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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Winding Down the Year, Prepping for the New

As the year winds down to a close, it’s always the time where I start to re-think everything I’m doing, and what I should be doing in the new year. After all, it was around this time that I was prepping for the launch of SNOW Magazine (it went live towards the end of January), and now I need to re-evaluate what the point of the site (or platform) is, and where it should be going in 2011. I already have some strong ideas on this, and I’m going to take the next week or two to properly plan this out and figure out what is best.

This “re-thinking” mode also affects every other personal project I have online, in some way or another. For example, the site I have up for Cafe Pause and my involvement there. As evidenced by the level of updates to it, it doesn’t make sense to keep that going as a blog, and I’m certainly going to modify it to make it more static, more of a pointer for info instead of news — and to be honest, I just haven’t been as active there as I have in past years, due to lack of time, and a focus on other things.

And even new projects, like Codex, which was launched less than two months ago. I’m pretty happy with the way it’s working, but I’m sure I’ll be tweaking things here and there. I’m having an absolute blast creating new episodes, and I’ll probably look to expand on what I’m doing with it.

So just a little post to say that I do like when this time of the year comes up, as it’s a good excuse to really re-evaluate and come up with new ideas to get the new year rolling at a good and energetic pace.

Have something to add? Feel free to leave feedback through either Twitter or Facebook, or contact me by email.

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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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