Bowling, Beer, and Soccer

Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Jun 12, 2006

Bowling, Beer, and Soccer

Last night I went out and bowled for the first time in Japan (and first time in ages) and had an absolute blast. Now, I’m sure bowling in North America has also been updated since the last time I played (probably 7-8 years ago), but I was really taken in by all the high-tech aspects of it: scoring is done automatically, and at the end you get a sheet with scores, pin formations, as well as a picture of you and the people you were playing with. Even better are the monitors that not only show scores, but also video of the pins (there are cameras over the pins), and then these wacky little videos after every play, usually showing a cute girl saying how happy she is, or disappointed, in your shot. It was also my first time big ball bowling, meaning with the holes for your fingers, and that was fun too. Also played a few rounds of good ol’ air hockey, followed by a run on the SUPER MARIO KART arcade game.

Tonight’s of course the big game for Japan (against Australia), and so I got me a couple of bottles of Asahi Stout to enjoy while watching the match!

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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.

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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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