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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Jun 26, 2004

Samurai Champloo Rules!

That title alone is probably going to kill my bandwidth allowance, if the top 10 searches leading to my site this month are any indication:

1. samurai champloo
2. samurai champloo torrent
3. russian sex
4. samurai champloo torrents
5. lolitas
6. samurai champloo download
7. big lips
8. porno
9. champloo
10. samurai champloo wallpapers

I should probably change the name of the site to Champloo something or other, and start hosting all the episodes here. Give the folks what they want! As for “russian sex,” that’s probably because of the comment spam (they did a real job recently on poor Patrick’s site). “Big lips” and “porno,” well, it must mean something… I’m surprised our dear BoA hasn’t made the list, as her thread is still alive and well (and again, sorry to disappoint you guys, but I’m not her).

But let me not disappoint all you SAMURAI CHAMPLOO addicts. As I initially wrote, I love the show, and also hope that the torrents keep on coming. With the recent death/disappearance of one of the major anime torrent sites, it seems like things have been a bit quiet lately. As far as I know, although the show is still airing weekly on TV, there are only 2 episodes with fan subs that have been released. In the meantime, I need to get to that new episode of PARANOIA AGENT that Paul found for me.

Oh, and a bit of trivia for ya: champloo is a word from Okinawa that means stir-fry. This actually makes quite a bit of sense, when you see what director Watanabe Shinichiro is trying to do with the series by mixing hip-hop elements within the traditional samurai environments. Also, the main character is from Okinawa.

Update: Scratch that, I’ve just watched a fan subbed version of episode 4.

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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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