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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Okutama

Okutama

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been out hiking, something that was rectified earlier today when we headed out to the Okutama area. We decided to head to Mitake mountain, and took a cable car up (pictured above), with the idea of walking down (we didn’t really have time to walk both ways). 

It may be silly to say — and believe me, I did enjoying the walk — but one of my favorite things when we go out hiking is that we usually pick up a bento (lunch box) for the trek, and since we passed through Shinjuku station, we were able to get some really nice ekiben (bento that is aimed specifically at people travelling long distances by train, sold at stations that have lines that leave the city).

And what I always like to point out as well is that all of this happened within the bounderies of Tokyo-to, meaning you don’t even have to leave the city to go on these wonderful hikes.

To get there, from Shinjuku station you hop on the Chuo line (the orange line) and switch trains at Ome (you may need to switch at Tachikawa on the way, depending on your train), to then get off at Mitake station. Across the street from the train station is a bus station, with buses that take you up to the cable car station (270 yen for the bus, 570 yen for the cable car, one-way).

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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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