Tokyo Blog

3Waves Japan Market Research is a full-service qualitative research agency based in Tokyo that serves the overseas market exclusively with a team of bilingual and bicultural consultants, and they chose me to build their website. The project was a joy to work on because they’re great people, but I also got to build a Flash weather widget for Tokyo, as well as scrolling interfaces, dynamic XML-driven slideshows, and a component in Flash that interfaces with the Wordpress blogging platform. All-in-all it was a bit of a tour de force and we’re all over the moon with how it turned out. Have a look for yourselves, or even better, contact them about your market research requirements in Japan. Unfortunately they’re so good at what they do they’re in very high demand already so get them while you can (the launch was January 1st 2010).

Tokyo rapper Chinza Dopeness’ unique style is new to my ears, but I’m going to get the album as a result of listening to this. Via Shane Lester’s Vimeo.

Personally, I’m a user but not a fan of Facebook. It’s obviously one of the most sophisticated online applications and also one of the most visited sites in the world - but I can’t help feeling that it’s somehow evil. It’s pretty spammy at times and has caused me no end of troubles, not to mention the wasted hours resulting from the voyeuristic tendencies it fosters.

That said, you can’t knock their offices. Designed by studio o+a, it’s a rambling facility of entertainment rooms, modern interiors, recreational facilities and hippies riding skateboards. Whether or not this multi-million dollar playhouse will increase productivity is another matter. It’s now generally accepted that a happy workforce is a productive one, but I think you have to draw the line somewhere. With too many distractions it becomes impossible to get focused on what it is your supposed to be doing (i.e. not table football).

See more photos at either cpluv.com or officesnapshots.com

There’s a new Studio Ghibli movie coming out and it looks to be loosely based on the classic, British children’s book The Borrowers. This isn’t the first time a Ghibli movie has been based on children’s books written in the UK either; Howl’s Moving Castle was based on a book written by Diana Wynne Jones.

The title of the movie is going to be 借りぐらしのアリエッティ (Karigurashi no Arietty) which translates as Arietty the Borrower - the official website is here, for what it’s worth. It will be directed by Hiroaki Yonebayashi, and not by the great Hayao Miyazaki, although Miyazaki will be responsible for writing the script. Apparently, the idea for the movie has been discussed before a long time ago by Miyazaki and his team, but only now is it being put into production. Miyazaki stepping back from the directing duties is interesting, as he has already retired once before and looked to be trying to appoint individuals capable of carrying his legacy forward, most famous of which being his son, Goro Miyazaki who took directorial duties on the movie Gedo Senki - Tales from Earthsea (which was also loosely based on a series of books by American author, Ursula K. Le Guin). As he relinquishes control on Karigurashi no Arietty it will be interesting to see if he will be able to keep his hands off the drawings and animation all the way through production, without seizing control of at least one of these aspects as he has been alledged to have done on past features (where he was supposedly not going to be involved in either).

Finally, the story (in a nutshell) is going to be about a boy living in a house in Koganei, Tokyo (the real-life location of Studio Ghibli) who has a tiny girl called Arietty living under the floorboards of his house, and presumably she ‘borrows’ stuff.

It’s the end of a decade and as you can probably tell, I’m in Tokyo. I saw in the new year on the top floor of the Mori building in Tokyo, at a party that featured DJs from United Future Organization and Kyoto Jazz Massive but I couldn’t tell you for sure if I caught the performances of either one. It was mayhem and the place was absolutely huge. You couldn’t miss however, the stunning panoramic views of the city and the famous Tokyo Tower. The night was not so cold and crystal clear and it was a good chance to remind myself just how massive Tokyo actually is. In this new year I’m going to try to see much more of it, projects allowing. At the turn of midnight, Tokyo tower lit up in white displaying ‘2010’.

Having cleared my head after the actual event, it was then time to participate in the traditional practice of ‘Hatsumode’, where people visit shrines and temples to pray for good fortune and purchase religious trinkets and lucky charms. I got myself an all-purpose talisman and threw some coins in offering and of course prayed in front of the shrine. In order to do this I had to wait for 2 hours, but I was able to watch a documentary about the shrine (Meiji Jingu near Harajuku) on a huge TV screen to kill the time as we all shuffled slowly up the approach.

And then all that was left to do was to file back out and get back on the train, but not before sampling some of the festival fare on offer at the many traditional food stands lining the route. I ate buttered potato to try to warm up enough to make it as far as Yoyogi station. I feel very positive about this year - it was definitely a good thing to be here in Japan for the transition as I plan to be here for the foreseeable future, but I’ve got a lot of work to do this year if I want to achieve my goals. What they are exactly are only known to me and the Deities at Meiji Jingu.

Happy New Year, and good luck in 2010.

Today is Christmas Day, and this year I’m spending it in Japan. This morning I watched Tom & Jerry’s The Night Before Christmas and Disney’s A Christmas Carol while eating one of the two Christmas cakes from the fridge, played the fresh copy of Super Mario Bros. Wii for an hour, then went to Tokyo Midtown for the illuminations and the Christmas market. The picture you can see at the top of this post was taken there. I’m about to have dinner, but unfortunately it won’t include roast turkey this year. That’s OK, it’s been a pretty good day!

Merry Christmas and a prosperous and productive New Year from Tokyo Story!

Often it’s the mundane, easily taken for granted things I find in Japan that fascinate me most. Sometimes it’s the small differences but, in the case of the Japanese ATM, it’s a world apart from the UK equivalent I’m used to. You can probably tell by looking at it that it’s pretty unique in the world of ATM’s, but this is the ATM at the bank I bank with, and I’ve got some interesting facts about it.

The first thing you’ll notice is the screen. There’s an animated male and female teller that welcome you to the machine with a bow and a robotic ‘irasshaimase’ (’welcome!’ - lit. ‘come in’). Then, you’ll get a bow every time a request is received or when you finally end your ATM session. Finishing said session can take time depending on your Japanese reading skill and general ability to decipher unfamiliar screens filled with flashing messages, numeric matrices and any number of other offers for services and information superfluous to your requirements.

Having navigated the touch screen successfully, you might then have to get comfortable with the other hatches, slots and gadgets outside your current schema. The interface to the right of the screen (near to which is a complimentary calculator - not chained to the counter) looks like a smaller secondary keypad or possibly cup holder but is, in fact, a biometric scanner for your palm. In a super-security-conscious modern day Japan, a 4 digit ID number is too risky for some people. If this is the case, they can go into a branch during business hours and get their palm scanned in order to make use of this secure, labour-saving feature (it might be preferable for visually impaired customers too).

Moving in an anti-clockwise direction around the machine, directly above the palm scanner is the bill hatch. This is the hatch that not only dispenses, but also accepts deposits of Japanese bank notes. Of course, it’s capable of counting banknotes and verifying their authenticity, and even unfolding, uncreasing and flattening them out if need be, but what I find most useful about this hatch is that it’s almost impossible to leave the money behind. It makes a pretty loud noise when opening to dispense notes, but also continues to do so until it finally closes automatically and returns the money to the customer’s account, in the event of the notes not being taken. It made a novel change from the usual slot from which notes, in a variety of ages and conditions, are ejected from in the UK or Europe. Suffice it to say, the notes that come out of a Japanese ATM always look like they’ve been freshly minted. Any other condition would simply be unacceptable here.

So onto the card slot, which is unremarkable - but then you have its wider counterpart on the left labeled ‘passbook’. This slot does indeed accept a passbook, or bankbook. You insert this in order to get your statement recorded. Transactions in and out, charges, transfers and so on. First, you find the correct page to insert it on. It doesn’t matter if the previous printout of your statement finishes halfway down the page, the machine will detect the point to continue printing from and will even turn the page in order to continue printing records that span pages. Upon running out of pages, you will be prompted to order a new passbook through the ATM touchscreen, or you will just be given the book back once printing is completed, whichever comes first.

Beneath the passbook slot is the coin hatch. As you may have guessed, this dispenses coins and accepts the deposit of coins too. It’s pretty unusual to draw coins from an ATM, but it’s even more suprising to find you can pay them into your bank. However, don’t go pouring thousands of ¥1 and ¥5 coins into the hatch as they won’t be accepted. However, if you do test this rule and your coin hatch ends up spasmodically chewing on 6 months worth of shrapnel, you can use the handy telephone embedded directly in the bottom-left of the ATM to place a maintenance request, but make sure you leave before they get there.

It’s pretty amazing what Google has done in a relatively short time, and Nick Scott Studio’s animated story of the companies rise to ubiquity is a great way to visualise it for yourself. What next indeed?

It’s nearly the end of the year, and like most people I’m gearing up for the following one. After getting through a busy year with the aid of Muji notebooks and iCal, I’ve decided to go completely analogue for 2010 with a Moleskine diary, or schedule as the Americans will recognise it by, or possibly techou if your Japanese. So basically you’ve got several different formats of time-based notation throughout (but I got the one with the weekly format), with national holidays for every country in the world, time zones, measurement conversions, phases of the moon, timetabling, a matrix showing the distance between any two of the world’s major cities, a ruler, dialing codes, domain suffixes (internet TLD) a separate leather-bound notebook, a thinner notebook with customisable tabs, perforated tear-outs for giving details, icon stickers for weather, birthdays, events and so-on (you can just go ahead and stick them on a particular day or you can use the worded stickers to customise tabs in the notebook). It’s impressive because it’s pretty compact too. I know I recommended the Hobonichi Techou last time I talked about getting a diary, but I also recommend this one from Moleskine now too.

This is pretty goofy, but it’s a remix of the Family Mart jingle that you usually hear when you walk into one of their convenience stores. The guy’s pretty hot with the Korg too. The cheesy techno it descends into would usually be a turn off, but in this situation it suits the chimes perfectly! People in Tokyo will definitely recoginse it.

Whilst walking home the other night, I spotted this original piece of ‘bombing’. Someone had used marker pen to customize a small bear toy and left it on top of a crossing junction box. Underneath that was their tag, I’m guessing. I was lucky to notice it, I usually wouldn’t after working all day.

NOTE: The poor quality is due to the mobile phone camera I used to take the shot.

My Father is restoring a pre-war Riley Special, which is an British vintage car. He’s been doing this since before I was born, but this project is particularly special because he’s not just building one, he’s building five. This will be the first time my Dad’s process has ever been documented and will show you all the individual steps that are involved in taking the decomposed remains of a car dating back to the 1930’s and making it look like it just rolled out of the factory. Personally, I can’t wait to see the first one finished but you can read about it now and see the progress in ‘real time’ over at his Riley restoration diary blog.

I’m pretty excited about the new housing development about to open on schedule (of course) in Funabashi, Chiba (30 min from Tokyo). Muji Village is, as you’d expect, a housing development designed by Muji, the Japanese lifestyle ‘no-brand’ brand that embraces Japanese minimalist and practical product design to create extremely affordable and yet stylish clothes, furniture, stationery, and practically anything else you can think of. Personally, I can’t get enough of Muji, so I’ll be taking an architectural sightseeing trip to the site some time before Christmas. The chance of living in one is probably very remote at this present time as waiting lists will certainly have been filled.

The project is a collaboration between Muji and Mitsubishi Jisho real Estate Co., one of the largest in Japan. Muji will be designing everything, Mitsubishi will only be responsible for construction. The concept is thus: Green, Plain, Community. Sounds less than inspiring, but you could transliterate it to Nature, Simplicity, Community which maybe sounds more inviting! Anyway, this means plenty of foliage, a timeless aesthetic and airy communal spaces where residents will be able to mingle.

Some Uniqlo news now. I was in the newly expanded Ginza branch yesterday and had the good fortune to see the new +J line of clothing at the back of the new mens’ section. I tried on some of the outerwear, and I liked it very much. Although I didn’t buy anything (yet), I was taken by the fine tailoring and the details. This lead me inevitably back to the Japanese Uniqlo website where I saw the new Flash toy launched this Autumn - Uniqlo Tunes. It plays video in time with MP3’s, and you can even upload your own. As usual you have the option of integrating it into your blog. This new music toy joins a small collection of other Uniqlo Flash virals and microsites.

The Hobonichi Techo is a phenomenon in Japan. It’s a personal organiser built in the Japanese tradition of excellence in workmanship. The company’s forward-thinking marketing has it branded as as much a fashion accessory as a piece of boring stationery. With a community of owners, and idea books full the various ways they use them, it’s become a real modern design icon here. Many people seem to use them and about this time of year are usually in stationery stores such as Loft agonising over which one to choose from the multitude of different collaborations, material finishes and colourways. I’ve been browsing them also, and they look really nice. I’m getting one for 2010, but which one? Check the video above for possible options.

Sorry if this video is a little heavy, its native resolution on YouTube is pretty large.