PingMag interviews Ken Oyama about his passion for housing complexes. Oyama is behind the new photo book DANCHI NO KENKYU (AN ASSESSMENT OF HOUSING COMPLEXES).

JAPANESE ROOMS is a new photo book by artist and graphic designer Sven Ingmar Thies that takes a look at how the Japanese live, with photo spreads of their rooms taken in five cities (Berlin, New York, Shanghai, Vienna, and Tokyo). The book can be purchased from the Kaitenart website, or through Amazon Japan.

Zoren Gold & Minori have done a major update to their site. Quite the striking image on the front page!

Yuki has put up a big blog post on her recent photo exhibition that took place at Cafe Pause. Lots of photos to see, in case you couldn’t make it in person.

Stephen Lebovits is a Tokyo-based freelance photographer who has just launched the Photos 4 Food project. As he explains:

Here’s a reminder that Yuki Nakano’s photo exhibition is now on at Cafe Pause, running until April 6. Following that, it will be the Speakerdog show.

Want to take a peek inside some art/design/photo books coming out of Japan? Then head to BCCKS, a site that offers digital books (and you can make your own) through a very beautiful interface. It was photographer Ani Watanabe who sent me the link — have a look at his books SAIGON and LONG EYES.

Flyer for Yuki Nakano’s upcoming show at Cafe Pause (March 24 to April 6). Love this private dialogue between her and her companion Lindsay, at this week’s PauseTalk.

PingMag interviews Hideki Omori of POWERSHOVEL, maker of Lomo/Holga-like toy cameras.

Me and Max were roaming the streets of Kubukicho yesterday, and Max took this great shot of two police officers patrolling in front of a giant ad for SEGA’s new RYU GA GOTOKU KENZAN! game, the third release in their YAKUZA series.

PingMag has a profile on Tomoko Sawada, a Kobe-based artist/photographer whose work I’ve been a fan of for a few years now. I absolutely love her photo booth series, part of which is pictured above.

This past Friday night saw the opening of Alin Huma’s new gallery space, Ginza the Edge. The inaugural show, “Photography,” runs until February 29.

It was a great turnout, and we pretty much filled up the relatively small space. The gallery actually takes up Alin’s apartment, and so every piece of “daily living” got removed to make space for the show.

Digiki was there — he helped out in the conceptualizing of the show and space. Busy man indeed, what with the 101TOKYO art fair fast approaching.

The desk of the man behind the show. That MBP has certainly seen better days!

What goes on at Shinjuku station, stays at Shinjuku station. Photo by Max Hodges.

I’ve been wanting to get a decent hat for a while now — something with a bit more class than the knit cap I often wear. I don’t know if I could ever really pull off wearing a fedora, but I don’t mind trying them on when I’m in shops. The photo above was taken by Max in a shop in Koenji a few weeks ago. Yeah, I know, the North Face down jacket would certainly not be part of the ensemble.

A few months back I met up with the travel editor of FOOD & WINE magazine, who was in town doing a piece on Tokyo. Salma’s article appeared in the February 2008 issue, and she writes a bit about what we did on that day in this part.

After we had lunch at Maisen, we were walking down Omostesando, and got stopped by an editor and photographer from TOKYO GRAFFITI magazine. If you’ve never seen it, each issue is mostly made up of shots of people holding up whiteboards in which they’ve written an answer to something. The question they asked us was something in the lines of “what do you contribute to society,” and I honestly can’t remember what I wrote. They said that we would appear in a future issue, maybe the December one, but I completely forgot to check.