This month’s edition of my “On Design” column was published last week in The Japan Times, and can be read online here. I covered the Tepra Pro label writer, PORE’s Lessev, the Plus Minus Zero Fan, Fumie Shibata’s fumfum magazine holder, and Tokujin Yoshioka’s TO Automatic watch.

For everyone who’s missed the Nadiff art bookshop, it re-opens next week (July 7) in a new art building in Ebisu that will also be the new home of Magical Artroom and G/P Gallery. More details at Art Space Tokyo.

Digiki has just released a new EP through Tokyo Fun Party, Encore Music. It’s available for download from all the major online stores, and you’ll find the links here.

Shantell Martin sure likes to use her Wacom tablet when she does live performances and events, so much so that Wacom ended up doing a case study on her. I’ve embeded a video that’s part of the piece, but read the whole interview here.

This week in my weekly Tokyo post for MoCo Loco: the Lamp base stand from 100%, Kyouei‘s exhibition and prototypes, and the “Dinner Party of the Dead” exhibition.

Tokyo guerilla gardening in action. Via Boing Boing.

Over the past few months I know a few of you have asked about the Palla poster that was being offered as part of the “A Swarm of Angels” project. I’d ordered one — same as many of you — back in August of last year. I’ve been in touch with both Palla and Matt Hanson (the creator of the project) and it looks like despite a few hiccups along the way, they are working hard to rectify the problem.

For more on the whole situation, have a look at this post Matt wrote yesterday.

PingMag covers RFID aesthetics. This has got to be their most esoteric topic yet, but interesting none the less.

I’m afraid I’m having to cancel the July edition of PauseTalk (Vol. 23) because, well, I’ll be out of the country. I’m heading to the US and Canada for three weeks — first time back in three years — and even though I was hoping to leave a bit later, circumstances made it impossible.

Apologies to those who were hoping to attend, as well as to Chris Kirby, who will be having an exhibition at Cafe Pause at the end of the month (June 30 to July 7), and was going to present his works. He’ll be having an informal reception on the evening of July 4 (Friday) at cafe, so come join us then.

PauseTalk will be back the following month, to be held August 4.

The current issue of Kateigaho International (20) has a feature on interior design, kicking off with interviews of Simplicity, Super Potato, Masamichi Katayama (Wonderwall), and Akihito Fumita, conducted by the likes of Gelman, Gwenael Nicolas, and Mark Dytham.

I contributed the descriptions for these six studios: Tekuto, Torafu, Assistant, Cafe, Graf, and Gift.

If anyone sees a copy of Amusement, a new French gaming magazine, in Tokyo at a reasonable price, please-please let me know. I really want to pick this up — comes off as Monocle doing games — but buying the issue from their site is close to $40 (to Japan).

Foreign fans of tabloid journalism in Japan will be quite saddened by the news that The Mainichi Daily News has decided to end the popular WaiWai column. More from Marxy over at META no TAME.

My weekly Tokyo post at MoCo Loco is up, this time covering Cocco’s Branco bench, Michiko Fukuoka’s TERU-TERU wind chimes, Flame’s Cappuccino Light, and the “Japanese Design at the Milano Salone 2008” exhibition at the Tokyo Design Center.

For the exhibition, Keiji will be participating, showing his Gravity Light and a new version of his Parabola Light during June 19-24. There’s an opening party tomorrow night (Friday) from 19:00.

My good friend Brian has a piece in the current issue of design magazine Metropolis on Nendo‘s office in Meguro. You can read it online here.

TAB has released its second Tokyo Art Map, this time adding two new areas (Harajuku and Yokohama), and featuring five event previews. TAB is also looking for some help in spreading the art gospel — if interested, check the following TABlog post for more details.