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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

This Week in Magazines

Mac PowerBrutusPen

  • MAC POWER (207) sports a cover story on Steve Jobs. It’s of course all in Japanese, but there are quite a few classic quotes that pepper the piece, and they make for a good read (and some nice old photos as well). The issue also puts the spotlight on a few independent magazines, and there’s a look at “Kashiwa’s [Sato] Life & Work Style.” I think there was something about Sato in every magazine I browsed through this week.
  • BRUTUS (611) is a REAL man’s magazine this week: “Cars to Drive, Suits to Wear.” I wrote a while back on my desire to get a bit more smart with my clothes, and so suits have been on my mind of late — I want a 60s cut, with cigarette pants — but there’s nothing I can really afford in here. For the car component, I did find it more interesting than usual because it’s mostly about celebrities and their cars. I will say that comedian Gori (of the duo Garage Sale) has a mean-looking ride (I forget the name, but it looks like a classic Mustang, all in black).
  • This month’s cover feature for TOKION JAPAN (57) is — drum roll, please — Kashiwa Sato, as the “glocal creator!” It seems like TOKION is already taking a step back from what they were doing since the re-launch. Now, don’t get me wrong, I quite like Kashiwa Sato’s work — and hadn’t realized that he created the logo for the National Art Center, Tokyo — but I’m not sure it was necessary for TOKION to use him for a feature, especially since there is no lack of Sato on the newsstands these days.
  • +81 (35) celebrates its 10th anniversary with their “Now and Then 10th Anniversary Issue.” You’ll find a satisfying collection of creator interviews, and rich in images, as we’ve come to expect from the magazine.
  • Music fans rejoice, the latest issue of PEN (193) is all about design in rock, so album art galore, as well as a look at a few creators, and celebrities listing their faves.

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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 is March 5.

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 Global Cities Week

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.

Neojaponisme

He serves as editor-at-large at Néojaponisme, a web journal covering social and cultural aspects of Japan. Read the manifesto, by founder and chief editor W. David Marx.

He also writes a monthly column covering Japanese product design for The Japan Times, called "On Design." It appears on the last Tuesday of every month, in both the print edition and online.

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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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