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.

Just a reminder that I’ll be having a special PechaKucha event on Friday (May 11) as part of the Magazine Library exhibition at Hillside Terrace in Daikanyama. The theme is of course magazines and print culture, and I’m very happy with the lineup, which will include, among others, TOO MUCH magazine and my fellow Radio OK Fred co-host Audrey Fondecave, De Rigueur‘s Antonin Gaultier, Tokyo-based designer Ian Lynam, Amsterdam-based editorial designer Luis Mendo, and Postalco‘s Mike Abelson. 

The event is free to attend, and will kick off at 19:00 (presentations start at that time). Hope to see many of you there, and it’s a good chance to take in the exhibition as well.

As I teased the other day, after a hiatus of a couple of years, Radio OK Fred is back this week, live! The Magazine Library 10 exhibition runs May 3-13 at Hillside Terrace in Daikanyama, and me, Audrey, and Yoshi are reuniting for 2 live editions of Radio OK Fred this week, on Thursday and Friday evening (May 3 and 4). We will be starting around 17:00-30, and each show will go for 1-2 hours. It will be a mix of music selections and interviews with special guests, so if you’re around please drop by and come say hi, we’d love to chat with you! There are also plans to do an extra edition on Saturday, May 12, and I’m have more details later about the time.

Just over a week ago I attended the launch party for the second issue of TOO MUCH magazine, held at the United Bamboo store (in the building’s event space) in Daikanyama. TOO MUCH is of course the follow-up to OK FRED magazine, and is still helmed by the editorial duo of Yoshi Tsujimura and Audrey Fondecave (my fellow Radio OK Fred podcasters). The party doubled as an exhibition based on a feature written by another good friend, Ian Lynam, of which you can see more here. You can buy a 2-issue subscription to TOO MUCH (it’s published twice-annually) here.

After the reception, we walked down towards Nakameguro to get some drinks at Just Another Space, which is a rather funky spot — and hey, there’s ping-pong table there too.

Also, if you’re curious as to the effect I’m putting on these photos (which I also did for the haircut post), I’m using a series of actions in Photoshop that replicate the filters found in Instagram — in each case, I’ve applied “Hefe,” followed by “Brannan.” You can download them here (and thank you Nick Chester for the tip on this).

As I mentioned yesterday when I posted episode 9 of the Codex, it’s only after I was done that I thought it would be a good idea to do a Christmas episode, and I wanted to get it done as soon as possible. Here we are then, an extra-sized holiday episode with 20 yuletide tunes that I hope make for a Christmas soundtrack that’s a bit different from what you tend to hear everywhere.

As I said on the show, a lot of the tracks were found thanks to a great holiday music round-up post on Pitchfork. Here are also links to some of the compilations I mentioned, that you can download for free: The Christmas Gig, Ho! Ho! Ho! Canada Deux, and A Familyre Christmas Volume 3. Also, you can still download the Christmas episode of Radio OK Fred (15) we did last year (me, along with my co-hosts Yoshi and Ay2).

You’ll find the link to download the episode below, along with the complete playlist, and you can subscribe to an RSS feed so as not to miss any future episode. The show is on the iTunes Store too.

Codex 10 (61.8MB)

1. James Kochalka Superstar – “Christmas in Dimension X”
2. Pine*AM – “Snow! Snow!”
3. Blazer Force – “Electronic Santa”
4. Sufjan Stevens – “Put the Lights on the Tree”
5. Low – “Taking Down the Tree”
6. Bishop Allen – “You’ll Never Find My Christmas”
7. Best Coast/Wavves – “Got Something for You”
8. Coconut Records – “It’s Christmas”
9. Summer Camp – “Christmas Wrapping (The Waitresses Cover)”
10. Los Campesinos! – “Kindle a Flame in Her Heart”
11. Dressy Bessy – “Hopped Up on Xmas”
12. Dent May – “Holiday Face”
13. By Divine Right – “Mall Santa”
14. The Zolas – “Snow”
15. Paper Lions – “Jingle Bells”
16. The Mountains & The Trees – “My Favourite Sweater (Happy Holidays)”
17. Ben + Vesper – “Planet Witness”
18. Rachel and Jon Galloway – “Glory”
19. Joshua Stamper – “To Us a Child of Hope Is Born”
20. Halcali – “Strawberry Chips”

Every month or so, Warren Ellis puts out a post on his site in which he explains where you can find him on the web and elsewhere — sort of a monthly updated FAQ on what he’s up to — and I figure I should do one as well, since I’m sure that someone who has just arrived to my site for the first time might have trouble understanding what exactly I’m up to these days.

First off, this week saw the launch of my latest project, The Magaziner, a new site that will cover the growing push of magazine into the digital world — something I’ve been covering here for a couple of months now, but realized it made more sense to create a proper space for it. It is also accompanied by a Twitter account, which I’m now using for my magazine-related tweets, and has a Facebook fan page too.

Last month I also launched a new weekly music podcast I call Codex. It’s usually me playing a selection of 10 tracks, but I’ll have the occasional themed shows (like the next one), guest episodes (soon), and I’m also going to start adding what I call the Codex Coda, short guest mixes. You can download all previous episodes here and subscribe to an RSS feed — it’s in the iTunes Store too.

Radio OK FRED is the long-running music podcast series I do with Editions OK FRED‘s Yoshi Tsujimura and Audrey Fondecave, and although it’s been on yet another extended break (apologies for that), it still pops up every once in a while, and I’m hoping we’ll be able to make 1 or 2 new episodes this month.

Then there’s PauseTalk, my monthly creative talk event that takes place at Cafe Pause here in Ikebukuro. We’re on a bit of a break this month and the next (due to the holiday slowdown), and so the next edition will take place February 7. If you’ve never been there, it’s a very casual salon-like atmosphere, where a bunch of “creatives” basically get together and discuss topics that affect us, share projects, ask for advice, etc.

SNOW Magazine is the natural extension that was launched at the start of the year for all of the Tokyo/Japan-related art/design/culture coverage I used to do on this blog for many, many years. Although most of the content is provided by me, it does include the occasional guest columns and feature. SNOW also has a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

That means that this place, JeanSnow.net, is again a hub for all of my activities, so don’t come looking for Japan-related news, really. I’m on Twitter as well — where some say I actually tweet too much — and of course Facebook.

On the book side of things, while I’ll remind you that my previous contributions — Arcade Mania and Tokyolife — make for great holiday gifts, next up will be the release early next year of the fifth editions of The Rough Guides to Tokyo and Japan.

And although it doesn’t get updated as much as I’d like, my little gaming corner — simply called GAME — still features a host of games that I like a lot. I’ll try and get back to adding a few each month.

The PLAY series, where I would spin virtual discs at Cafe Pause every once in a while, is also on hiatus, and I think it has pretty much been taken over by Codex. I actually want to occasionally record some live Codex shows from the cafe.

You can also still catch my monthly design column for The Japan Times, “On Design,” which is published on the last Thursday of every month. It focuses on product design, and each one usually has me recommending five new items. I also contributed two items to the Japan Times‘ holiday gift guide piece, which was published today.

And even though I don’t really contribute anything in the written sense, I would say that I’m a “spiritual” contributor to Néojaponisme, David Marx‘s web journal that covers social and cultural aspects of Japan, which explains my editor-at-large title. Although the site has slowed down a bit this year in terms of new content, expect a bunch of great year-end reflections to appear later this month.

I’m also a proud member of Luis Mendo’s Goodfellas Network, and more specifically part of the GOOD Inc. Japan team. If you’re looking for a terrific group of people to work on a magazine-related project (print or digital), then please get in touch.

Last, but CERTAINLY not least, I continue my work as Executive Director of PechaKucha, where my role is mostly behind-the-scenes, but I also provide a public face through the PechaKucha Daily blog, and on Twitter. Local PKN organizers from around the world are the people I mostly deal with, but do feel free to get in touch if you have any questions regarding all things PechaKucha, whether it’s about holding a one-off PK event, starting a regular PKN series in your city, or anything else you may have on your mind. Since the organization is run as a non-profit, sponsorship enquiries and collaborations are also VERY welcome!

So there you have it, and if all of this wasn’t enough, do feel free to email me with any question you may have.

Tomorrow night (Wednesday, November 24) isn’t any old PechaKucha Night, nope, it’s actually the last one of 2010, since December is always a skip month. So come on down to SuperDeluxe for what is looking like a great night of presentations, including my pal Ian who is promising to give away free stuff, and Audrey who will be talking about TOO MUCH magazine. If you want to say hi, just drop by the front either before or during the beer break, as I sit at the front next to Mark and Astrid.

Last night marked the official launch of TOO MUCH magazine at HAPPA gallery in Nakameguro, and man was it ever fun. Such a terrific gathering of people, and everyone seemed really happy to see Editions OK FRED finally be in the magazine business again.

Although it still doesn’t appear to be for sale online, it should be soon enough, and I’m sure you’ll be spotting it in Tokyo’s better bookstores. At the event they were also selling a separate pamphlet that features Japanese translations of all the articles (remember, unlike the bilingual OK FRED magazine, TOO MUCH is English-only).

Above, the two creators of the magazine, Ay2 and Yoshi (and of course, my fellow Radio OK FRED co-hosts), and just behind the glass you see Cameron as well, who edited the issue.

Here’s another round-up of the last few days of articles to appear on SNOW Magazine. First I’d like to highlight the three guest columns that appeared this week: Bianca Beuttel returns to the package design series she used to contribute to PingMag (starting with Xylish gum packaging), Audrey Fondecave provides a second column to make sure everyone knows about Abake and their open studio sessions, and we ended the week with Hiyoko Imai’s first contribution in what she’s calling her “SNOW Characters” series.

Below, the news items from the last few days. Here’s also a reminder that you can subscribe to the site’s RSS feed, follow on Twitter, and become a fan on Facebook.

• Groovisions Interviewed
• Tokyo Gallery Geography
• Green Marker
• Kilico
• Rainbow Church
• Takayuki Fukatsu’s Photo Apps Get Awarded
• Wonderwall 10th Anniversary Collaboration
• Corona by Nendo
• SWEETS ROOM
• Drainspotting Online
• TPUTH
• Madrix
• The Life and Times of Oswald Cooper in Idea Magazine
• Lodge
• Hammock
• Moon Otoko
• Izmojuki Machinaries
• Nonchan’s House
• Tamagawa Takashimaya S+C Marronnier Court
• Frisk Built QR Code
• Artalking #6: How Dead Is the Book?
• iPad Stencil for Omnigraffle
• A Few Things the West Could Teach Japan About Housing
• Bad Signs for Abercrombie & Fitch in Japan
• MicroWorks in Stockholm

The French Embassy in Tokyo has recently moved to new premises, and to commemorate this is holding a special exhibition at the old location. “No Man’s Land” (November 26 to January 31) features a vertigo-inducing number of participants, including my fellow Radio OK Fred co-host, Audrey Fondecave.

And speaking of Radio OK Fred — on hiatus since the start of my health problems — I can tell you that we’re planning on recording a new episode soon-ish, and before that you’ll get to hear two episodes that were recorded (but not yet edited) earlier this summer. Here’s a link to the last episode that was uploaded (#14).