Today marks the release of the very long-awaited DRAGON QUEST 8. As every poster advertising the game announced, the game went on sale at 7 this morning. This of course meant lines galore.
Read the entire MDN article here.
Nov 28, 2004
My new design column for the Tokyo Q site will start next week (Friday), and will then continue to appear on the first Friday of every month. The anime column is still scheduled for the second Friday of every month.
Nov 27, 2004
Excite Japan features some of the new Fukasawa Naoto designs for the Plusminuszero brand. Also, I’m not sure if this is new, but the recently opened Aoyama shop — I still haven’t made it there — has a nice-looking cafe on the premises. The Excite link is via Dezain.net.
Nov 27, 2004
Octopus Dropkick! is a fun group blog covering Japanese pop culture. They put up a lot of video from Japanese TV, so well worth checking out for that alone.
Nov 25, 2004
The Felicity label is selling a a pack of 6 Trattoria t-shirts for 6800 yen. Link via Patrick.
Nov 25, 2004
Patrick reminds me that I need to go see the Kusama Yayoi show, Eternity – Modernity, happening right now at the National Museum of Modern Art (until December 19). I missed the Kusamatrix show earlier this year.
Nov 25, 2004
Oh my. With everything happening in Tokyo this month, the Dotmov festival completely slipped my mind. Get thee to the official site right away and have a look at the tons of shorts that are there, waiting to be enjoyed.
Nov 25, 2004
The Sound X Vision 2004 event, which I’ve often mentioned here, is about to make its way to Tokyo, to the Laforet Museum. Sounds like the opening day will be something special.
The event happens December 3-12.
Nov 25, 2004
Although I’m late with the posting — I’m just now catching up with all the blogging I should have been doing over the past few days — I did enjoy a few more programs on the final two days of the festival.
On Monday, I was there for RESMIX Shorts, which is the Japanese-only program, and a first for me. I was pleasantly surprised by quite a few of the works that were showcased. I’d seen a few of them before (three were from the Panasonic “Capture the Motion” project), and THE LOST SAMURAI was a good laugh — a piss take on LOST IN TRANSLATION. My favorite was a crudely animated spoof of dictators Kim Jung Il and Saddam Hussein. I can’t remember the title, but it absolutely cracked me up. I also really liked the theme song written for the PERAKO TV short, done by Kicell.
The final day saw Shorts #03, featuring documentary type works, and the Jonathan Glazer retrospective. Of the shorts, it was Cheryl Dunn’s BICYCLE GANGS OF NEW YORK that was the standout for me. A documentary is only as good as its subject matter, and the featured players in this one were scene stealers the whole bunch. The highlights of the Glazer retrospective were the TV commercials, which I’d never seen. I’d seen pretty much all of his music videos (“Virtual Insanity” was especially nice on a big screen), except for the Richard Ashcroft one (for “Song for Lovers”), which has a really neat concept — the song acts as BGM.
So all in all, I had a great time, and pretty much enjoyed everything I had a chance to see. Someone was telling me that this year’s output was a bit weaker than in past years, but I can’t agree.
Also, a huge thanks goes out to Haruna, one of the volunteers there, for helping me out during the festival. You were a life-saver!
Nov 25, 2004
Julia Barnes, who recently opened a new gallery, wants us all to know that the featured artist there, Clint Taniguchi, is also having another opening at Gallery Closet for his new series of sculptural paintings, with a live video installation.
Clint Taniguchi presents his most recent series of sculpture-like-paintings; OAHU (Hawaiian for
gathering) Taniguchi uses organic shapes to create an installation of “living dots.” Video artist Mike Paunovich, also of San Francisco, will collaborate with Taniguchi on the opening night where they work primarily with organic qualities of energy, immersing themselves in vibrations and fractal patterns. Waveforms become visible through the play of light and liquid, in their most current project, Burst. A live video installation will be on display at Closet Gallery.
Nov 25, 2004
Momus has been doing some high-density blogging of late, and a recent entry takes a look at some Japanese-related cultural artifacts that you should be aware of — and it reminds me that I really need to write a MoCo Tokyo entry on Atelier Bow Wow.
You should also download “I Refuse to Die,” and outtake from his upcoming album, OTTO SPOOKY.
Nov 25, 2004
Nov 25, 2004
I was sent the following press release for a new t-shirt brand called Anko, that’s being distributed in the UK and Japan.
Having spent a number of years living and working in Japan, Andrew describes the brand as one of “refreshing simplicity and balance”. Collection one comprises of 12 unique designs with a variety of ‘kawaii’ (cute) characters and text/detail adorning both the front and back of each t-shirt; with text ranging from ‘please pass the mayonnaise’, ‘where is my face?’ and ‘are you watching me smile’ to other messages which reveal a deeper level to the brand.
anko can be translated from the Japanese as ‘red bean paste’ aswell as ‘stability’ and ‘balance’. This concept of balance and simplicity runs throughout the brand, while the t-shirts in collection one are made of the highest quality interlock cotton. A women’s line is planned for 2005, with collection one being available exclusively in Tokyo and London and through the anko website.
The contact person for the brand in Japan is Yuko Yamauchi.
And while on the subject of t-shirts, let me mention that Beinghunted has just launched a new line of tees, produced in limited numbers.
Nov 24, 2004
I don’t normally gravitate towards fashion related events, but the following does sound quite interesting — and I’m quite fond of the graphic that advertises the exhibition.
It happens at the Musashino Art University Museum & Library until December 13.
Nov 24, 2004
Nov 24, 2004
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.
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 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.
