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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Happening at Tokyo Design Week 2009

  • Yes, it’s that time of the year again, Tokyo Design Week is just around the corner, this year kicking off on a Friday instead of the traditional Wednesday, running October 30 to November 3. Best way to find out about everything that’s going on is to pick up the guides to the events — they should be popping up around town soon — and of course to check out the official event websites: DesignTide, 100% Design Tokyo, Tokyo Designers Week, Swedish Style, and Design Touch.
  • So instead of “Happening in Tokyo” event posts, time to start some “Happening in TDW” ones. I still don’t know how much I’ll be able to take in because of my back (it’s much better, if still painful at times), but I’m still going to try and sample as much as I can.
  • Currently I’m most looking forward to the DesignTide opening party on Friday night (although I believe it’s not a public event). It’s always a good opportunity to get a first glimpse at everything, and chat up the attendees.
  • More of a pre-TDW event, this month’s PechaKucha Night in Tokyo (Vol. 66) happens this Wednesday (October 28), and it will of course have a TDW flavor to it. This will also be the first PKN I attend in quite a few months, so happy to be able to join up with team PKN again.
  • Berlin’s DMY will be participating at DesignTide, with products and prototypes from 14 Berlin-based designers.
  • Designboom presents Hermès Paris: “A design adventure from high-quality bags to helicopters and yachts, an online graphic competition for the upcoming tie collection and the world preview in Tokyo of new high-tech suitcases. A presentation of the most recent development inside the Hermès design department, and a Q&A with design director of Hermès Gabriele Pezzini conducted by Birgit Lohmann (Designboom).” It happens at the design conference/forum space at the 100% Design Tokyo venue in Jingu Gaien on October 31 (12:00-13:00).
  • And of course, don’t miss the Designboom Mart, again a part of 100% Design Tokyo.

Oct 26, 2009

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 March 5.

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.

Codex is a weekly music podcast hosted by Jean Snow, recorded in Tokyo. Playlists for all episodes are posted on the site, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of posts and episodes.

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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PechaKucha Global Cities Week

Jean Snow is Executive Director of the PechaKucha organization. He also helps run the PechaKucha Night in Tokyo -- please get in touch if you are interested in presenting at a future event. For a more intimate salon-like discussion group, join him at his monthly PauseTalk event.

A longtime resident of Tokyo, he lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming, sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for various online/offline publications, including the following: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 1UP, 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, Phaidon, and The Japan Times.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook, or get in touch by email.

Neojaponisme

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 Tuesday of every month, in both the print edition and online.

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The "Jean Snow" logo is written using the free Kirimomi Swash 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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