Karl Escritt needs you help! If you dig his work (like what you see above), you can go here and give him a vote (it’s for a contest he entered).

Cool Hunting covers the Head Porter Plus line of clothing from Head Porter. View “The Newest Basic Style” collection at Honeyee.com.

How does Microsoft promote the GEARS OF WAR game in Japan? Supposedly, with these wacky viral videos.

Update
The actress in the videos has posted them on her blog, explaining that they are in fact from Microsoft.

Designboom has launched an online shop, and it includes an exclusive red version of Kouichi Okamoto‘s Balloon Light.

These letter-shaped postcards were created by Johnson Banks for the interior shop Cïbone. Boicozine has some more details, and go here if you want to buy some online.

Today’s edition of THE JAPAN TIMES has a piece on Tokyo Midtown, which opens on Friday (March 30).

This month’s edition of my “On Design” column is in today’s THE JAPAN TIMES (and online here). The theme is “back to school,” and in it I cover MUCU‘s stationery line, the Muji Pencil Sharpener, the HORI Stationery Style Set for Nintendo DS lite, KOKUYO’s mini stationery set and PILOT’s Putimo pen, and the Pantone Mobile Phone from Softbank.

Anyone know what this is all about? It’s a promotional site for Onitsuka Tiger, but I don’t really get what it’s promoting.

Update
Josh Spear has more:

Patrick checks out the Obey Giant vs. WK Interact exhibition, and reports.

Just in time for sakura season, Sonia has posted some PSP wallpapers featuring her Rezidents characters. If you can’t deal with that much pink in your life, you can also grab a blue or gray version.

As promised, here are a few photos I took at the Nissan showroom in Ginza last year (August 2006), showcasing the concept car used in GHOST IN THE SHELL: SOLID STATE SOCIETY. You’ll find 5 in all on my Flickr account.

What is TB.Pensar? Find out here.

My latest addiction? PUZZLE QUEST (for the DS, although a PSP version is also available)! Mix in the trappings of an RPG with a combat system that plays like a BEJEWELED-like puzzler and you get more fun than I would ever expect from this sort of game. I’m not usually interested in puzzlers — LUMINES is the exception — but here I find the combination of abilities, spells, and the act of “killing” an opponent by matching rows of icons to be rather fun.

This coming week is a holiday for me, so I’m looking forward to catching up on some movies I’ve been meaning to watch for a while now. Lots of gaming planned too — already have a night of poker set up, as well as a night of CCGs (collectible card games), with hopefully some boardgaming, and plenty of videogaming of course. And yes, I do plan on leaving my apartment and doing some things around town, like catching some shows I’ve been wanting to see, as well as checking out a few new cafes and whatever else comes up. Who knows, you may even get a Tokyo Boy podcast out of it! I’m also trying to schedule some time for me, Ay2 and Yoshi to get together and record some new episodes of Radio OK Fred.

What else can you expect over the coming week? A new “This Week in Magazines,” certainly, probably as early as tomorrow. And speaking of magazines, I’ve already mentioned the magCulture blog a few times, but let me also point you to the new blog by Mr. Magazine (aka Samir Husni). If your passionate about magazines as a medium, you’ll definitely want to take a look. He covers the industry in general, as well as spotlighting notable launches.

I’ll finish off with a few reminders regarding PauseTalk. To get the latest updates, see this post. I’m really hoping that we can get all the projects happening without counting on the physical meetups, since I’m now realizing that it’s impossible to organize things when you only see each other once a month, and sometimes not even then (the participants usually vary greatly from month to month). I love the direction that things are taking with this idea of producing creative projects as a group, but I think that it should exist in parallel with the usual discussion and networking that participants have come to expect at the monthly gatherings.

Update
Updated to include the warning label, found via Lisa’s TOKYOMANGO blog. Make your own label here.

The next edition of PauseTalk is coming up (April 2), and I wanted to update everyone on things.

First of all, the 8mm Film Project. For those who didn’t attend the last edition, it’s been decided that coordinating everything is going to be done outside of the meetups, since waiting once a month to do this just won’t work. The idea is that all the PauseTalk creative projects will be coordinated online between the meetups, with the gatherings serving as general updates (with the rest of the time devoted to the usual discussion and networking).

The PauseTalk network on Ning is the best place to coordinate things, so I welcome you to create a profile there and contribute to the threads (you should also join the mailing list). Right now there are 3 cameras at the cafe, waiting to be used, and plenty of film. If someone wants to drop by and pick one up and buy a film (1500 yen), just let me or Denis know. You can find out more about the features of each camera, as well as the film, on this page at the PauseTalk wiki.

Also, I suggest we start discussing the PDF Magazine Project on the PauseTalk network as well. The first thing would be to come up with a theme for the first issue, so that people can start sending in contributions. I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks.

Lastly, I would love to get some ideas for a main topic for next week’s edition of PauseTalk. I think the past few gatherings have just been about updates on the various projects and scattered discussions, but I’d like to do a theme again, like we did in the early days (share images on a common topic, etc.)

I’ll admit that up until now I haven’t really been attracted to the design of the MEDIA SKIN phone from the AU Design Project — they always show images of that red/orange version — but I must say that the black one that Roy got looks mighty fine.