Tokyo Blog

Monocle are now offering this limited edition tote bag for every subscriber. It’s made in collaboration with Porter, the legendary Tokyo bag company that readers may remember from a previous post. I personally love the design and everything about it. I haven’t subscribed yet, but I’m seriously considering it. That is, if they ship to Japan.

I love Monocle. So I was interested when I saw this Monocle x Beams collaboration watch while on a shopping spree in Tokyo’s Ginza district on Saturday. I didn’t buy one, but it should be noted that Ginza Beams does a good line in skinny fit jeans.

UPDATE: The pic on the left was shot at the store using my mobile phone.

Famed Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s new novel 1Q84 has recently hit the shelves in Japan and has been met with enthusiasm by his hardcore fans and Japanese book-reading public alike. I have to admit, after reading a couple of his novels, I really like his style. There’s something about his writing that seems to draw parallels with Japanese film. Slow, deliberate, vaguely haunting. Of course, this new book is already on the cards for being a best-seller in Japan, and no doubt once we get foreign language translations, it’ll do the same abroad.

The book reportedly features Murakami’s trademark surreal narrative and slides between the stories of two people, a man and a woman, looking for each other. The book deals with themes of love, violence, social issues, emotion and family ties. The title is an intriguing one. Most people say it is either inspired by, or is a homage to, George Orwell’s 1984 as the Japanese title is pronouned ichi-kyuu-hachi-yon (1-9-8-4 in Japanese), or perhaps relates to an event in Murakami’s personal life around that time (Murakami’s books are known for containing semi-autobiographic references).

Regardless of the title, when the English language version goes on sale later this year I’ll have a copy in the front pocket of my Porter at all times, alongside the trusty DSi - staple entertainment for train journeys.

I just want to mention the Metropolis Calendar 2009. For those of you in Tokyo, you can get yours now, if you haven’t already. I got mine in January from the tourist information stand in Keisei Ueno Station (the line that you take to get to Narita Airport). The pic that you see above appears on the September spread of the calendar, and was taken by my good friend Trent McBride. Congratulations Trent!

I’ve been walking past this place for months and I wanted to take a picture of it. It’s a very small, old bookstore, based in one of the oldest buildings in the area. An old woman clad in kimono tends the shop which is open onto the street. A small oil burner keeps the place from getting too cold in the winter months and if you do go inside you can find piles of books everywhere you look. They all look old or used, and in places the shelves have broken and the rows have collapsed down on one another. I can’t read the books at all, but I like going in and looking at the retro covers with the funny typefaces - much to the bemusement of the woman who watches me from the back. I should buy a load just to use to decorate my bookshelves, you can get one for as cheap as ¥100 (about 70p or $1).

This is what it looks like as you exit Inaricho Sta. at around 5.30am after staying up all night in Shibuya. I’d forgotten I’d taken this picture. I just found it in my camera. The wind is pretty strong in Tokyo at the moment, and it blows into the entrances and exits of the metro stations. As your walking out feeling delicate after not sleeping, or having just woken up after half-an-hour’s sleep on the train, it chills you to the bone. I’ve done a lot of not-sleeping recently, and I’ve also got into the habit of sleeping on trains in the early hours of the morning and riding past my station, out into the suburbs and beyond.

The cool Japanese car manufacturer Scion has teamed-up with Giant Robot and Japanese paper artist Shin Tanaka to create these awesome paper models. If you can grab yourself a copy of Giant Robot magazine, you can make one of your own with scissors / scalpel and glue. I’m on the hunt for one!

If any fellow Tokyoites know where we can grab a copy of Giant Robot magazine, let everybody know in the comments thread!

I picked up this useful issue of computer arts magazine before boarding my flight back to Tokyo. The insights into Japanese graphic design style are slightly rudimentary, but it’s got some good techniques and inspirational material inside. Also, Shane Lester from W+K Tokyo gets a mention as do several other foreigners working in the metropolis right now.

Last week I picked up a copy of Web Designing Magazine from Parco Ikebukuro. Actually, I’ve seen it in the magazine section of other book stores since, so I think it’s got pretty good circulation. Certainly better than Monocle, which is extremely hard to find in Japan, although it is all in English which might have a lot to do with it.

Web Designing is all in Japanese, but you can certainly get the jist of it, and it unearths some great new websites and profiles some great producers. It even deconstructs several websites in this issue, offering an insight into other designers’ creative use of CSS, XHTML and images. It’s a little bit expensive at ¥1280, but if you’re in the industry, you should grab yourself a copy.

Front cover is by Prismgirl.

TIME magazine’s blog has a post right now, that allows you to submit questions for a forthcoming Haruki Murakami interview. Readers send in their questions, and Murakami will pick 10 from the list to answer. This is part of TIME.com’s famous “10 Questions” feature. The problem is thinking of a question good enough to put to the man himself. If I can come up with one, I’ll do it myself too.

I finally found an English version of a Haruki Murakami book here in Tokyo. I was meaning to read this back when I was in the UK, but I’m glad I’ve only started now. It’s set in Tokyo (amongst other locations), so it’s nice to read a little bit about the city. So far, I’m really enjoying it. I like Murakami’s style of writing, but wonder what was lost in the translation. I’m sure Jay Rubin did an awesome job of rendering the book into English text, but an ambition of mine would be to read the original Japanese text one day.