News Otaku

Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Jan 31, 2004

You might have noticed a slowdown in postings lately (although I’ve kept up with the daily pics), and that’s probably in part due to an unfortunate new addiction: political news. I’ve never really been a political news hound, but for some reason, I’ve become quite the junkie of the US Democratic race (even though I’m Canadian). I subscribe to TIME (the Asian edition), and the articles (and essays) I tend to go to first are the ones covering the primaries. Add to that CNN and BBC World coverage. Add to that the book I’m enjoying at the moment: Al Franken‘s brilliantly hilarious LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM: A FAIR AND BALANCED LOOK AT THE RIGHT (I’m listening to the audiobook on my iPod during my daily commute, and I highly recommend it as Franken himself does the reading, and he’s great at it). Also, although I’ve been totally out of touch with Canadian politics since moving to Japan, I found out this week that the CBC keeps a contant stream of its nightly TV news mainstay, THE NATIONAL, and I’ve started watching that while I do my surfing. Nice to see Peter Mansbridge again.

Oh, and as a pleasant to surprise to me, I’ve been keeping up with the Japanese studies (to attain my goal of passing the second level test at the end of the year). Need more time in the day.

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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.

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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.