Even though I was planning on going, I missed out on Paper Sky’s “Bicycle Club” event this past Saturday at the farmer’s market in front of the UN University, but the magazine’s Lucas Badtke-Berkow has posted a few photos from the day, both for the bicycle event and the booth the magazine had at the market. Above on the right, Lucas and his carrots!

Yoshi Shimura (Star Graphics) is a Tokyo native who moved to LA a year ago, and he’s just released the second issue of Megane Zine. As he describes it:

Megane Zine is a regular publication aimed at introducing artwork of young, up-coming Japanese artists to the United States. “Megane” means “Glasses” in Japanese. Megane Zine focuses it lens on the inspired achievements of these fantastic artists.

A Megane Zine tee designed by Ed Templeton will be released through Beams T in January, and a show featuring works from the issue will take place at LA’s HVW8 Art + Design Gallery, starting January 9.

It’s been another very long hiatus — obviously due to me breaking my spine — be the OK Fredders are finally back for a new episode of Radio OK Fred. It’s episode 15, and it’s our special Christmas show. Also, thanks to Djay — which is what I’ve been using at my PLAY events — this marks the first time we record a show live, which means we were able to prepare, record, and have it online all within 2-3 hours — for me, it was the editing that always killed me. So yes, apologies if we’re far from professional, but we’ll get better, I promise.

Below is the full rundown of what we played, as well as a link to the episode. Also, we have a new feed for the show now, so if you were subscribing to the old one, please make sure to switch.

Radio OK Fred 15 (36 MB)

1. James Kochalka – “Beautiful Christmas Lights”
2. Run DMC – “Christmas in Hollis”
3. Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band – “The Sun Is Down”
4. Karen O and the Kids – “All Is Love”
5. Gayla Peevey – “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”
6. Vince Guaraldi Trio – “Linus and Lucy”
7. Yuji Ohno – “Holy But Easy”
8. Naomi & Goro – “Presente de Natal”
9. Jose Feliciano – “Feliz Navidad”
10. Tokyo Panorama Lounge – “Winter Wonderland”
11. Ryuichi Sakamoto – “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”

The new issue of Paper Sky (31) is a special one, marking a major renewal for the magazine. The most obvious change is the cover design, but you’ll find English content creeping back into the magazine as well — for now, mostly with intro paragraphs to each article, but Cameron Allan McKean’s article on sento bathing in Tokyo is published entirely in English.

The Paper Sky website is also about to get a major revamp, and is set to launch within a week or two. The new site will now have a strong English component, of which I’ll be a contributor (but more on that once the site launches).

The other day I had the great pleasure of finally meeting the magazine’s founder, Lucas Badtke-Berkow, who also founded the original — and truly great — TOKION. Seems like this should have happened ages ago, and it was great to have a nice long chat with Lucas about where Knee High Media has been, where it’s heading, and on the state of print media in general. After checking out the KHM office in Shibuya, we ended up getting coffee at this amazing little retro cafe nearby, which I hate that I can’t remember the name (but I’ll be going there again).

Above, the label for Lucas’ new Luke’s Carrots line of organic products — I had a taste of the carrot jam, which was delicious. You can currently buy it at the weekend farmer’s market in front of the UN University in Aoyama, where he and his wife are manning a booth this month. Next weekend they’ll also be offering free rides on some very cool bicycles, as part of the new Paper Sky Bicycle Club.

Update: The cafe’s name is Aoyama Ichibankan, and here’s a map that shows the location. Make sure to get the honey toast!

Plants+ is the web spinoff that came out of the now-defunct Planted magazine, and here’s a video (via Click Opera) of Ito Seiko and Lucas Badtke-Berkow (founder of TOKION and Paper Sky) talking about the web venture, with English subtitles.

Free Copy Tokyo is a zine by LA-based graffiti writer Eyeone created during a recent trip to Tokyo, covering the graffiti scene. You can download a free PDF version of it here. Ian Lynam contributed the logo.

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.

Very nice to see Matt Alt and his wife Hiroko appear on the cover of this week’s issue of Metropolis, as part of a feature on small business owners — you can read the piece online here.

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.

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.

The new issue of the twice-annual +81 Voyage magazine is the “Magazine Creation and Bookstore Excursion” issue, and as the title implies, is a look at the current magazinescape.

Our aim with this event is not to yearn for the magazines of yesteryear but rather to look upon those magazines extant in the world today, and in doing so, understand the culture and tastes of our time, reaffirm our awareness of paper’s function, and confirm the intelligence and ingenuity of humanity as seen in magazines.

Will absolutely be picking this up later today. Via The Blog of Scott Hansen. Above, one of the magazines featured inside.

First Tokyo, then Kyoto, now it’s Osaka’s turn to get the Wallpaper City Guide treatment. As I wrote when I covered the Kyoto volume’s release, I really like what these book’s represent. No, they’re not intended to be a thorough travel guide to the cities they cover. Instead, they act as handy compendiums of the types of spots you see highlighted in Wallpaper, but end up forgetting about (unless you cut them out and paste them in a notebook).

As with the Kyoto edition, regular Tokyo-based Wallpaper contributor Gordon Kanki Knight is the author , and I have to say that he’s come up with a very cool collection of stylish spots I never knew existed in Osaka, and I’ve already marked a few I plan on taking in on my next visit — and don’t you know you it, as with all of these Wallpaper guides, you have extra blank note pages at the end in which to write down all those things.

The official release, as indicated on its Amazon US page (or even Amazon Japan), is December 9, but Gordon tells me that the book should be popping up in some shops around mid-November. As for what’s next for the City Guide series in Japan, I hear that Sapporo is on the horizon.

TABlog has a couple of reports on the recent Tokyo Graphic Passport event: first on the state of the art scene, and then on the independent magazine panel.

Patrick Macias posts a fun gallery of photos featuring Yuka, a 6%DOKIDOKI shop girl. Also check out the latest issue of Japanese gaming bible Weekly Famitsu for a collaborative article with Otaku USA.

I recently linked to a couple of posts covering the zine scene from TABlog, but somehow missed this one, which has regular PauseTalker Sophie Knight writing about her experience creating a zine, and then selling it at the “Zine’s Mate” event.