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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Stocktown


It’s been a busy week for me and my friend Ola [pic 12]. Shorly after FutureDesignDays we took a flight [pic 1] to the royal capital of Sweden, the lovely city of Stockholm [pic 5], to celebrate the 25th birthday of a mutual friend, also named Ola [pic 6]. We were suppose to take a slow friday before the party on saturday but ended up going clubbing anyway. At Grodan nightclub one of my friends dropped his pants infront of Swedish R&B-singer Robyn [pic 11] and her ultimate fighting boyfriend which I thought was hilarious (note that nobody got hurt).

Another friend, Olle [pic 3 right] was kind enough to lend us his apartment which was situated close to the new Clarion Hotel [pic 2+4] at Sodermalm. A really nice hotel that has the ambition “to mix the relaxed, connecting and curious atmosphere of an international back packer hostel with the obvious service, quality and environment of a contemporary first class hotel.”

The birthday party was a huge succes with people from all over Sweden, from Ostersund in the north to Helsingborg in the south, representing different cultures and subcultures, from Issey Miyake catwalk models to snowboard freaks and the usual drunks – all charing boundbreaking joy through music and good food enhanced by the legal drug alcohole. As one of our presents we gave the birthday child an alco-helmet filled with 12 year old dark rum [pic 6] which made this white dreadlocked guy stand out even more in the follow-the-style-of-the-leader parts of stockcity.

I love the picture of me and the former fitness champion of Sweden; Eva-Linda Karlsson [pic 7] (at least we caught the best part of her on film). Another guy showed up in a Narcissistic Youth t-shirt [pic 8] designed by my friend Ola [pic 12] which was also fun since it was made in a limited edition and is quite hard to find.

After two late nights which both ended at Berns (thanks to Fredrika from Superlounge for helping me skip the cue and payment), I spent the late sunday having a coffee at Svart Kaffe (japanese info here) together with my friend Ken from Tokyo [pic 10]. We both missed Tokyo reading news articles about shopping in Tokyo, watching the Futura2000 posters on the wall and chatting about old party memories.

We were suppose to catch some movies at the Stockholm Filmfestival but since we slept in we didn’t get any tickets and ended up watching the new Clint Eastwood movie Mystic River [pic 9]. Despite great actors and loads of good reviews it turned out kinda silly, especially some scenes in the end that should have been cut out completely.

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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 June 4.

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.
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.

 

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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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