Tokyo Blog

In accordance with building a more harmonious and civilized society for everyone to enjoy, Tokyo Metro (the local government controlled subway train service provider) has been campaigning via this series of brilliantly illustrated posters. They are looking to reduce incidences of inebriated salarymen sprawling themselves across carriage seats, and the evil of talking on mobile phones, whilst spreading awareness of the dangers of running to make the train as the doors are about to close. That’s hardly important to me; I’m already pretty compliant with the rules of Japanese train ettiquette. Mostly I like the style of these posters and some of them are quite funny.

Hold onto your hats, this is quite unbelievable. Some guys, who I think are German, have been able to put together an audio production environment that runs in your browser, called Audiotool. It obviously uses Flash, but I don’t know how this is possible! There doesn’t seem to be a sequencer, so it can’t really claim to give Reason a run for its money, but the visuals and the interaction design are pretty stunning. A nice tool to use to play with sounds, but not for finished tracks. Have fun, but remember to do some work!

The beauty continues, this time in the form of another musical interlude. I give you Radiohead’s Epic, ‘All I Need’ with edited footage from the 1996 French nature documentary film ‘Microcosmos’.

Marui department store has a poetic and beautiful new promotion in the form of ‘All New 6 (senses)’. I didn’t have the perseverance or the time to decipher the Japanese text juxtaposed over the sepia toned stop frame animations of small model characters living out their lives in various locations in Tokyo, but that didn’t matter. The music and the atmosphere of this piece will draw you in, and then demonstrate to you a side of the marketing sensibility in Japan not often seen in other countries, certainly not in the west. One of haunting, wistful moodiness. A bit strange and sinister. It reminds me of watching those strange eastern European animations on TV when I was a kid.

Romance Car VSE 50000 to Hakone from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

But, this time, I’m riding the weird Romance Car from Shinjuku to Hakone. In this train, passengers see through the front window and not the driver. Actually, he’s in a cockpit on the roof, not dissimilar to the shape of that on a fighter jet. If you go onto my vimeo now, there’s a bunch of other videos taken from the train. More views of the outlying areas of Tokyo and beyond.

There’s a new Tron movie coming out from Disney Pictures and I can’t wait to see it. It’s going to be released at ’selected cinemas’ - which probably means iMax. Whatever, I want to see it, not least because Jeff Bridges is back, but also because the bikes are back. Check out this teaser scene. My only gripe so far is that the bikes don’t turn at right angles any more and the filmmakers missed out on a golden opportunity to bring together modern special effects and a retro aesthetic. Instead, it’s all smooth and shiny and reflective with no repeated geometric patterns to mention. Via Motionographer

The awe-inspiring web/info design agency, Information Architects in Tokyo have released the 4th version of their popular Web Trend Map. It’s such a great idea, and it’s so well executed - why not check it out for yourselves Google Maps style. This was no small feat of production either. I saw the pics of them examining the enormous A0 sheet at the Japanese printing company (that also happens to produce Apple Japan’s printed material), and the end result shows that an enormous amount of care and attention has gone into this one, and that’s without even thinking about the research component.

I’ve got a Wii at home now, so I really want to get my hands on this game. I used to love it on the SNES/Famicom, and now it’s come to Nintendo’s newest home system and it looks even better, plus you’ve got the nunchucks and Wii-remote to use to throw your punches. Ding-ding!

As an Adobe Illustrator user myself, I am amazed at how incredible these pieces of work are from Yukio Miyamoto. Driven by some obsession with the ‘gradient mesh’ tool in Illustrator he spends months producing photo-realistic images that are infinitely scalable.

Uniqlo’s continuing viral campaign perpetrated through lots of great Flash mini-sites never ceases to be awesome. The latest one to launch, called Uniqlo Calendar, features time-lapse photography of various locations in Japan given the tilt-shift photography treatment also known as miniature-faking, where a very shallow depth of field often found in macro photography is simulated thus giving pictures of life-size subject matter the appearance of a tiny model. Flawlessly executed as usual with characteristically quirky and hip background music, I’m left eagerly anticipating the screensaver (the link on the site says ‘coming soon’, unfortunately).

This newest viral joins a raft of others: Uniqlock, Uniqlo Paper, Uniqlo Grid, Uniqlo Mixplay and Uniqlo Try. I may have missed some, there’s that many.

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.

Porter is a brand of luggage, bags, wallets and accessories from Yoshida Co. in Tokyo. People familiar with them will know that they are renowned for their high quality and high price, but in this introduction to the brand, I need to stress just how incredibly high the quality of these bags actually is. Recently, with no intention of actually buying one, I’ve been stopping to admire them at every opportunity. I found a huge range at Tokyu Hands in Ikebukuro (Sunshine City), and a small traditional bag shop in Ameyayoko-cho packed full of Porter goodness, and every time I see them I go and check them out. The problem is, with such a huge variety and at such a high price, it’s difficult to choose a particular bag. Do you get a Boston bag, which looks amazing, but you couldn’t fit your 15-inch laptop in, or do you get the messenger, which is extremely practical but also extremely boring, or do you go for a rucksack, which is fit for almost any use but seems to lack the brand’s trademark sophistication? This is the main factor behind my inability to buy one. However, I actually found a new line of Porter bags in Ikebukuro’s Parco with anodised blue zips against their trademark graphite which just might have narrowed it down for me. If you want a decent-sized item from the range get at least ¥20,000 at the ready (£127, $210), and put aside at least three hours for the selection process - this brand is prolific.

Yoshida Co. are also the company behind Luggage Label, a similar kind of brand with different motifs and a more military feel. Porter has a flagship store in Harajuku, behind Murasaki Sports, opposite the mouth of Takeshita Dori, called Head Porter. You’ll find the cheapest ones at Tokyu Hands Ikebukuro, and potential buyers should skip the Ameyoko store as everything is overpriced, the display is cluttered and the service is icey cold.

The bag in the pic at the top of this post is an Original Fake x Porter Boston bag (drool).

I’m long overdue in doing this, but just a short note to let readers know, I’m moving the RSS and Atom feeds over to FeedBurner from now. You shouldn’t have to do anything, you should be redirected to the new feed automatically. If that doesn’t happen, don’t worry, the feed will continue to update with new posts, whatever happens.

Check out the full set of pics of the Nakagin Capsule Tower on my flickr.

There’s a building in Tokyo that, to my mind, represents Tokyo. When I looked at the Nakagin Capsule Tower yesterday and imagined what lay behind it’s rusting porthole windows, I realised that it fits with all of the pre-conceptions I had of Tokyo, of people living in tiny modular spaces, futuristic, geometric buildings, grungy concrete facades with anonymous, gloomy peepholes. Brutally modern, but still unmistakably Japanese in origin, the Tower has the same appeal as an old Casio digital watch. It’s obviously a past attempt at realising the future, but it succeeds at doing this on so many levels. It still puts to shame every shiny steel structure in the vicinity in terms of it’s presence. A brutal, decaying monolith sticking out between two high rise buildings in the Tokyo business district of Shinbashi.

The building was completed in 1972, designed by a young Japanese architect called Kisho Kurokawa. The designer himself said, in an interview with TAB, that the capsules were meant to be replaced and maintenance was supposed to be carried out every 25 years, but the building is now 37 years old, and nothing has been done since it’s original construction. For this reason, it has recently fallen into disrepair, with problems arising from water leakages and electrical faults, as well as the rusting and general degredation of the capsules themselves. The building has 13 stories, with each of the capsules which make up the floors being attached to the enormous central shafts by just 4 high-tension bolts. The idea was that the capsules could be individually changed without disturbing the others, fulfilling objectives of sustainable architecture rooted in the metabolist architectural movements popular at the time. The Nakagin Capsule Tower was the first of it’s kind, designed to provide affordable housing to office workers unable to make it back to their real homes on weekdays.

When Nakagin went bankrupt some years ago, they were bought out by U.S. hedge funds. Now the companies behind the acquisition are planning to have it demolished. Some architectural preservation groups are campaigning to save the tower and have it listed as a world heritage site, and I agree with that. It’s unlike any building I’ve seen before - it’s got a kind of immortal quality, probably derived from its very sci-fi appearance. Trouble is, there are doubts as to whether the building is resistant to earthquakes, and there is some controversy over the possible use of asbestos in the building’s construction. Time will tell as to whether such a doomed building is possible of saving, or whether such a seemingly invincible, obtrusive, controversial structure is capable of being destroyed at all.

And so I’m stood in the side street with The Tower looming overhead and there are some business men in suits smoking cigarettes outside the convenience store at the foot of the building. I’m looking in their direction, and further up the street there’s a small shop or office which, on closer inspection, turns out to be a small real estate agent. I thought it would be too good to be true if they had an advertisement in the window for a capsule to rent in the Nakagin Capsule Tower itself, but there it was.

Check out the full set of pics of the Nakagin Capsule Tower on my flickr.

Oh boy, what an awesome name! This beer has come out, possibly to coincide with the Tokyo Oktoberfest in Hibiya Park, which I’ve already been to twice since it opened a week ago. On the TV commercial they sing the classic German beer drinking song, and then toast using the german ‘Prost!’. Of course, I was straight down the shop as soon as I saw the commercial, to try out this all malt pilsner from Asahi Breweries. I have to admit, it’s very, very good, but it still lacks the sweetness of the german beer, in fact it’s very dry. This seems to be a pattern that’s emerging, and relates to the Japanese aversion to sweet things in general. The strapline is not very interesting this time, also, unfortunately:

“A full-flavored 100% malt draft beer based on traditional German brewing techniques.”