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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

An Afternoon in Shibuya

Headed out early today to get to Shibuya with Yuko. She has some things she needs to do all day at the Tokyo University Komaba campus, so I tagged along until Shibuya, and am spending the afternoon in the area.

I started off with Tower Records, where I finally picked up the first issue of COMPOSITE (the previous issue was numbered 0). It brought my Tower point card to 40, which means my next magazine will be free! My regular Shibuya stops route was followed by Parco Part 1’s basement, where I got some nice stationary at Delfonics. Seems like they updated their collection, as there were many new things on hand, including some new Braniff Airlines branded goods, produced by Delfonics. The Parcos Gallery had a show by Colobockle. I picked up a nice Christmas card. I also noticed for the first time that the P-BC is now a Libro bookstore. Don’t know when the change was made.

I had a hard time getting out of the Parco complex, what with a visit to the basement of Parco Part 3 (the recently opened zakka floor), and then Parco Part 2’s 4th floor for a few new interior design shops (style, keep left, arenot) that recently opened. If I had the money, I would love to redo my apartment with some of the things I saw. One day…

Now I’m at Planet 3rd, where I’m writing this, and just had a delicious taco lunch set. After this I’ll head out to Aoyama. I just had a look at Tokyo Art Beat, and I think I’ll check out some new exhibitions (Gallery 360, Rocket, Colette Meets Comme des Garcons, and Nadiff).

Update: When I visited Gallery 360, I had my iPod earphones on (nevermind that the music was off). The woman in charge came up to me and asked me to stop listening to music. When I asked her why, she responded that it was “bad manners” to view an artist’s works while listening to music. I felt like I was being confronted by SEINFELD’s Soup Nazi. I thought it was ridiculous, and walked out.

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SNOW Magazine

Where's all the regular art/design-related content you used to see here? Check out SNOW Magazine, a Tokyo-based online magazine featuring news and guest columns -- see the full list of contributors -- covering the cultural landscape of Tokyo/Japan.

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 is September 6.

PLAY is a series of events with Jean Snow spinning some of his favorite virtual discs in a casual setting at Cafe Pause. See the setlist for previous editions here, and subscribe to a feed of the mixes.
Game

Being a survey of recommended titles for your gaming pleasure. New games are added 2-3 times weekly, and all selections are by your host, Jean Snow, a Tokyo-based writer and gamer.

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.
Jean Snow lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming in Tokyo -- sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for the following online/offline publications: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 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, and The Japan Times. He's also the founder and editor-in-chief of SNOW Magazine.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Pecha Kucha Night

He's a member of the Pecha Kucha team, working on various projects, including updating Pecha Kucha Daily, a blog that highlights the creativity coming out of PKN events worldwide.

PauseTalk

He serves as editor-at-large at Néojaponisme, a web journal covering social and cultural aspects of Japan. Read the manifesto, by founder and chief editor W. David Marx.

He also writes a monthly column covering Japanese product design for The Japan Times, called "On Design." It appears on the last Thursday of every month, in both the print edition and online.

Colophon

The "Jean Snow" logo is made up of the Blackout open source 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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