I was asked to contribute a piece to CNN for its MyCity_MyLife series, offering my take on the city of Tokyo — this week’s show covers 2007 Miss Universe winner Riyo Mori. You can read the piece here.
Category: TV • Tokyo Walking
Jean Snow lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming in Tokyo -- sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for the following online/offline publications: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Game|Life, and The Japan Times. He also manages the gallery space at Cafe Pause.
Jean Snow is a daily contributor to Wired magazine's game blog, Game|Life, covering game news from Japan and beyond.
Arcade Mania is currently on sale through Amazon Japan, with the same edition available for pre-order on Amazon US (to be released January, 2009).
Tokyolife: Art and Design covers Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives. Jean Snow provided coordination assistance.
The Superfuture Superguides are a series of PDF travel guides to some of your favorites cities, updated monthly, and obsessively compiling the best places to shop, eat, and drink. The Tokyo guide is edited by Jean Snow.
He is also the design/culture editor at Neojaponisme, a web journal covering social and cultural aspects of Japan. Read the manifesto, by founder and chief editor W. David Marx, here.
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 December 1.
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I think the lack of cultural diversity in Tokyo, as opposed to major cities like New York or London, leads foreigners here to focus on commercial things like the design of products, shopping centers, and trendy cafes. Whether you buy it, you write about it, or you take a photograph of it, it’s all a form of consumerism. Isn’t there another way to enjoy this town without being part of its superficial consumer culture?
It’s not just foreigners, nobody. That’s the post-war Japanese paradigm for you. Culture = consumerism. The best art galleries are in department stores…
I don’t entirely disagree, although for me spending time in a cafe is more about enjoying the surroundings and relaxing (reading, chatting) than anything trend related.
For anything that involves nature, I hop on train and head to the city outskirts.
Although I love cafes in Tokyo for the design of the places, especially ones in remodeled old buildings, and also for the food, I have yet to find one that is like a real coffee house where you could actually expect to relax, read or study. Add to that the problem of smoking. . there are very few cafes in Tokyo where I would like to spend a lot of time in to while away the hours. Oh, I miss coffee houses like the ones in the San Francisco Bay Area. If anyone knows of something with that kind of atmospherein Tokyo, please write about it.