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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

More Biking Adventures

mYwaY

As you could tell by my moblogging yesterday, I’m still enjoying the hell out of my new bike, and ended up doing the long trek to Tokyo Big Sight. On Thursday I was in and around Ginza for a while, and then headed back to Kundanshita to meet up with Craig at Co-Lab. We grabbed some lunch at a Russian restaurant in Jimbocho, and then went to this really funky cafe I’ll post more about later. When I told him about my idea of biking to the “Good Design Presentation,” he showed me the best route (he’d done the same thing the day before), and I realized that it was definitely doable, and not that complicated a route (quite easy actually). From my apartment to Tokyo Big Sight took me 1 hour and 20 minutes, which I think is pretty decent for someone like me who only started biking around the city a few days ago, especially since I still need to check my atlas every once in a while to get my bearings. The Good Design show was fantastic, but walking around the exhibition space for 3 hours took its toll. On my way back, I remembered spotting a sign for the CODAN Shinonome housing development, and I’d always wanted to check out the mYwaY store by TRICO there, so decided to head inside and try to find it. Finding it was quite easy, and as soon as I walked in I was welcomed by Haruna (pictured above), who works there, and brought me a glass of tea. After having a look at the gallery on the second floor, I came back down and ended up staying a couple of hours, drinking some beer — they have a mini-bar area near the register — and chatting with Haruna. When I finally left, it was around 7, so completely dark out, which made for an amazing ride, as I could see all of Odaiba illuminated.

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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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