I’ve started by weeklong stay at Gridskipper, so don’t forget to drop by. It will probably end up being Tokyo heavy.
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Month: March 2005
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Office Meguro Closed
I was at Claska last Friday to see the “Catholic” show — very enjoyable, and loved the vibrating cat — and thought I’d stop by Office in Meguro, since I’m never in that area. I first went up to the desk person at the hotel to find out when it opened, and she looked at me strangely, and then when I asked again, she said the place was already closed, which didn’t make sense to me. I ended up going to the cafe, only to find that it had been closed down, and was now only available as a room to be rented. The Transit site doesn’t seem to have been updated though.
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Groovisual Update
After a 3-month absence, Toe is blogging again at Groovisual Diary. We missed you!
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Bye Bye Bape Cafe
Another sign that Bape is nowhere near where it was a couple of years ago: I stopped by the Bape Cafe in Aoyama earlier today only to see that it had closed down, with a tiny sign on the window explaining that this had happened for “certain reasons.” Yeah, certain reasons. Love the brand or hate it, it was still a nice cafe, created by Wonderwall.
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New at Miru-Kenchiku
Miru-Kenchiku has 3 new galleries covering some of the big-name fashion brand boutiques in Ginza: Dior, Lanvin, and Louis Vuitton. Link via Dezain.net.
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The Actroid
From Japan Today:
An “actroid” robot receptionist greets visitors at the Aichi Expo. Developed by Kokoro Corp and Advanced Media Inc, the actroid can give directions in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean.
“Actroid” sounds like some sort of disease.
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Looking Down
Ryuichi Sakamoto looks down on the masses. Shot taken in Harajuku.
Next weekend (April 2-3) sees the big Tokyo International Anime Fair at Tokyo Big Sight.
The biggest animation trade show in Japan attracts over 50,000 visitors in two days to see the latest anime features and TV shows, games and characters goods. 130 Japanese production companies and TV broadcasters, as well as about 30 international anime houses, will be showing their newest products. Last year was a let down, as all the long-awaited “event” animations from the masters (“Appleseed,” “Innocence,” “Steam Boy”) turned out to be yawn-filled duds – but there might be a surprise like “Mind Game” in there this year. The future is definitely Gonzo, or maybe even elsewhere in Asia. (Tokyo Q)
These things can be trying, as there’s only so much “otaku” culture a sane person can take in on one day, but might still make for an interesting outing. Oh, and I don’t agree at all with that reviewer’s statement that APPLESEED, INNOCENCE, and STEAMBOY were duds.
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Shinako Sato
Barbie, like you’ve never seen her before.
Photographer Shinako Sato reportedly worked for five years as a makeup artist for a mortician, daubing the dead with lipstick. Perhaps that explains her fascination with elaborately staged and dressed dioramas of stiff figures (thankfully, dolls not real dead people). Sato works with Barbie dolls and plastic figures, posed and lit with cinematic intensity, then photographed and printed onto plexi-glass, and finally painted with little accents or illuminated with a witty caption. The resulting images could be surreal film stills from some weird parallel world where Barbie and Ken star in their own action, erotic and exploitation movies. In a previous show, one dead Barbie doll was inscribed “I’m gonna die… in your dirty mind.” Otaku art as only the Japanese can do. (Tokyo Q)
The show is at Gallery Side 2 in Akasaka until April 23.
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Vodafone’s Japan Blunder
I keep hearing that Vodafone is not doing well at all in Japan, and now this:
I can’t see how Vodafone can get out of the hole they dug themselves into.Gerhard Fasol, president of Eurotechnology-Japan, a consulting company, speculating that Softbank Corp, a Japanese broadband Internet provider that’s trying to get a cell-phone license, may buy Vodafone’s Japan unit. (Bloomberg)
Goes to show that you can’t just buy yourself into a market. Take a cue from KDDI, who have been stylishly innovating their way up.