Some bad news for the upcoming GEDO SENKI (TALES OF EARTHSEA) from Studio Ghibli:
Jul 27, 2006
Hope you didn’t make the mistake of heading to SuperDeluxe tonight thinking you would catch this month’s edition of Pecha Kucha Night! I almost made that mistake (PKNs are usually held on the last Wednesday of the month), and was planning on dropping by after work, but luckily I checked the global site and saw that they’ve postponed it a bit, to August 9 — mark your calendars! They have a partial list of presenters, and I see that PingMag founder Uleshka is even presenting, so should be fun!
I’m including a picture I got from Mark Dytham taken at the huge London event they had last month. How’s that for a PKN crowd!
Jul 26, 2006
I haven’t been able to watch it, but it would seem that this is a link to a new JIN-ROH anime short, “Images of the Last Battalion,” from Production IG.
Jul 26, 2006
This week at Cafe Pause we have an exhibition by artists Kazaho Setsu and Nikiniki called “Happy Time” (until July 30). Postcards — which you can see here and here — are sold for 150 yen.
Jul 25, 2006
Bondi Books in Kichijoji has just launched an online store, that accompanies the books they already list on Amazon Japan.
Jul 25, 2006
In a recent post, William Gibson states that Marxy’s site is his “current favorite English-language blog from Japan.” Nice!
Jul 25, 2006
Indie art magazine HERE AND THERE has just released a sixth issue, with accompanied talk event and exhibition at Nadiff.
Jul 25, 2006
Karl Escritt is a Kyoto-based graphic designer/artist who seems to be doing some cool things out there. I think I need to bring him to Tokyo somehow!
Jul 24, 2006
The Tokyo Art Beat blog has been getting quite active, with lots of event reviews, and they’ve just updated with a rather long interview of Japanese artist Tabaimo.
Jul 24, 2006
As a follow-up to my post on Mieko Sai, it seems that you can pick up the bilingual art magazine COOL at Nadiff, this bookstore in Gaienmae, and TACO Che in Nakano.
Jul 24, 2006
Just a reminder that this month’s edition of my “On Design” column appears in tomorrow’s (Tuesday) edition of THE JAPAN TIMES. In it I cover a finger-mounted optical mouse, a mower, an aluminum-based outdoor “shed,” and a stool.
Update
You can now read it online here (free registration required after a week).
Jul 24, 2006
The other night when I was out for dinner with an old friend who was in town for a visit (at a stylish Italian restaurant in Odaiba called Fragile), I met graphic/web designer Mieko Sai, whose site you can view here (I dig the interactive cursor animation). She was telling me about a NY-based art magazine she works on called COOL, with the tagline “Creator’s Infinite Links” — intriguingly, the Japanese content on the site is quite extensive, but there’s almost nothing in English. She was saying that the magazine is hard to find, and that she sells copies herself. She showed interest in attending next month’s edition of PauseTalk, so it might be a good opportunity to get her to bring along some copies.
Update
Mieko has sent me a list of places where you can pick up COOL in Tokyo.
Jul 23, 2006
I have just updated the PauseTalk site with a (much requested) complete list of attendees at the edition we had earlier this month (Vol. 2), as well as the proposed theme for next month’s edition (which will be held on the third Monday, August 21). Also, I’m about to launch a PauseTalk mailing list, to keep participants updated on all future PauseTalk happenings.
Jul 23, 2006
US-based designer Maiko Kuzinishi has been up to a few new things, including a re-design of her main site, Decoylab, adding a few new items to her webstore (including some new plates — I have the original 4, and absolutely love them), and has also started a blog to show her works in progress. If things go right, I’m hoping we’ll have an exhibition of her works at Cafe Pause before the end of the year.
Jul 23, 2006
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.
