Month: May 2003

I just saw the following quote on the Japan Today website from prize-winning author Yoshinaga Fujita, criticizing the new Roppongi Hills, which pretty much described my experience there: I just walked around confused, and when I felt like sitting down to take a rest, all the coffee shops were full.

And for fans of the modern architecture that’s popping up around town (like the new Prada building in Aoyama), you could do worse then check out the SANAA exhibit at Gallery MA. Again, from REALTOKYO: SANAA is the name of the collaboration project by Sejima Kazuyo and Nishizawa Ryue, that was set up after Nishizawa…

And another way of looking at urban rewewal (from REALTOKYO): The “R-project” dealing with “potential buildings” that Baba Masataka has been writing about in his entries in RT’s “Tokyo Editors’ Diary” has taken up serious operation. The ambitious idea is to reform in a physical way the evaluation of “life in the city” by converting…

This is the cover of the Arling & Cameron album (All IN) that was given to me by Elsbeth and Derk the other night. You can see how approriate a gift it was, explicitly illustrating the Amerdam-Tokyo connection. As for the album itself, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it on my iPod these…

To continue on the same topic (I’m posting a new entry because old entries tend to get lost in the churn, as do the comments), a couple of articles came to my attention today. First, I was late picking up METROPOLIS this week, but finally got around to it and found a cover story featuring…

On Friday I met up with Elsbeth and Derk, from Amsterdam, who are in Tokyo visiting for 10 days. They first contacted me a few months ago after having discovered my site. They share the same interest in design (Elsbeth works as a graphic designer), and as I discovered on Friday night, in music also.…

I’d just like to point out that there’s a discussion going on in the comments section of one of my previous entries about the new Roppongi Hills complex, and I’d be curious to hear what others think. You don’t need to have visited it for yourself, it’s more a question of whether or not there…