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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

The Future of MUJI

The Future of MUJI

MUJI posts a beautiful flash-based essay — mixing visuals and text — on its global site, explaining the rationale behind the company’s line of products.

Pass the Baton

Pass the Baton

Spoon & Tamago shares a few photos of Pass the Baton, “a vintage shop that derives its name from the concept of passing things on from one generation to the next,” located in the Marunouchi area. The shop’s design is by Masamichi Katayama (Wonderwall).

Azito

Azito

Azito is an online gallery that deals with sales of Japanese contemporary art worlwide, including works by the likes of Takashi Homma, Kenji Yanobe, and Keiichi Tanaami.

Pictured above, “New Waves,” a print by Homma.

Carina

Carina

Here’s a look at a new shop in Aoyama for children’s brand Carina, designed by Kazuyo Sejima (SANAA). Via Dezain.net.

Rroomm

Rroomm

A fun idea, if possibly a maddening one: Rroomm is a clothing shop in Osaka that was recently renovated by architects Ninkipen, and the main feature is a series of eleven doors, six of which are fake. Via Dezeen.

Tokyo Bike Shops

WBASE Harajuku

CNNGo has a piece up looking at some of Tokyo’s best bike shops. Pictured above, WBASE Harajuku.

Wacka Wacka Chocolate

MUJI Chocolate Cake

Is it just me, or does this photo from MUJI’s Xmas 2009 page for their “gateau au chocolat” mix look like a certain yellow pill-popping fiend.

Feeling Good About Uniqlo

Uniqlo

Marxy explains the success of Uniqlo over at The Business of Fashion blog. My favorite bit from the piece:

In fact, perhaps the brand’s most powerful asset is its neutrality. Wearing Uniqlo carries no meaning of its own. It’s as close as apparel has ever come to interchangeable LEGO blocks.

Japan Brand in NYC

Japan Brand in NYC

Felissimo in New York is hosting a Japan Brand pop-up shop during the holidays (until December 24), and it’s been getting some coverage on a bunch of NYC-based blogs, including JoshSpear.com and Spoon & Tamago.

Pictured above is a bicycle designed by Gelman, made of lacquer, silver plating, and gold leaf. It was created for his “Gelman’s Masterpieces” exhibition earlier this year at the Kakitsubata gallery in Nakameguro. I was actually given the chance the take it for a spin after the show was over, but I chickened out — was just too nervous that I might crash it or something.

Comme des Garcons Trading Museum

Comme des Garcons Trading Museum

The Comme des Garcons brand has opened a new concept store in Omotesando Hills called Trading Museum. As noted in this Wallpaper piece,”the space features eight expansive display cabinets on loan from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.” Via Dezain.net.

Tokyo’s Best Magazine Stores

A few months ago, Jeremy Leslie over on his MagCulture blog posted a detailed — and crowdsourced — map of London’s best magazine stores. At the time I thought it was a terrific idea, and wanted to create something similar for Tokyo. Sure, I already have a few I know, but the best way for this to work is if I can get as many contributions as possible.

So please, let me know what your favorites are — either by leaving a comment or by emailing me. I’ll compile the results, and create a proper map on Google Maps, just like Jeremy did for London.

Nike Harajuku

Nike Harajuku

Nike is opening a new store in Harajuku tomorrow (November 14), and the shop’s website is now showing a time-lapse video of the construction (or at least of the exterior’s temporary display).

Muji + Lego

Muji + Lego

Muji has launched its annual Xmas campaign section, which includes the new collaborative project between Muji and Lego. Imagine a mix of paper crafts, using Lego blocks and pieces as accessories. I don’t know if these are sold at all stores — I don’t think so — but I saw a huge display at the Tokyo Midtown Muji store during design week.

My Tokyo

My Tokyo

Not “my Tokyo,” but rather my friend Luis Mendo’s take on the city we love to love. Earlier this year Luis stayed in Tokyo for a 3-month “inspirational retreat” — I posted about his terrific illustrated Tokyo diary back in April — and now here’s a sneak peak at a map he’s created for an upcoming issue of Journal de Nîmes, a newspaper for the denim store Tenue de Nîmes in Amsterdam. I’m very happy to see that Ikebukuro gets a mention, both for its Muji and Cafe Pause.

Chiso Memo Block

Chico Memo Block

The Tokyo Art Beat online store is now selling the colorful Chiso Memo Block by Kenjiro Sano.

SNOW Magazine

Where's all the regular art/design-related content you used to see here? Check out SNOW Magazine, a Tokyo-based online magazine featuring news and guest columns -- see the full list of contributors -- covering the cultural landscape of Tokyo/Japan.

SNOW Magazine Cafe The SNOW Magazine Cafe is a month-long celebration of art, design, and culture magazines from around the world, on display for everyone's reading pleasure at Cafe Pause in Tokyo.
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 is September 6.

PLAY is a series of events with Jean Snow spinning some of his favorite virtual discs in a casual setting at Cafe Pause. See the setlist for previous editions here, and subscribe to a feed of the mixes.
Game

Being a survey of recommended titles for your gaming pleasure. New games are added 2-3 times weekly, and all selections are by your host, Jean Snow, a Tokyo-based writer and gamer.

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.

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Jean Snow lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming in Tokyo -- sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for the following online/offline publications: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 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, and The Japan Times. He's also the founder and editor-in-chief of SNOW Magazine.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Pecha Kucha Night

He's a member of the Pecha Kucha team, working on various projects, including updating Pecha Kucha Daily, a blog that highlights the creativity coming out of PKN events worldwide.

PauseTalk

He serves as editor-at-large at Néojaponisme, a web journal covering social and cultural aspects of Japan. Read the manifesto, by founder and chief editor W. David Marx.

He also writes a monthly column covering Japanese product design for The Japan Times, called "On Design." It appears on the last Thursday of every month, in both the print edition and online.

Colophon

The "Jean Snow" logo is made up of the Blackout open source 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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