I’ve made it a habit of kicking off the new year with a post that tries to address what I’m looking at in terms of the coming year, and I’ve used it over the past couple of years to announce some personal projects — both the launch of SNOW Magazine in 2010, and then the closure of the site in 2011. This year I don’t really have anything specific to announce yet, so this is going to be a short list of things that I have on my mind and wishes for 2012 — a state of my union, if you will.

The biggest change I think that I’ve experienced over the past year is that I’ve fully transitioned into working full-time on PechaKucha. My role as Executive Director sees me doing so many interesting things in relation to the PK community and network, and it’s one that I relish — I so enjoy the fact that I’m constantly in contact with people from all over the world who are producing PechaKucha Nights in our 460+ cities. 2012 is going to be an even bigger year for PK, with lots of cool things already in the works, and I can’t wait to share them with you all.

Something that also relates to PK is that I have it in my mind to organize something that would be gaming-related — to quench my thirst for doing something in that world, since it’s been quite a while since my days as a writer for Wired‘s Game|Life and the Arcade Mania book. I’m hoping to team up with some friends on this, and we’ll see how it goes. Expect it in the second half of the year though.

And speaking of Arcade Mania, there may be some developments with that this year, but nothing that I can talk about or promise for now — stay tuned.

On the SNOW Magazine front, when I closed the site I said that it was actually going on “hiatus,” and by that I meant that I would still love do something with that again, but that I just don’t feel like a regularly updated website works. I’d love to maybe do it as an irregular magazine on iPad, but since I want to keep this all indie and not have to depend on anyone (and can’t pay anyone), that means me trying to do it myself, which is a lot of work — the release of Mag+ for singles did give me hope that it might be doable. 

Codex, my music podcast, has been back for a few weeks now, and I look forward to getting back on a regular schedule with it this year, now that I’ve found a setup that works for me (for recording a show live while using Spotify as my music source). Over the next few days (maybe even today), I’ll release two episodes with my favorite music of the past year. And my other obsession, magazines, will continue to be covered over at The Magaziner. I wasn’t able to do a magazine-related event like I did in 2010 (the SNOW Magazine Cafe), but I hope that this year I can produce or participate in some cool new magazine projects.

PauseTalk also continues its run — 2012 will see it celebrate a 6th anniversary — and I have a few PT-related developments in mind as well, but I’d rather have them more concrete before I share them.

This past year has also seen more active — in a physical sense — than ever, both in terms of cycling (with the occasional bike commute to go work at the Klein Dytham architecture office in Ebisu) and with me and my wife’s mountain trekking lifestyle. On the bike front, I’ve slowed down a bit with the cold weather, and also because I’m really hankering to get a regular sized bike (not the foldable BD-1 that I’ve been using). As far as the mountains go, we’ve been adding bits and pieces to our equipment every month (since we can’t afford to spend much), and next up on our want list are sleeping bags and a tent. I also need to post photos from the last two snow treks we did over the past couple of week in Nagano.

The last thing that I’d like to see happen this year (at least for now) is that I would like to try and write some longer pieces, something a bit more thought-out than my regular posts. I don’t quite know what I’d like to write about — and hey, maybe I could try fiction for a change — but it’s something that I certainly have on my wishlist of things I want to do in 2012.

So there you have it, a few reflections as we transition from one year to another — here’s to an amazing 2012!

Maybe “Tightening the Belt” is not really the best way to describe what I’ve been doing of late, but I am on a trajectory to make my online presence a bit leaner (and maybe even a bit meaner). As I announced a week ago, I’ve put SNOW Magazine on indefinite hiatus, and I’ve done the same with my little GAME site. 

Yes, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I just can’t handle all of the things that I’d like to be doing online, at least in terms of my personal projects (i.e. the stuff that doesn’t bring in income). It was getting to the point where I’d feel guilty about not updating these various sites, and I finally figured that enough was enough.

For now, and for the foreseeable future, expect me to stick to just The Magaziner, new episodes of the Codex, the monthly editions of PauseTalk, and the odd scribblings here — there’s another podcast project that I’d like to get off the ground too. 

As for the day job — I’m Executive Director of the PechaKucha organization — things have never been more exciting, and we have a lot of very cool things in the works. It’s also been a pleasure to be working more closely with my good friend Ian Lynam, who has taken on the big task of refreshing our visual identity and online presence.

As you’ll notice if you visit SNOW Magazine right now, I’ve decided to put the site on indefinite hiatus. I’ve been quite embarrassed by the lack of updates to the site over the last few months, and I think it’s just better to have it go on leave for a while, instead of the lame life support I’ve had it on.

Why the lack of love for the site? I just haven’t really had the time to focus on it like I’d want, and to be fair, I’ve been much more passionate about what I’m covering on The Magaziner — and the Codex podcast — and I think it’s best that I just let myself embrace those things, instead of continually feeling like I should try to come up with something to write about on SNOW, and feeling stressed about it. In the end, it’ll be for the better for everyone, as it frees me up to do more casual writing here, and to continue my exploration of how the magazine landscape is shaping up as it embraces new digital platforms.

As for SNOW Magazine, I’ll just say that it’s going away for now, with no definite plans on when it will be back, or even in what form. I don’t think I was ever really able to do what I wanted to do with SNOW, and I think — and I’m hoping — that what I’m doing over at The Magaziner will eventually inform what the next stage will be. And yes, I’m already thinking — and it’s what, in the end, I’ve really wanted to do — that this next stage or new form will be more publication-like, as in regularly released packages of curated ideas and stories (some people call these magazines).

Oh, and I will eventually reinstate access to the archives.

As I mentioned when I wrote about it at SNOW Magazine, this past Friday night I headed out to Koenji to catch the reception of Antonin Gaultier’s “2005-2010: Collected Archives” show. It was held at Alin Huma’s F de C Tokyo multi-purpose space, and it was my first visit there. I had a really nice time, and the crowd was great — was good to finally meet Alex of so+ba, although I hope I didn’t freak him out too much with my Uwe Boll stories — but what made the evening even better is that I decided to go there by bicycle, from Ikebukuro. I’ll say that the ride back when it suddently got really cold with high winds wasn’t as fun as the way there, but it still felt good (I haven’t really been cycling regularly of late).

The photo above popped up on Facebook, and was taken by Yann Le Goec. That’s me in the space, with my back to the camera, talking to Alin.

As promised, here’s the deal with SNOW Magazine and what’s going on.

First off, even though you are now greeted by a hiatus announcement on the front page when you get to the site, please note that you can still access all of the site’s archives.

So why a relaunch? There are quite a few reasons, actually, and I’ll try to cover as many as I can here. I think the first thing I need to say is that for a few months now, I’ve been feeling more and more like updating the site was a chore. I wasn’t having much fun doing it anymore, and so I started thinking about why I was doing it.

If you’ll recall, it was a year ago that the site launched — towards the end of January — and there were a few reasons for doing it. In short, I wanted to continue the art/design/culture covering from Japan I’d been doing for years on my blog, but wanted it to feel less like a blog, and more like a proper site or web magazine. The other goal was to bring together a whole bunch of voices, to build a community out of people I love and respect, to help spread “our” view of this country.

That last part is where the site has mostly failed. Although I did realize that it would be difficult to get a whole bunch of people to contribute regular columns (that I was hoping to be “mostly” monthly) for no pay, that’s why I tried bringing together such a large group — I was hoping that the sheer volume would ensure a regular stream of newness. But if you don’t count the re-posts from Néojaponisme, Papersky, and Art Space Tokyo, the only regular contributor has been Bianca with her terrific “Japanese Package Design” series, and she deserves my eternal thanks for that (and it’s the reason I wanted the final post on the site to be her latest column). Now, I don’t blame anyone, as I certainly know what it’s like to want to contribute to something, but simply getting too busy with all of the other things in your life.

And this resulted in another problem with the site. Since this community aspect of the site was so important to me, I really wanted all of the columns to act as the “meat” of the site, with my contribution being a regular stream of smaller news items and links, to keep the site feeling alive with daily content. While doing this, I also purposely changed the way I wrote these — as opposed to how I would cover them on my blog — giving them a more neutral style. In part it was because I wanted to give the site an authoritative voice (more objective, less subjective).

But in the end, as a friend of mine remarked, what was interesting when I used to do this kind of coverage on my blog was that it was usually placed in the context of how I encountered it — the anecdotes that went with them were part of the fun. On SNOW, it came off as dry, and since the site was pretty much resting on these due to the lack of columns, it made for a relatively boring read.

The other elephant in the room is, well, a big one. I alluded to it recently when I addressed something Momus had said in a recent podcast, and it’s the fact that I’m just not particularly inspired by the creative output of this country these days. This feeling has been growing over the past year, and although I’ve constantly tried to explain it as “just me,” thinking that I’d just been here for too long and that my constant focus on this particularly topic had maybe burned me out on it — and hey, that may really be the case — I do feel like there’s a serious lack of exciting development happening here. That’s not to say there aren’t some amazing creators doing some amazing things, but it’s no longer enough for me to want to base the entirety of my writings on — especially the kind that I do on my own time.

So what do I do? Although I haven’t completely finalized the exact shape that SNOW Magazine will take — and that’s why I’m giving myself a few weeks to flesh that out — I do have a few thoughts on what I’m going to do with the site. Some of these changes include an end to outside contributions to the site, writing longer opinionated/subjective pieces (probably 3-5 times a week), and — the big one — no longer tying myself to covering Tokyo/Japan-related content exclusively. As you’ll notice with The Magaziner, I don’t have a problem writing when it’s something I’m passionate about, and that’s what I want to bring back to SNOW Magazine.

These changes will also bring with them a drastic change in the site’s design, especially since I’ll want it to better reflect the difference in content and frequency.

I would like to thank everyone who has helped me with feedback in the past week or so — your comments and suggestions have been priceless — as well as everyone who has contributed something to the site over the year. Although it may sound like I ended the year with rather negative thoughts about the site, the idea to bring changes has really been invigorating — and liberating — and I’m absolutely positive that SNOW Magazine in 2011 will be even better than what you experienced in 2010, and I can promise that you’ll be seeing other SNOW-related projects happening as well, so stay tuned!

As the year winds down to a close, it’s always the time where I start to re-think everything I’m doing, and what I should be doing in the new year. After all, it was around this time that I was prepping for the launch of SNOW Magazine (it went live towards the end of January), and now I need to re-evaluate what the point of the site (or platform) is, and where it should be going in 2011. I already have some strong ideas on this, and I’m going to take the next week or two to properly plan this out and figure out what is best.

This “re-thinking” mode also affects every other personal project I have online, in some way or another. For example, the site I have up for Cafe Pause and my involvement there. As evidenced by the level of updates to it, it doesn’t make sense to keep that going as a blog, and I’m certainly going to modify it to make it more static, more of a pointer for info instead of news — and to be honest, I just haven’t been as active there as I have in past years, due to lack of time, and a focus on other things.

And even new projects, like Codex, which was launched less than two months ago. I’m pretty happy with the way it’s working, but I’m sure I’ll be tweaking things here and there. I’m having an absolute blast creating new episodes, and I’ll probably look to expand on what I’m doing with it.

So just a little post to say that I do like when this time of the year comes up, as it’s a good excuse to really re-evaluate and come up with new ideas to get the new year rolling at a good and energetic pace.

As you get towards the end of the year, it’s usually a time to reassess the way you do some things, and one thing I’ve decided to do is to take my personal Facebook account and make it just that, personal. For the past year or so I’ve just been adding whoever sends me a request — I imagine after I’m discovered through this site — and it’s gotten to a point where my Facebook account is practically unusable now.

What I’ve done instead is create a new JeanSnow.net page on Facebook, which I’ve also added as the “Facebook” link that appears at the end of every post on this site. A few years ago I had created a JEANSNOW.NET group, which I’ve never done anything with, but decided to get rid of it as I think it makes more sense to go as a “page” and not a “group” — on Facebook, SNOW Magazine and The Magaziner each have pages, but PauseTalk is a group, which I think makes sense.

So apologies in advance if you send me a friend request and I don’t approve it — from now on I’ll be limiting interaction with my personal account to people I actually know.

Hey, you lazy blogger, aren’t you doing anything?

If you think I’ve suddenly dropped everything, I would remind you to check (and often) my other little web publications that do get a lot of love throughout the week: SNOW Magazine and The Magaziner. It’s amazing the amount of attention the latter has gotten — more than any personal project I’ve launched so far, and I gotta say it feels good. The Magaziner will also be involved in the launch of a very cool project in January that I’m excited about — can’t say anything yet, but trust me, if you’re at all into this whole digital magazines thing, then you’ll love it. And Gym Class Magazine has offered me a regular “The Magaziner” column, starting from the next issue (out in February).

If it’s more Codex you want, fret not, as I’ll be recording a new episode tonight or tomorrow. I absolutely love doing these, and so huge thanks to everyone for the great feedback — it’s very much appreciated.

The title to this post simply refers to the amazing poses my dog performs when he’s jolly and jumping around during play — he would make any kung-fu master proud.

I just posted something on SNOW Magazine about Momus‘ latest podcast, in which he talks about his new life in Osaka — he has recently relocated to the city. Momus used to do a lot of these talk-only podcasts, often recording them as he was walking around a city (Tokyo, New York, Berlin) describing the things he was experiencing. I really loved these “virtual tours,” and it even inspired me to do a few of my own.

Now in this new one — which he says “may” turn into a series, which I hope so — he mentions me, saying how he used to follow my blog back in the day, and he says how it’s interesting that when you look at pretty much all of the tweeting I do these days — which is admittedly a lot — that there is barely ever any mention of anything Japan-related. Now one thing that should be obvious is that I’ve moved all of my Japan-related art/design/culture content to SNOW Magazine, and the accompanying Twitter account, but there is something to what he says.

Momus states that it’s possible that after a foreigner has been here for long enough — I’ve been here for 10+ years — he starts losing interest in the things around him, and I can’t entirely disagree. I’m certainly no longer intrigued or surprised by the differences between Japan and other cultures. These have become routine for me. But I will admit that over the years my interests have evolved, and I’ve taken a bigger interest in things that lie outside of this country — you could probably count recent projects I’ve launched, like Codex and The Magaziner, as a reflection of this.

There was certainly a long period time where I was so obsessed and in love with all of the things I was seeing and experiencing in Japan that yes, it pretty much made up everything I was absorbing in terms of daily culture. But the past few years have seen me re-connecting with what’s happening in the rest of the world, and it has changed my perspective on things. Now, this is not to say that I don’t genuinely like what I cover on SNOW Magazine — I really do — but it’s also something I produce as a “project” now. As a whole, I’m just not as excited or intrigued by Japanese culture (meaning in art, design, culture, and more) as I used to be. Now whether this is due to me turning jaded or because of a general decline in what is being produced on the cultural landscape, that’s a topic for another post.

Does this mean I lose my Tokyo Boy crown?

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.

I gotta say I’m getting a kick out of this: In the past 24 hours I conceived of a site, a name, bought the domain, got it working, installed WordPress, imported posts from this site, found a theme that I modded to my liking, and have now launched my latest project, something I’m calling The Magaziner. What’s a magaziner you ask? Here’s my made-up answer:

We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.

It all started last night when I was reading a comment on Facebook by Craig Mod, who suggested that all of the magazine-related coverage I’ve been doing over the past couple of months is getting lost within the rest of what I post here. I think he made a good point — and god knows I have a lot of respect and admiration for what he’s accomplished over the past year or so — and so I decided to launch a new site that would be exclusively for all of the magazine stuff. Expect the same kind of coverage you’ve been seeing here — commentary, news, new release announcements, reviews — that weighs heavily on the emerging digital side of the magazine publishing industry, something I’m quite passionate about (although I do still love my lovely print publications, thank you very much).

So this site returns to being a hub for news on me and all of my various projects, which on top of The Magaziner includes Codex, my new weekly music podcast, Radio OK Fred, SNOW Magazine, PauseTalk, and other fun stuff. Hope you’ll continue to follow what I’m up to here, and if you really enjoyed the magazine coverage, then please head on over to The Magaziner — and you can of course subscribe to an RSS feed. There’s a Twitter account too (@the_magaziner) that I’ll be using to post magazine-related news as well.

Oh, and one more thing about The Magaziner, please consider this a beta version of the site. As I said at the top of this post, it all came together rather fast, so over the coming weeks I’m sure I’ll be changing things here and there, fixing things I missed, and maybe coming up with new features or sections to add.

Last night I decided to put together a quick and dirty website for Codex — as you’ll probably notice, it’s a simple mod of the SNOW Magazine site. Should make it easier to keep up with what’s going on with the show, instead of having to search for appropriate posts here.

Also, I already have my playlist decided for the next episode (03), but trying to be patient and wait a week before recording it.

I hope you saw the article recently on SNOW Magazine about the upcoming launch of TOO MUCH magazine, and if you didn’t, get to it. It’s the new magazine by Editions OK FRED — yes, OK FRED magazine is no more, but they have still been publishing one-off projects, and with TOO MUCH they return to the world of magazines.

And just as a reminder, the official launch happens this Friday (November 19) at HAPPA gallery in Kami-Meguro (pretty much between Yutenji and Nakameguro), and it’s also followed by a weekend event they’re calling the “Romantic Geography Biannual” — you’ll find more details here. One of the activities during the festival is a showing of Mike Mills’ Does Your Soul Have a Cold? on Saturday (November 20) at the Llove Theater in Daikanyama.

Over at Magtastic Blogsplosion, Andrew goes over a few examples of magazines that have been produced using blog content — mentioned are of course Michael Bojkowski’s Lineread and Jeremy Leslie’s magCulture.com/PAPER (pictured). Although not mentioned, It’s Nice That is another great example of this — and hey, issue 4 just came out.

It’s certainly a proposition that makes sense — as Andrew lays out, with print-on-demand services taking care of printing and distribution, all a budding magazine creator needs these days are the words and the design, and a good blog can take care of the former (with a bit of reformatting, expansion, etc.) It’s definitely something that comes to mind when I think of SNOW Magazine, and what I could do to expand on the site.

You may have noticed that over the past couple of weeks I’ve been posting lots in regards to magazines. It is in fact something I’ve “actively” decided to start doing here, and there’s reason for it. First of all, it’s no secret that I have quite a bit of love for that particular medium — there’s a reason why that profile blurb in the column on the right has always had the “sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines” bit.

When I launched SNOW Magazine earlier this year, pretty much all of the Japan-related art/design/culture coverage I used to do here moved there, which has sort of put this personal blog of mine in a bit of limbo since. I wasn’t sure what I should write about, and pretty much kept to things that related to my various activities. So far all of my magazine-related thoughts and comments have pretty much lived only on Twitter, which is of course rather limiting, and it was when I was thinking of commenting about the latest iPad issue of Wired that I thought, hey, why not write it up here. How’s that for an idea, writing on a blog about something you’re passionate about. I know, it sounds weird, but I have a feeling it’s something that may catch on.

So yes, expect to see lots more of what you’ve been seeing here of late. I do plan to focus mostly on how magazines are transitioning to digital — mostly iPad, but other tablets as well — since it’s something I’m particularly interested in. Don’t get me wrong, I do still have a great deal of love for print — in fact, the SNOW Magazine Cafe was just a great big love embrace to that very thing — but I am also quite excited by what’s happening on the digital side of things, especially because of the iPad. If you ask me, there’s never been a more exciting time to be a reader, creator, and lover of magazines.