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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

TB.31

TB.31 is now up. A few pics taken at night in my neighborhood.

Mao Zedong

I switched desktops today.

Mao Zedong

geisha.3

As promised last month, I’ve readied a new issue of my GEISHA ezine. It’s now posted, and you can access it by clicking on the “ge3″ icon near the bottom of this page. Hope you enjoy it. I’ll have another issue out next month.

Japanese Mac Mods

The Japanese love to modify their Macs.

TB.30

It’s Friday, so of course time for a new TOKYO BOY to get posted. Includes a pic taken at the TIFF today of the Q&A that followed the screening.

Hong Kong Nocturne

As planned, I went to see a movie being shown as part of the Shaw Brothers retrospective at the Tokyo International Film Festival. HONG KONG NOCTURNE starring Cheng Pei Pei (better known these days as Jade Fox in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) was a musical done in the 60s by a Japanese director, who was remaking one of his own movies, but this time setting it in HK. It was a really fun film with great tunes and costumes. A really funny scene was when a girl is tricked into going to Tokyo, thinking she’s going to become a star, only to meet up with a pinkueiga (infamous Japanese softcore films of the time) director, complete with beret and Hitler style moustache. Oh my. The director and Cheng both showed up at the end for a Q&A session. Cheng brought her daughter along, who did the English translation, and it was amazing how much she looked like her mother in the film.

I just wish I would have been able to see more films at the festival, but this being Japan, the scheduling of course sucked, with every movie being shown during the day, with the latest showing at around 7 at night. Is this a festival only for university students and the jobless?

Moph

Yesterday while I was in Shibuya I had a coffee at a new cafe in the renewed Parco. Called Moph, you can check out their website for more info on the place (and a better view of the layout). Tomorrow I head back to Shibuya to see a movie at the TIFF, and then I’m thinking of doing some roaming in Aoyama and Harajuku.

Milo Store

Check out pics of the latest addition to the A Bathing Ape (BAPE) empire in Aoyama, the Milo Store. Also check out the rest of the site, as this design company as designed most of the BAPE stores, as well as lots of other cool places.

PauseTalk

PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition happens on Sunday, May 13, as part of the Magazine Library 10 exhibition in Daikanyama.

We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.

Codex is a weekly music podcast hosted by Jean Snow, recorded in Tokyo. Playlists for all episodes are posted on the site, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of posts and episodes.

Jean Snow is a contributor to Arcade Mania, your guide to the arcade gaming scene in Japan (Amazon US/Amazon Japan). He also provided assistance on Tokyolife: Art and Design, a guide to Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives.
He will be contributing to the upcoming fifth editions of The Rough Guide to Tokyo and The Rough Guide to Japan, due for release in 2011.

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PechaKucha

Jean Snow is Executive Director of the PechaKucha organization. He also helps run the PechaKucha Night in Tokyo -- please get in touch if you are interested in presenting at a future event. For a more intimate salon-like discussion group, join him at his monthly PauseTalk event.

A longtime resident of Tokyo, he lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming, sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for various online/offline publications, including the following: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 1UP, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Wired's Game|Life, PingMag, CNNGo, Phaidon, and The Japan Times.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook, or get in touch by email.

 

Colophon

The "Jean Snow" logo is written using the free Kirimomi Swash typeface. The "M31" logo is by Ian Lynam, and is part of a series of 31 unique designs. The site's design is based on the Grid Focus WordPress theme by Derek Punsalan.

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