Last night, on one of my frequent stops in Ikebukuro’s bookstores to check out magazines, I picked up the inaugural issue of the international edition of KATEIGAHO, which describes itself as “Japan’s Arts & Culture Magazine.” There are lots of nice pictures inside, and articles that cover various aspects of Japanese culture, from traditional washi and gardens, to the fashion streets of Harajuku and the place of humanoid robots in society. The magazine is going to be quarterly. A few of the articles can be read at the website.

This is the main entrance as you arrive to Roppongi Hills through Roppongi station on the Hibiya line. The escalators that were pictured in Tokyo Boy are inside this structure.

The page is now up to register for the 1IMC (First International Moblogging Conference). It also seems that you’ll be able to follow the conference remotely, so feel free to register even if you can’t make it to Tokyo. I’ve just registered, so I’ll see whoever else is planning on going there on July5th at Super-Deluxe.

Momus has announced the dates he’ll be performing in Japan this Summer. He starts out at Shimokitazawa’s Club Que on June 22nd (with Miniskirt, Plectrum, and Pancakes) and then visits a few cities in Japan on his Little Apples tour, where he will be joined by Odradek (who I’m assuming is Robert Duckworth) and Digiki. This tour is supposed to start in Tokyo, but there is no date or venue announced yet. Of interest is that the Kobe show on July 7th will be simulcast via RealVideo.

It’s been quiet in this main blog column for the past 2 days, but you can see that I’ve still been active if you follow the Tokyo Boy moblog. On Saturday, after having to get up early for a meeting (we have Saturday morning meetings at my workplace every 3-4 months), me and Yuko decided to finally check out the new Roppongi Hills “city.”

We arrived through Roppongi station on Hibiya line, which has a connecting tunnel to the new complex. As you arrive and exit to the grounds by taking the main escalator (that you can see in the moblog) the feeling you get is that you’re entering a giant adult theme park, including music playing in the background (composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto no less). It is quite impressive, all these new glass buildings. I never go to Roppongi, so I don’t know how long the site has looked like this, but for me it was quite suprising as I wasn’t really expecting something this massive. But as much as the outside look is interesting, I found that the interiors just didn’t match up and were quite disapointing. Just your typical mall interior. One nice thing is that everything is very spaced out, but at the same time it makes for a lot of walking, and a lot of confusion (more than once I had no idea where I was, and had to find maps of the place, which are thankfully pretty much everywhere).

It was fun to see, and I did pick up a few things at Village Vanguard (a store I like that sells a lot of, well, “stuff”) and at the Art & Design store. Don’t know if it’s a place I’ll be wanting to go often, but it will probably make for some fun outings every once in a while, especially if they get some interesting exhibits at the Mori museum.

This is a digital art display on the side of the TV Asahi building at Roppongi Hills. They presently have lots of art displays throughout the grounds, and this is one of them. It’s a real working LED display, and the numbers that you see are constantly changing.

I was just watching the new trailer for Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai with standing Yuko behind me, and she was saying that there are a few very famous Japanese actors in the film. From what I can see, it looks quite nice (and I’m a sucker for epic battle scenes) but we’ll just have to wait until December to see if the story matches the visuals.

There’s a documentary on Murakami right now on NHK, and it’s quite interesting. He seems to get all these very strange and unique people to work around him. They profile one girl, a shut-in who was afraid to see people, who got encouraged by him to continue with her art. Her work is comprised of lots of pictures of dolls in various outdoor settings, pictures of anime being shown on an old TV, and sketch books full of crazy manga-like illustrations. They’re also showing how some of Murakami’s works are created, and how he can also be quite hard (as is common in master-apprentice relationships in Japan) with his employees. I wish I could understand more of what he’s talking about.

There’s a BD (French comics) exhibit taking place at the Printing Museum called Albums of Color until July 6. I definitely want to try to go to this, as I’m a huge reader of BDs, and it seems that entire albums will be on display, which I’ll then be able to read.

A glass building in Aoyama.

Some stickers on a sign near the Dojunkai apartments.

I love the Komadori Bros! Check out their animated short, Brother Hunting. You can even grab a t-shirt while you’re there.

It has come to my attention that Yumiko Kayukawa, a Japanese artist whose site I mentioned a while back, has gotten a new domain for her website (sweetyumiko.com). It also seems that her latest show in LA was sold out a day before it opened, so great news for her. If you’ve never seen her art before, do check it out.

Here’s another pic of the Dojunkai apartments that I took last week. Thanks to Nadine of Tokyo Shoes for mentioning the other one.

This is good. Get an idea of what it “sounds” like to live in Japan.