Just a reminder that tonight (Monday, February 6) is indeed PauseTalk Vol. 57, the first edition following a 2-month break (because of the holidays). I’ve been sick for a week, and still have a bit of a cough, but still quite looking forward to tonight’s event, to get my chat on. It all happens at Cafe Pause with an official start time of 20:00 (although feel free to come earlier). The photo above was taken at December’s Vol. 56 by Michael Holmes.

Here’s a fun pic that Michael Holmes took of me and Yuki at the recent PechaKucha Night Vol. 88 — there’s an entire gallery on Facebook.

Over the past month or two I’ve been occasionally stopping by the AQ office in Nishi-Azabu (either at lunch time, or after work) for a bit of card gaming with my friend Ryan, who is AQ’s resident graphic designer. For these sessions, we play either Warhammer: Invasion, or more frequently, Magic: The Gathering. It’s Magic that we’re playing in these photos — in their conference room. The photos were all taken by AQ’s Paul, using the Olloclip lens on his iPhone.

As promised in the post about PauseTalk Vol. 56, there’s now a Facebook gallery of photos from the event, all taken as usual by Michael Holmes. Big thanks as always to Michael for attending and sharing these photos.

The last time I went to Mount Tanigawa, during the summer, I got the worst sunburn I’ve had since I was a kid, but this time it was all about the snow. Me and my wife went yesterday and were greeted by quite a bit of snow — no worries though, as that’s what we were expecting. Although we had a tiny trail of hardened snow to walk on — thanks to other hikers — if you walked off it you would literally have both legs completely buried in snow. Some bits were slippery too, but we had our ice spikes on, so we were fine. In this post I’m including a few photos I shared on Instagram, and I’ll put up a few more sometime this week.

This is what it looks like when you’re sitting on the very first train of the day, at 5:02, leaving on the Saikyo line at Ikebukuro Station. To be fair, there were actually quite a few people who were catching the first train to get back home after a night of partying (this was Sunday morning).

We took the cable car to go up to one part of the mountain, and then hiked the rest, just like we did on our last visit. I believe it is possible to climb from the very bottom, but it would take a very long time (you would need more than a day), and some parts are quite dangerous.

There are two peaks, both are close by, and this is the post on one of them, which indicates an elevation of 1963m (the other peak is higher by a few meters).

Nothing like having your lunch when you’re on the top.

I’ve put up a few pics taken during last week’s 3-day trek in the mountains in Nagano — previously mentioned in this post. It was a pretty great trip, and we’re already planning on going back there in May, when the hut (Karasawa) re-opens (and it will completely be covered in snow).

I’m very happy to announce a new little project of mine called Instabike Tokyo. It all started last week when I discovered a site that Amsterdam-based illustrator Laszlito Kovacs had launched called Instabike. The idea was a simple one, and can be explained with this mathematical equation: Amsterdam + Bikes + Instagram = Victory! I loved the idea — and I need to thank my main man in Amsterdam, Luis Mendo, for turning me on to this — and immediately thought that it would be great to do the same thing in Tokyo, and a few days later, and with the blessing of Laszlito, Instabike Tokyo was born.

I will say that my version is a bit different in that my plan is to cover Tokyo cycling culture in general — one of the ideas behind the original Instabike site is to capture shots of cyclists from behind. The density of cycling in Tokyo would make this a hard thing to do.

Laszlito has now put up an Instabike hub page — and I’m assuming he’d be open to other cities joining in. For Instabike Tokyo, on top of the Tumblr site, you can follow the project through Twitter, and there’s a Facebook page as well.

I know I’m terribly late with this, but here’s a partial list of those who attended this past month’s PauseTalk Vol. 54 (those who signed up the attendance sheet). It was an interesting evening, with the talk this time often revolving around game development and design, since we had a few developers as part of the group. I posted the link the other day, but again, here’s a fun gallery of photos taken by Michael Holmes. The next PauseTalk (Vol. 55) is set for November 7.

• Anna-Maria Montonen (Product Designer)
• Colin Northway (Game Developer)
• Derek Arnwine (Photographer)
• Jean Snow (Executive PauseTalker)
• Jeffrey Chiedo (Photographer/Gallerist)
• Mark McFarlane (App Making Mercenary)
• Matt Date (Actor/Management)
• Michael Holmes (Photographer)
• Niko Gaetano Lanzuisi (Film Director)
• Said Karlsson (Journalist/Photographer/Game Developer)
• Sarah Northway (Game Developer)
• Scott Popular (CEO Final Round Japan)
• Seiko (Hair Color Specialist)
• Shota Kubono (Photographer)

As of a couple of weeks ago I’ve started spending more time at the Klein Dytham architecture office in Ebisu, and that’s given me an excuse to do a lot of biking again. That’s still my bike pictured above, a Bianchi BD-1, that I bought from Craig Mod close to 3 years ago. At first I told myself I’d maybe go to the office by bike on one day a week, but so far I’ve been doing it more often, and rather looking forward to the ride.

From my home in Ikebukuro to the KDa office takes me about 40 minutes, with a distance of around 10km — even though it’s a very easy ride, since I’m pretty much just on Meiji street from start to finish, things always slow down around Shinjuku, when I start hitting all those traffic lights. I had a blast last night when I left the office after a meeting with Ian Lynam and Mark McFarlane, as we all biked together until Shibuya before separating, side-by-side on one lane (traffic was light).

And yes, this does mean that I’m out and about more, being based in Ebisu (and often with a bike), and can be easily bribed by coffee or drinks if you want to meet up with me.

I know I’m late sharing the list of participants from last week’s PauseTalk Vol. 54 — another great one, by the way — and I’ll get to that soon, but here’s a gallery of photos from the evening courtesy of Michael Holmes. If you’re wondering how he gets that effect, it’s done through the use of a reverse fisheye lens — he also put up a gallery following Vol. 50.

It was back to the mountains yesterday, but this time closer to home as we went to the Okutama area to climb Mount Takanosu. It still always amazes me that all of this terrific terrain is within the boundaries of Tokyo. It was a tough day though, as the hike up was quite the workout and took us much longer than planned, and then coming down we ended up doing the last hour and a half in the dark (we did have lights). Pictured above, what greets you at the top (at an altitude of just under 1800m).

From Ikebukuro we took the train up to Okutama station (by way of the Yamanote and Chuo lines), and then it was a 15-20 minute bus ride to the start of the trail.

The village where we got off the bus.

Here’s the sign that marks the start of the trail, as well as a few others alerting you of things to watch out for — the one with the helicopter says that water will be dropped in case of forest fires.

My wife, ahead of me.

A map that shows the Okutama area, with all the trails you can take.

A piece of street art I spotted yesterday in Ikebukuro, which my friend Patrick Benny made me realize is by street artist ESSU — here’s a larger piece Patrick spotted recently.

Remember that weekend last week with the typhoon warning in effect? We kept waiting for it to come, and finally on Sunday decided to head up to the Okutama area for a bit of hiking. Lo and behold, the typhoon weather made itself felt just as we arrived, and so it was a very, very wet day indeed (below, me, dressed to deal with the elements). 

Despite the wetness (which was on and off, but mostly on) we took the cable car up to Mount Mitake, and then hiked over to the top of Mount Otake, where we managed to cook lunch (see below). The big adventure comes next weekend though, as we will be heading to the Northern Alps (Mount Yari) for a 3-day trek. Cautiously looking forward to it — just worried about one of my knees, which occasionally gives me trouble, but I bought a brace for it. We’ll be staying in mountain huts, which should be interesting — first time for me.

A week of opposites then, from the tech-heavy Tokyo Game Show to the alpine heights of the north!

Just before I went to the TOO MUCH magazine launch party, I stopped by my friend Spikey’s new studio in Daikanyama. Spikey (or Shin Takahashi) worked at Klein Dytham architecture for 7 years, and just a few months ago left the company to start his own thing, in the guises of Special Normal. He’s an amazing interior designer, and I got to hear about some upcoming projects which all sounded fantastic. Loved his studio space as well, which is what you’re seeing in this post.

Just over a week ago I attended the launch party for the second issue of TOO MUCH magazine, held at the United Bamboo store (in the building’s event space) in Daikanyama. TOO MUCH is of course the follow-up to OK FRED magazine, and is still helmed by the editorial duo of Yoshi Tsujimura and Audrey Fondecave (my fellow Radio OK Fred podcasters). The party doubled as an exhibition based on a feature written by another good friend, Ian Lynam, of which you can see more here. You can buy a 2-issue subscription to TOO MUCH (it’s published twice-annually) here.

After the reception, we walked down towards Nakameguro to get some drinks at Just Another Space, which is a rather funky spot — and hey, there’s ping-pong table there too.

Also, if you’re curious as to the effect I’m putting on these photos (which I also did for the haircut post), I’m using a series of actions in Photoshop that replicate the filters found in Instagram — in each case, I’ve applied “Hefe,” followed by “Brannan.” You can download them here (and thank you Nick Chester for the tip on this).