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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Jun 14, 2006

This Week in Magazines

PENStudio VoiceCasa Brutus

  • TITLE (76) offers up a “Tokyo Relax Tour,” which is well worth picking up as it has some attractive picks — the feature even includes a tilt shift lens shot by photographer of the year (in my book at least) Naoki Honjo! There’s also a rather nice survey of the works of design unit Intentionallies.
  • The latest issue of STUDIO VOICE (367) is devoted to photography, presented in the form of lessons, with tips from major names in the field. There’s also a guide to the must-see anime of 2006.
  • I’ve lost count, but the new BRUTUS (595) is the umpteenth issue of a magazine devoted to book surveys I’ve seen this year. This time, the list includes 730 titles, which are presented in various categories, as well as lists by various celebrities.
  • As I mentioned before, the latest PEN (177) devotes its entire issue to an exhaustive look at the life and works of designer Kashiwa Sato. It’s actually better than a lot of designer profiles/monographs I’ve seen in book form.
  • Following Italy last month, this month’s CASA BRUTUS (76) heads to Germany. There’s obviously a heavy focus on World Cup-related material (like a look at all the new soccer stadiums), but still, it’s a rather nice guide to all the country’s architectural highlights, and would make a nice guide of things you should try checking out during a visit. They also include a pull-out “gluttons” guide to Tokyo restaurants. I also quite liked the article that shows Kazuyo Sejima (of SANAA) giving a workshop to kids about architecture, in which they go through all the steps of construction, from planning, all the way to creating playhouse-sized buildings out of cardboard.
  • OK, it’s official, I’ve lost interest in RELAX, with the new issue’s (113) “Relax_Season Diaries 2006″ feature just the latest in a series of un-engaging topics that revolve around relaxation and health. There are still a few interesting things to find in the back pages, but I’m not even sure I’m going to bother picking it up (or browsing) for that anymore. RELAX has become just too “relaxed” for my tastes.
  • This month’s issue of SOTOKOTO (85) presents the “LOHAS Design Award 2006″ selections. Is it just me, or can pretty much anything be considered LOHAS-friendly?

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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 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.
PechaKucha

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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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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