I’m sad I had to miss out on the festivities for the launch of the fourth issue of the excellent interior magazine Apartamento here in Tokyo last week. The magazine teamed up with Utrecht — at the NOW IDeA by Utrecht shop — and created a temporary cafe (one of the chef’s for the week was Digiki). TABlog posts a photo report on the event.

Rather nice looking Starbucks in Kamakura, “designed to resemble a wooden Japanese-style home.” Via PSFK.

Ian has some work featured in the just-released Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand, and one of examples is the poster he originally created for my Cafe Pause poster series.

If you’ve been to PauseTalk, then there’s a good chance you know Joseph Keenan. Probably the person outside of me who has attended the most sessions, it’s been a joy all these years to have him attend — and yes, he became a very good friend as well — and it’s with sadness that we see him leave Japan next week, as he heads back to Australia (although I have a feeling we’ll be seeing him again here in a few years).

But before he leaves, I absolutely wanted him to have an exhibition at Cafe Pause to show off the countless sketches that I always see him drawing in his many sketchbooks. “Sketchin’” is now on at the cafe, and runs until this coming Monday, July 6, which coincides with this month’s edition of PauseTalk, the last one Joe will be attending.

How strange: the beautiful teahouse and sweets shop in Nakameguro Higashiya is about to close its doors (not sure on the date, but soon), yet it gets a “recommendation” post on Cool Hunting, with no mention of said closing.

We ended the “Little Pink” exhibition last night with a nice little gathering, which also gave us a chance to say goodbye to Shantell, who left for NYC today. Thank you Hiro for the photo. From left: me, Shantell, and Anna.

Looking for an architect? Then head on down to the Architect Cafe, where you can meet with architects and discuss projects. According to Spoon & Tamago, “they have an extensive database of architects that you can sweep through by name or by portfolio, and decide on a style you like.” There are currently two locations, one in Aoyama and one in Shiodome.

The “Little Pink” exhibition — read about it here — is now on at Cafe Pause, and runs until Sunday (April 26).

Update: Looks like we’re going to have a reception tomorrow night (Thursday, April 23) at the cafe with Shantell and Gelman for the show. I’ll post more details soon, but please join us if you can!

Update 2: Apologies, but scheduling problems will prevent the reception from happening tomorrow night.

I stopped a while back to do those regular magazine round-up posts — it was a bit too time consuming to take all those notes and then put them together in a post — but I do still regularly pick up new magazines for Cafe Pause, and here’s a list of the latest bunch.

• Re:S (11)
• Arne (27)
• Switch (Vol. 27, No. 4)
• Studio Voice (401)
• Casa Brutus (109)
• Ku:nel (37)
• Life with Camera (24)
• ART iT (23)
• Dazed & Confused Japan (76)
• Eyescream (May 2009)

As promised, a few photos taken at the party we had for the 5th anniversary of Cafe Pause last Saturday. All photos were taken by Kei Suzuki — he was responsible for the visual/sound performance.

Following Saturday night’s amazing 5th anniversary party at Cafe Pause — I’ll get photos up soon — on Sunday night we were treated to another performance by painter Hiroaki Koshiba, accompanied on guitar by his brother, Takaaki Koshiba. Photos taken on iPhone using the Toy Camera app.

Just a reminder that Cafe Pause‘s 5th anniversary party — which I posted about earlier this week — happens tomorrow night (Saturday, February 21). Entry is free, and doors open at 19:00, with live acts starting at 20:00 (there are three scheduled, with Taichi playing third at around 21:00), and the cafe will be open until midnight. For people who Facebook, here’s the event page. Come join us!

I’m always told I announce these things too late, so let it be said now: this coming Saturday (February 21) Cafe Pause celebrates its fifth anniversary. Doors will open at 19:00, with live performances starting at 20:00 — I’d make sure not to miss Taichi at 21:00. Entry will be free, and I’ll of course be drunk on the floor, so come celebrate with me.

If you’re left standing, on Sunday (February 22) Hiro will be returning to the cafe for a live painting session, accompanied by his brother on guitar. It starts at 19:00.

I’m really digging the large displays in the showcase, taken from the labels for the Pause Original Blend Tea.

This month marks the fifth anniversary of Cafe Pause, and one of the things we did to help mark the occasion was to create an original tea blend for the cafe — well, two actually, one is regular tea, the other is a herbal blend. Five labels were created by five friends of the cafe: Next Century Modern, PMKFA, Shantell Martin, Ian Lynam, and Josh McKible.

The blends are sold at the cafe for 600 yen.

I know I don’t do magazine round-ups anymore here, and I haven’t updated the Cafe Pause blog in a while concerning new magazines, but I do in fact still curate the magazine selection there, and picked up a few more today, which I’ve listed on the cafe’s blog.