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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

101TOKYO Opening

101TOKYO Opening

On Wednesday I attended the opening for this year’s second edition of 101TOKYO, held again in Akihabara, but this time at the Akiba Square event space inside the UDX building. It’s not really fair to compare this edition to last year’s — they were quite different beasts — so I’ll just congratulate Jason, Kosuke, Donald, and the entire 101TOKYO crew for a terrific event. The opening was a blast — and according to Jason, 400-500 were in attendance. Oh, and the purple rocks.

101TOKYO ends today (April 5), so depending on when you read this you may still have a chance to go out and catch it on the last day, or go to the after-party to be held later tonight (from 21:00) at Trump Room in Shibuya — that’s where they’ll be giving out the Berengo Prize. I’ll put up a report tomorrow at PechaKucha Daily on last Thursday’s special edition of PechaKucha Night — it was hosted by our very own Mark and Astrid, who took a break from preparations for their big exhibition, which opens this week at Gallery Ma.

Below, a few more photos from the opening.

101TOKYO Opening
Party people taking in art.

101TOKYO Opening
Jason giving me a “you lookin’ at me?” face during the event’s opening press conference.

101TOKYO Opening
New this year: gigantic art.

101TOKYO Opening
Party people drinking and chatting in the main hallway. The purple definitely works.

101TOKYO Opening
My friends Ega and Erika, obviously having a good time.

101TOKYO Opening
Juniper giving me the look, and in the background we see Digiki, who helped produce last year’s edition, and made it to the opening despite the broken arm.

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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 happens June 4.

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

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.

 

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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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