Month: February 2006

Signal to Noise

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 20, 2006

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Luc Meier of Pro Helvetia, the Arts Council of Switzerland, sends word of the upcoming “Signal to Noise – Audio Swiss Japan” tour, to hit a few cities in Japan (Tokyo, Yamaguchi, Kyoto, Osaka, and Nagoya) in March (3-17), and bringing together avant-guard electronic artists Guenter Mueller, Jason Kahn, Norbert Moeslang, Tomas Korber, and Christian Weber. Also, on March 5 they will present an artist talk (as well as a short performance) at the University of Tokyo (the Komaba campus), speaking on the topic of “The Contemporary Sound-Art Scene in Switzerland.” You’ll find more info on the tour here (dates and venues, as well as participants, since every show will include varied guests), and you can keep up with future Swiss-related events in Japan through the Dynamic Switzerland site.

TB.Movel

The Twisted Genius of Momus

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 19, 2006

fl20060219x2a Momus gets a write-up (registration required after a week) in today’s edition of THE JAPAN TIMES, courtesy of Martin Webb — and I can assure you that Martin looks just as good in real life as he does in that picture Momus put up.

Cafes Magazines

Magazines at Cafe Pause

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 19, 2006

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I was talking with the owner of Cafe Pause earlier tonight, and convinced him that it would be a good idea to have some nice magazines at the cafe for customers to browse. So we headed down to Junkudo, and I selected the latest issues of the following 16 magazines, which are now on display and available for your reading pleasure:

Anyone who follows my regular “This Week in Magazines” posts won’t be too surprised by the selection.

Meta Web

Tokyo Blog #1

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 18, 2006

David (or Mr. Makuremu) just let me know that a Google search for “tokyo blog” reveals my site at the top spot. Yeah, I’m #1!

Architecture Design Events TB.Grafico

Construction Sights

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 18, 2006

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Yes, the title of this post is spelled correctly. What you see here is a picture taken at the “Construction Sights: Building Site Design” exhibition I mentioned seeing at Matsuya’s Design Gallery in Ginza the other day. It ends February 20 (Monday), so this weekend is your last chance to catch it. I put up 5 pictures on my Flickr account (direct links: here, here, here, here, and here). Remember that you can also just subscribe to the my Flickr photopool’s feed.

Music

La Nuit de Romantica

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 18, 2006

20060218romantica If you never got around to picking up READYMADE MAGAZINE NO. 2, that came with a sexy DVD of stripteases by Romantica, now comes news that they are re-releasing the DVD as a separate cheaper (only 1600 yen) package. I loved this the first time around, and will probably pick up this version. More info from Patrick’s Agenda.

Games Web

Katamari Damacy Online

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 18, 2006

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2D old-school Katamari Damacy, playable online! I’m sure Patrick is going to be all over this… Link via Boing Boing.

The Spring 2006 Update

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 18, 2006

Well, for some reason, I got back home after work earlier tonight and decided that I wanted to change the site a bit, and this is what I came up with. With Canadian Style done with, I felt like it was time to get rid of the red, but I’d been itching for a few more changes, and so decided to play around and to see what would happen. I’ll probably still tinker with it a bit, but it’s a start. It seems to work fine on both Safari and Firefox (for Mac), but I have no idea what it’s like on Windows, so do let me know if you encounter any problems (one problem I do know is that the Google ad on the left should also appear on individual entry pages, but for some reason doesn’t). While I was doing this, I also decided to upgrade to WordPress 2.0.1 (up from 1.5.2). The upgrade seems to have gone fine, and the new admin interface is a nice improvement.

Cafes

Cafe Pause Second Anniversary

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 18, 2006

This weekend, Cafe Pause in Ikebukuro celebrates its second anniversary, and so today (Saturday) and tomorrow (Sunday) they are serving beer (bottled) and coffee for 100 yen, limited to one serving per customer. Come and have a drink!

Design

System Bathroom I-U

Post author By Jean Snow
Post date February 17, 2006

How’s this for a nice bathroom? It’s the System Bathroom I-U, co-developed with Naoto Fukasawa for National/Panasonic. Link via Dezain.net.

Update (16/09/10): The image is no longer available.