Another year, another birthday. But I swear, it just keeps getting better and better, and as I mentioned the other day, today also marks a transition point for my career. So this year: bigger, better, and oh so satisfying.

Takahi Kawanishi creates paintings and collages that you may have spotted on various book covers. PingMag visits the artist in his studio, and interviews him regarding his current exhibition, “EVERESTS,” at POINT gallery in Ebisu.

I’ve been getting mail on this because of the confusion, so let’s clear things up. The Apple Store Shibuya performance that Momus has been touting as happening June 6 is in fact scheduled for June 4 (he noted the date wrong). Not only does that mean that the show will happen this coming Monday night, but also that he will not be attending PauseTalk, which is held at the same time.

Nakaochiai Gallery‘s Julia Barnes will appear in this week’s edition of TOKYO EYE, that airs at various times on NHK World. She does the “My Private Tokyo” segment, which is what I did a few months back.

The CG-animated sequel to APPLESEED now has an official website and a new trailer. APPLESEED SAGA: EX MACHINA comes out this fall (October 20), and will feature a soundtrack by Haruomi Hosono and Cornelius.

• BRUTUS (617) features a look at “Rakugo x Musician,” by covering collaboration or mixes between the two fields (rakugo is a traditional Japanese comedic form). The insert is an entire rakugo comic, from the series “Classic Rakugo Comics,” as well as a CD of performances.
• PEN (199) offers up a very detailed guide to Kamakura, presenting it with a beautiful cover shot filled with bamboo trees. They also include a guide to Tokyo whiskey bars, and this issue’s designer profile is on the unit so+ba.
• TITLE (89) touts an issue devoted to “Department Store Paradise!” It’s a rather nice feature, with tours of various depa-chikas, a piece on the Matsuya Ginza branding by Kenya Hara, and a look at department stores from around the world. They also imagine a few new ones with their “My Dream Department Store” piece, in which they asked a few creators, including KDa and D-BROS, to imagine their dream store. The Napster column — that’s the name for their music column — has Kaji Hideki offering a guide to music from Glascow, mentioning the likes of Teenage Fanclub, Belle & Sebastian, and The Vaselines.
• The lastest issue of EASY TRAVELER (16) has design as a theme, which includes talking about various locales with more emphasis on the architecture. As always, EASY TRAVELER is fully bilingual (Japanese/English).
• PLANTED (4) has their “entertainment” issue, which kicks off with a “Disney Flower Hunt” (a guide to flowers at Tokyo Disneyland and Disneysea). They also have a piece on “Movies on Plants,” following it up with a guide to “20 Plant Movies.” They also cover the maintenance of grass in soccer stadiums, and then take a look at underwater plants (that last piece is illustrated by Shoji Kawashima).
• The main feature in this month’s MACPOWER (210) deals with environmentally friendly creativity. It also includes a nice article on typography, profiling a few designers and their works, and presents a gallery of photos from the gorgeous Tama Art University library.
• CASA BRUTUS (87) concerns itself with world heritage, with a cover feature appropriately entitled “All About World Heritage.” The insert for the issue does the same for Japan: “All About World Heritage in Japan.”

I picked up a few of these for the cafe, which you can see listed here.

• Graphic designer Hideki Inaba has an exhibition, “Graphic Line,” at the Shu Uemura Beauty Boutique on Omotesando (near the Hanae Mori building), starting this Friday (until June 10).
• Micke — better known under the name PMKFA — has his first solo exhibition, “A Bag of Grease,” in Europe starting next week (June 8-July 31) at the Vallery gallery in Barcelona. The opening party will see lots of action, including a musical performance by Green & Ilpo.
• Even though this year’s edition of Design Tide is, again, happening during the first week of November (October 31-November 4), it’s worth noting that the first entry deadline is this Thursday (May 31), with the second — and I’m assuming final — one June 29.
• It’s going to be a busy Saturday (June 2) for Tokyo Fun Party, as they’re participating in two events on the same night: first it’s “Doki Doki” at SuperDeluxe, and then later in the evening head out to Velours for “Janus.” Full details here.

Illustrator Josh McKible posts about his experience at last weekend’s Design Festa. The secret to good sales? Concentrate on small products, such as postcards and buttons. In fact, I think that’s pretty much the rule for anything that relates to art in this city, as that’s exactly what I’ve seen happen with all the show’s we’ve hosted at Cafe Pause.

Update
Josh is also selling his “Nani Birds” directly, so have a look here, and then get in touch with him.

PingMag covers “Tokyo Design Premio,” a Japan-oriented exhibition presented as part of last month’s Milano Salone.

Marxy’s latest post alludes to the new site we’ll see him launch sometime this summer. I’m not at liberty to say anymore about it, but I will say that I’m involved, and I think it’s going to be pretty damn cool. To be continued…

What is TB.Pensar? Find out here.

Let me start off with a change you may have noticed recently on the site, in the form of the “Happening in Tokyo” posts (like this one). In the past couple of years I’ve gradually been posting less about events. In part, I felt that my TAB badge in the sidebar did the same job, and honestly, I just didn’t really enjoy doing them that much. Most of what I post here adds to the “resources” of my site — when I want more info on something, the first thing I do is do a search on my site for appropriate posts or links — and time-sensitive events didn’t really add to that. But I do realize that TAB doesn’t cover everything, and I do like to highlight the occasional event that interests me, so I think a fair compromise is the “Happening in Tokyo” post, which will appear whenever I have 2-3 events to list.

June for me is going to mark big changes: most of my time now will be devoted to freelance work (I’ll only be teaching twice a week) starting June 1, which just happens to be the day following my birthday. Sure, it’s a bit scary, but it’s a necessary step, and also means that I’ll finally be able to devote more time to the things I really have a passion for. The first thing you should see is me finally paying attention to the temporary M31 website, as I start putting things on there, and updating it regularly with new work, projects, etc. Here’s looking forward to a productive (and even more importantly, happy) 2007!

The promised game column with Brad has yet to launch, and for that I apologize. Maybe it’s a sign that I should start cutting down on the playing (that means trying, with great difficulty, to limit my time on WORLD OF WARCRAFT, BLUE DRAGON, SUPER PAPER MARIO, and MARIO STRIKERS CHARGED FOOTBALL, as well as all those damn card games I play).

Another thing is that I think I’ll start selling Japanese magazines on my site again. I’ve done it in the past in an informal way, but have been wanting to try again with a proper cart-like shopping structure. I finally took the time to look into the services that PayPal offers, and I think that I should be able to start very soon with something that will be quite basic at first, but may eventually grow into something larger (depending on sales, I suppose, and the time I need to devote to this). In the end, I’m doing it because I know there are a lot of magazine freaks like me out there who would love to get their hands on the sort of titles I cover in my “This Week in Magazines” posts, and so I figure I should do my part to help out the world magazine-lovers community. I expect I’ll have something up by the end of the week.

And in case you missed it, a new episode of RADIO OK FRED (9) is up. Yes, after an unfortunate — and ridiculously long — hiatus, we’re back, and with my new life changes, I do believe we’ll be able to get back on schedule and release new episodes at regular intervals. The next episode is already planned, and will be themed around Serge Gainsbourg.

Let me end with PauseTalk. After May’s cancellation, it returns next week, June 4, at the regular start time of 19:30. I believe Momus is planning on showing up, which should make for some interesting — and opiniated –talk!

The video above was created by PMKFA for Green & Ilpo‘s performance during the opening of his “Green Winter” exhibition earlier this year at Upsetters Gallery in Kamata — you can view a Flickr photoset of the performances here.

Yes, it may be hard to believe, but this past week we actually managed to record a new episode of RADIO OK FRED (9), and it’s now online! The format is the same as always: me, Ay2, and Yoshi each pick 4 tracks that hopefully don’t clash too much. We had a good time doing it, and are hoping that we can finally get on a regular schedule again. You can download the show directly here, or subscribe to the feed. Old shows can be found here.

Update
When I exported the show, the track with Ay2′s comments was accidently muted. I’ve re-uploaded the show, which you can download here.

• This weekend sees the 25th edition of Design Festa at Tokyo Big Sight. Tokyo-based illustrator Josh McKible will have a booth there showing some of his latest works, which you can also have a peak at here.
• Momus will be performing live at Apple Store Shibuya (June 6, 20:00 start time).
• Tokyo Fun Party’s “Juliana” party happens this Sunday at Soft (May 26, 19:00 start time).

Update
According to Apple’s website, Momus’ performance will take place Monday, June 4 instead.

THE JAPAN TIMES’ Jude Brand takes a look at few Sangenjaya cafes/bars in the latest edition of her “Best Bar None” column, including Sugar, A-Bridge, and Dune.