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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Happy 7th, TAB!

Libre Burrito at Tokyo Art Beat Party

I’d just like to take the opportunity to congratulate Tokyo Art Beat on its 7th anniversary, which was celebrated in style last night with a terrific event at Dictionary Club in Shibuya. I’ve been one of the biggest cheerleaders of TAB since its start — I’d rather not remember what it was like trying to find info in English on art/design events before its existence — and I’m so happy that not only is it still going, but that it seems to be in great shape. So again, congratulations to the TAB crew, as well as to the AQ crew for all its tech and production support.

Pictured above, a mini burrito from Libre at the party — it was really good, and so I definitely recommend you go check out the proper Libre shop in Aoyama. And I must say that the Dictionary Club is a really nice event space, and I’m hoping I’ll get to see more stuff there.

Please Help Tokyo Art Beat

As we’ve seen with many a site and company, 2009 was a very rough year, and our dear Tokyo Art Beat — itself a non-profit — was hit as well. So if you can, PLEASE help TAB keep going by making a donation here. PLEASE!

TAB iPhone App Startup Screen

TAB iPhone App Startup Screen

It may not have come out in November as promised (it will soon though), but here’s a sneak peek at what the startup screen for Tokyo Art Beat‘s iPhone app will look like. The image was created by AQ‘s Eiko Nagase.

Peace Sweater at TAB Shop

Peace Sweater

Some good news if you’ve been wanting to get your hands on the Peace Sweater — which I covered in my “On Design” column last month — as it’s now available for purchase online through the TAB Shop.

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 happens June 4.

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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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.

 

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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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