Remember that post from a while back about Johan Prag looking for a design assistant? Seems like the person who got the position, Ayasaki, learned about it from here. It’s definitely nice to see that this site has its uses.

• The latest issue of IDEA (315) features a rather nice gallery of drawings by Aquirax Uno, an artist I wasn’t familiar with at all.
• BRUTUS (588) sets out to learn from geniuses (“Meet the Geniuses”) in a feature that I found to be a bit too arbitrary.
• The latest PEN (170) is all about design in Spain, but also has a guide to the Aoyama/Omotesando area. A great issue to pick up if your planning a trip to Spain, as it highlights all the design-friendly spots/shops you should be checking out. I’m also noticing that Starbucks is spending big bucks on magazine sponsorship these days, as the last few issues of both BRUTUS and PEN have been home to Starbucks-sponsored columns.
• The second issue of DESIGN QUARTERLY includes a gallery of Naoki Honjo’s amazing photography (it’s the fake-looking scenery stuff, also seen in PAPER SKY a few issues back, as well as SWITCH). There’s also a great article by Kenya Hara called “Secondary Function,” that looks at tape and how to give it added value through design.
• The new DESIGN NOTE (5) covers the world of art direction, with plenty of interviews with top Japanese art directors. Heavy on the examples, so lots of nice eye candy.
• It seems like half of the magazines I follow have had cover features on books this past month, and add the latest issue of DESIGNERS’ WORKSHOP (Vol. 23, No. 145) to the list, with its “Book Guide 300.” There’s also a piece that takes a look at design magazines from around the world.

The Aoyama Book Center cares about good Japanese design, and you should too!

I love that Patrick continues to search the city for signs of QP. His latest moblog find (what you see here) is a bit of a strange one (found in Minami-Asagaya).

Update
And while on the topic of street tags, Patricks points us to CBCNET‘s photolog, TANK.

I mentioned the works of Tokyo-based Canadian video artist Jerome Olivier a while back, and he lets me know that his 24-minute short film, “Missing Pages (amended version),” an interesting motion/photo mix that he describes as “fotomation,” is now completed. You can view the opening 7 minutes on his site.

Luc Meier of Pro Helvetia, the Arts Council of Switzerland, sends word of the upcoming “Signal to Noise – Audio Swiss Japan” tour, to hit a few cities in Japan (Tokyo, Yamaguchi, Kyoto, Osaka, and Nagoya) in March (3-17), and bringing together avant-guard electronic artists Guenter Mueller, Jason Kahn, Norbert Moeslang, Tomas Korber, and Christian Weber. Also, on March 5 they will present an artist talk (as well as a short performance) at the University of Tokyo (the Komaba campus), speaking on the topic of “The Contemporary Sound-Art Scene in Switzerland.” You’ll find more info on the tour here (dates and venues, as well as participants, since every show will include varied guests), and you can keep up with future Swiss-related events in Japan through the Dynamic Switzerland site.

Momus gets a write-up (registration required after a week) in today’s edition of THE JAPAN TIMES, courtesy of Martin Webb — and I can assure you that Martin looks just as good in real life as he does in that picture Momus put up.

I was talking with the owner of Cafe Pause earlier tonight, and convinced him that it would be a good idea to have some nice magazines at the cafe for customers to browse. So we headed down to Junkudo, and I selected the latest issues of the following 16 magazines, which are now on display and available for your reading pleasure:

• CASA BRUTUS
• STUDIO VOICE
• TITLE
• SOTOKOTO
• KU:NEL
• ART iT
• MADAME FIGARO JAPON
• SWITCH
• POOKA
• RELAX
• ARNE
• PAPER SKY
• LINGKARAN
• BRUTUS
• PEN
• ESQUIRE

Anyone who follows my regular “This Week in Magazines” posts won’t be too surprised by the selection.

David (or Mr. Makuremu) just let me know that a Google search for “tokyo blog” reveals my site at the top spot. Yeah, I’m #1!

Yes, the title of this post is spelled correctly. What you see here is a picture taken at the “Construction Sights: Building Site Design” exhibition I mentioned seeing at Matsuya’s Design Gallery in Ginza the other day. It ends February 20 (Monday), so this weekend is your last chance to catch it. I put up 5 pictures on my Flickr account (direct links: here, here, here, here, and here). Remember that you can also just subscribe to the my Flickr photopool’s feed.

If you never got around to picking up READYMADE MAGAZINE NO. 2, that came with a sexy DVD of stripteases by Romantica, now comes news that they are re-releasing the DVD as a separate cheaper (only 1600 yen) package. I loved this the first time around, and will probably pick up this version. More info from Patrick’s Agenda.

2D old-school Katamari Damacy, playable online! I’m sure Patrick is going to be all over this… Link via Boing Boing.

Well, for some reason, I got back home after work earlier tonight and decided that I wanted to change the site a bit, and this is what I came up with. With Canadian Style done with, I felt like it was time to get rid of the red, but I’d been itching for a few more changes, and so decided to play around and to see what would happen. I’ll probably still tinker with it a bit, but it’s a start. It seems to work fine on both Safari and Firefox (for Mac), but I have no idea what it’s like on Windows, so do let me know if you encounter any problems (one problem I do know is that the Google ad on the left should also appear on individual entry pages, but for some reason doesn’t). While I was doing this, I also decided to upgrade to WordPress 2.0.1 (up from 1.5.2). The upgrade seems to have gone fine, and the new admin interface is a nice improvement.

This weekend, Cafe Pause in Ikebukuro celebrates its second anniversary, and so today (Saturday) and tomorrow (Sunday) they are serving beer (bottled) and coffee for 100 yen, limited to one serving per customer. Come and have a drink!

How’s this for a nice bathroom? It’s the System Bathroom I-U, co-developed with Naoto Fukasawa for National/Panasonic. Link via Dezain.net.