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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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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 March 5.

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 Global Cities Week

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.

Neojaponisme

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 Tuesday of every month, in both the print edition and online.

Colophon

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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