issue of Metropolis, as part of a feature on small business owners — you can read the piece online here.

Information Architects (iA) has begun selling the template for its site as a proper WordPress theme, and is using a “dynamic pricing” strategy to determine the selling price — they talk more about the strategy here. It’s currently selling for $33, but that will be for the first 100 purchases only, which will be followed by a price adjustment.

This could have been a very interesting cafe project, if completed.

In 2008 Japanese architect Hiroki Tanabe developed a small café house of 62 sqm — a two-story complex which has an elongated U shape. On the first floor there is a kitchen and the café doubling as living room. The second floor houses a bedroom and bathroom.

See a gallery of photos over at Designboom.

Science, metaphysicism, and architecture meet in Atelier Norisada Maeda’s “I Remember You” home. More at Spoon & Tamago.

For its new “Night Color” series of black appliances, Panasonic enlisted Cornelius to create music for a special installation at Tokyo Designer’s Week. I didn’t get to see it because I didn’t want to wait in line, but now we get to see a video of it. Via Patrick Benny.

It was indeed a terrific return to PauseTalk (Vol. 35) last night after a skip month, and I’d like to thank everyone — all 30 of you — who attended (and the manager of the cafe thanks everyone for all the drinking). If you haven’t already, do take a look at the great gallery of portraits taken by Max Hodges — he didn’t get everyone, but it’s certainly a nice representation.

Below is a partial list of those who attended — if you are not there, please let me know and I’ll add you right away. The next edition (Vol. 36) happens in three weeks, on December 7.

• Alastair Townsend (Architect)
• Andrew Lee (Editor)
• Edward Harrison (Illustrator)
• Erika Nishizato (Graphic Designer)
• Hawken King (Web Designer)
• Hiroaki Koshiba (Artist)
• Imre Ostmann (Photographer)
• James Kay (Game Developer)
• James Okubo (Filmmaker)
• Jean Snow (President of PauseTalkia)
• Josh McKible (Illustrator)
• Juniper Stokes (Teacher)
• Kate Holdsworth (Designer)
• Katrina Toshiko Grigg-Saito (Writer)
• Kayoko Ohtsuki (Architect)
• Mariko Mizukami (Radio DJ)
• Martin Holtkamp (Photographer)
• Max Hodges (Photographer/Publisher)
• Perrine Valli (Performance Artist)
• Ronnie Kattan (Retailer)
• Scott Popular (Gamer)
• Sergio Paolantonio (Interaction Designer)
• Sophie Knight (Writer)
• Tanya Tanaka (Artist)
• Tomoko Okazaki (Publisher)
• Wayne Moskwa (Designer)

Last night’s PauseTalk (Vol. 35) was a great one — I’ll have a separate post for the list of participants — but I first wanted to share a terrific gallery of portraits that Max Hodges took after the official session was over. I’m not exactly sure what gear he was using, but it included a circular flash and a big box with lots of wires.

Pictured above, Perrine Valli, a French dancer/performance artist in town for a couple of months as she researches a piece on sexual identity, that she will perform at SuperDeluxe on December 1.

Even more than today’s HG House — yes, I know it’s confusing — I really dig Sou Fujimoto’s House H, especially the interior — it has an M.C. Escher meets Muji feel to it. Photographer Iwan Baan has a gallery of 40+ photos from the house. Via Designboom.

Johnny over at the Spoon & Tamago blog was right to feature the signage by Nosigner for an Ikushinsha cram school. I definitely agree, using a ruler as a graphic element in that environment is both thematically sound and visually pleasing.

Is it just me or does pretty much every architectural project that appears on Designboom and Dezeen — especially homes — come from Japan? Here’s another one, this time the HG House by Atelier Tekuto, which fulfills the client’s request of “living in the garage.”

A friendly reminder that tonight (Monday, November 16) is this month’s edition of PauseTalk (Vol. 35), the first one in over two months. The official session kicks off at 20:00 at Cafe Pause, but feel free to join us earlier, from 19:00, to have a listen at Tokyo Realtime’s latest audio tour, covering Akihabara. So far, on the Facebook event page alone, we have 19 attending and 15 “maybes,” so looks like it’ll be a good one.

I’m very happy to be able to share the latest entry in my “Cafe Pause Poster Series” (#5), a contribution by Amsterdam-based art director Luis Mendo. You know about the Tokyo map he just produced for the next issue of Journal de Nîmes, and now here’s also his homage to the cafe. The concept revolves around the seats found in the cafe — there are 24 (all pictured), with 23 people shown, the idea being that the 24th customer is you!

The poster should occupy the entrance of the cafe sometime this week, but unfortunately won’t be ready for tomorrow night’s PauseTalk (Vol. 35).