Paul Snowden has produced a rather nice tee for Minimal Tokyo as part of his “Wasted German Youth” series. Wish I could have attended Ivan‘s event last week at the Vitamin Water event space in Harajuku.

Nice to see some of Josh Lieberman‘s photos appear in last month’s issue (July 2009) of Commercial Photo. Josh is an architectural photographer I met earlier this year when he attended an edition of PauseTalk.

As a follow-up to JJ‘s “Second Life and the Future of the Music Industry” exhibition from earlier this year, he’s put together a site that looks at what was covered in the show. He also wrote a piece on the project in last month’s issue of J@pan Inc.

I am very, very tempted by this: Bandai’s Jibun Damashii, a made-to-order figure that uses a photo you send for the face, at a cost of 13,650 yen. It was shown at last week’s International Tokyo Toy Show. Via Japan Today.

TABlog covers the zine scene, and also interviews Keisuke Narita, owner of the Irregular Rhythm Asylum “radical info-shop” in Shinjuku.

Megumi (Assistant) is readying for a new exhibition, “Published,” at Art Center Ongoing in Kichijoji (July 29 to August 9), and it will involve quite a few related events — you’ll find more details in the TAB entry. The opening happens Wednesday night (July 29, from 19:00), and will involve a sound project with Micke (PMKFA), Ega (One Hand Clapping) and Satoshi (Meteor).

TABlog has a write-up on Philippe Chatelain‘s latest “Sound Gardening” event, held last week. Hope I can attend the next one in September.

My Dear Horse, SoccerBoy‘s first “official” mixtape, available only from HMV in Japan (comes out August 1).

Dezeen shows off a beautiful new home — House in Matsuyama — by Suppose Design Office.

My weekly Tokyo post for MoCo Loco is up, this time covering Isamu Noguchi‘s AKARI lights, Tidy‘s Swippy broom and dustpan, and the “Japan Design in Milano Salone 2009″ exhibition.

If you’re a regular reader of Néojaponisme, then you’re probably already familiar with Ian‘s series of found photography which he’s been releasing under the “Meeting Modernity” banner (since it “documents Japan as it engaged with modernization and commercial photography in the Meiji and Taisho Periods”). The photos have already been on the road with shows in LA and Portland, and it’s finally time for a showing in Tokyo, set to happen Friday, July 31 at the SO+BA gallery in Kyodo.

The great thing about the opening for the Tokyo exhibition is that the entire Néojaponisme staff will be on hand — expect a “smattering of presentations” — and yes, I’ll be there too, making my debut as the evening’s music selector (or as Ian describes me, “Funkmaster DJ Jean Snow on the wheels of steel”). See this post on META no TAME for more details, and please join us for “a night of night of presentations, discourse, music, and booze!”

The latest paper bird to join Josh’s NaniBird collection is James Kay‘s GameBirdTM, which is his take on the NaniBird form factor meeting up with the original GameBoy. James — a fellow PauseTalker — is a Tokyo-based game developer, and runs the independent Score Studios.

Graniph is doing another series of tees based on master typographers — the first was Emil Ruder — this time inspired by the works of Josef Muller-Brockmann. Dezeen is running a contest where you can win all six, with all of the designs on display.

I’ve always been a fan of the traditional Kokeshi wooden dolls, but I think I may like the modern reinterpretations from the “Kokeshi: From Folk Art to Art Toy” exhibition in LA even more. Cool Hunting interviews the curator of the show, Christina Conway, and shows quite a few of the featured dolls in the process.

I wasn’t sure yet when we had PauseTalk Vol. 33 earlier this month, but I’ve finally decided that this August will be a skip month for PauseTalk — turnout tends to be lower in August because of the summer holidays. So the next edition will be September 7, which will also mark the start of an exhibition at the cafe to celebrate the recently launched Urban Paper book, which I’m organizing with Josh.

The photo above is courtesy of Julie Forgues. I’ll post a few more photos when I get around to the list of participants from Vol. 33, which should be up later this week.