For me, this weekend is truly one where two of my worlds collide. Last night I had a special PechaKucha event as part of the Magazine Library exhibition in which I invited a few friends (Audrey Fondecave, Mike Abelson, Luis Mendo, Antonin Gaultier, and Ian Lynam) to do presentations on the topic of magazines and print culture. It was a far more intimate audience than what we’re used to seeing at our regular PechaKucha Nights, but in the end I think we had nice attentive crowd who really seemed to enjoy the presentations — and all of these presentations should be popping up on the PechaKucha site over the next week or so.
The second part of this double-header weekend happens tomorrow (Sunday, March 13), with PauseTalk Vol. 60 happening again at the same Magazine Library space (Hillside Terrace in Daikanyama), starting at 15:00. It’ll be the same kind of PauseTalk that I always do, so I do hope that regulars will still want to come despite the change in venue and time. Yes, I’m sure magazines and print culture will come up in our discussion, but I’m open — as always — to talk about whatever. And if you’re a fan of the fantastic Apartamento magazine, then you should stick around as the editor-in-chief and art director will both be there to give a talk from 17:00.
The photos included in this post were taken by Michael Holmes — who most of you will of course recognize as the regular PauseTalk and PechaKucha Night photographer. He was on hand to take some photos during the event, but did a few fun shots outside of the venue after with some of the people on hand. The group shot at the top includes a whole bunch of great peeps, and above you have Rumi Nagata of the Winged Wheel stationery shop, and below that is my board gaming brother (and AQ designer) Ryan Ruel.
I just discovered the Instapress plugin for WordPress, and so you’ll start noticing more of my Instagram photos (which I do take quite often) here on the site. In the extreme right sidebar you’ll notice that it now shows the latest three photos (I may change this later), and it also lets you add code to show a gallery of them in a post, which I’ve done here.
Most of the photos in this batch were taken today, while I was out and about in Ikebukuro with my dog.
Yes, it’s cold and rainy, but don’t let that stop you from coming down tonight (March 5) to PauseTalk Vol. 58 at Cafe Pause — official session starts to 20:00, feel free to come earlier.
Also, as promised, over the weekend I added quite a few galleries of photos from past PauseTalk events, all taken by Michael Holmes, who will be there tonight. Just go to the Facebook page to see them all. Pictured above, the scene at October 2010′s PauseTalk Vol. 45.
Just realized I forgot to post a reminder that this coming Monday (March 5) is the time for PauseTalk Vol. 58, at Cafe Pause as always, with the regular start time of 20:00. Also, I’ll be adding all of the amazing photos that Michael Holmes has been taking at recent events on the Facebook page over the weekend, so check in for that — and Michael should be there this Monday too.
I will admit that I don’t go out for drinks that much anymore, and when I do, I find myself not really knowing where to go anymore (if I’m tasked with finding a place). With my good friend Luis Mendo in town this week — he’s working with me on some PechaKucha-related stuff — we ended up going out last night for dinner and then a bit of drinking in Shibuya, along with a few other friends.
Dinner was at the Royal Garden Cafe, and it was rather good — the menu focuses on organic offerings. We then met up with the rest of our companions in this wine bar. It was fine, but it’s a standing bar, and I’d much rather sit down and relax when I’m drinking and chatting, and so we then headed to a funky little hole-in-the-wall placed called Bistro D’arbre — there are apparently a few of them (as you can tell from the sign on the photo above), including a decent restaurant in Ebisu. Although tiny, there are 3 floors — we occupied the second floor (we were a cramped eight), and there was a tiny loft space on top of us.
All of this reminded me of the early years of my life in Tokyo, when I would cut out listings for bars and cafes, that I would past in a notebook, consulting it when I wanted to go out. It was a great research tool, and I had as much fun trying out new places as I had drinking at them.
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.
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.
Jean Snow is a contributor to 
He will be contributing to the upcoming fifth editions of 