MetaFilter posts tagged with Japan and tokyo

Like a cargo cult to 50 Cent

DecemberBoy — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:41:15 -0800

A recent trend in the ultra-fashion-conscious world of Tokyo teen girls: B-Style, or "black lifestyle", that is, emulating the black women in rap videos. In the video you will see Japanese girls with weaves and incredibly dark tans to mimic black skin. Rebellious rejection of convention, or weird sideways racism (one girl says: "when we do it it looks vulgar, but not on the black women")?

SAIKADO HANTAI! SAIKADO HANTAI!

flapjax at midnite — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 23:25:29 -0800

Yesterday, July 29, 2012, saw a massive antinuclear protest, attended by young and old alike, in Tokyo. This video, and this one, too, (both well-edited and featuring English subtitles) bring you right into the center of the action, to get a feel for the energy that the movement is steadily gaining.

7 Days in Tokyo

reenum — Sun, 06 May 2012 19:44:08 -0800

Pascal Ken, after taking several trips to Japan between 2007 and 2011, took some beautiful, dreamlike infrared photos of Tokyo.

Only those in love would know what a town without pity can do

byanyothername — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:45:19 -0800

I prepared for my first-ever trip to Japan, this summer, almost entirely by immersing myself in the work of Haruki Murakami. This turned out to be a horrible idea. For his cover article on the novelist Haruki Murakami, Sam Anderson visited some key places from Murakami’s life and work. Murakami's Tokyo. The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami. A few choice selections: Hotel Okura: With its high ceiling and muted lighting, the capacious lobby of the Hotel Okura’s main building seemed like a huge, stylish cave. Against the cave walls, like the sighing of a disemboweled animal, bounced the muted conversations of people seated on the lobby’s sofas. The floor’s thick, soft carpeting could have been primeval moss on a far northern island. It absorbed the sound of footsteps into its endless span of accumulated time. Metropolitan Expressway 3: The taxi’s radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janacek’s ‘Sinfonietta’ -- probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic. The middle-aged driver didn’t seem to be listening very closely, either. With his mouth clamped shut, he stared straight ahead at the endless line of cars stretching out on the elevated expressway, like a veteran fisherman standing in the bow of his boat, reading the ominous confluence of two currents. Aomame settled into the broad back seat, closed her eyes, and listened to the music. The Fierce Imagination: When he was 3, he told me, he managed somehow to walk out the front door of his house all by himself. He tottered across the road, then fell into a creek. The water swept him downstream toward a dark and terrible tunnel. Just as he was about to enter it, however, his mother reached down and saved him. “I remember it very clearly,” he said. “The coldness of the water and the darkness of the tunnel — the shape of that darkness. It’s scary. I think that’s why I’m attracted to darkness.”

Pantomime Course

Winnemac — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:52:40 -0800

Not for the first time, a paper-mache rhino terrorizes Ueno Zoo. Previously: ape, polar bear, tiger, zebra.

Nitto of Japan

rainperimeter — Tue, 24 May 2011 00:08:19 -0800

Do you love beautifully crafted bike parts? Do you love your Nitto handlebars, stem, seatpost or racks? Enjoy this brief visit to the Nitto factory.

Japanpost-earthquake nuclear crisis keeps going

mediareport — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:10:28 -0800

Fukushima Dai-ichi status and potential outcomes The Oil Drum has begun posting daily threads about the Japanese nuclear plant event. As during the last energy crisis, the comments there tend to have a good signal-to-noise ratio.

Large earthquake off coast of Japan

Celsius1414 — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:12:18 -0800

Preliminary magnitude 7.9 off Honshu at 05:46 UTC The Pacific Ring of Fire has been living up to its name lately. BBC flash reporting a Tsunami Alert has been issued.

Otakupocalypse

Ambrosia Voyeur — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:04:17 -0800

Localfilter: Today in Tokyo, legislation passed that will further restrict manga and animation "glorifying or exaggerating illegal sexual acts." Ten of the biggest comics companies are protesting the Tokyo International Anime Fair, sponsored by the city, responding that a focus on their mode of expression is unfair. Blogger Dan Kanemitsu reports.

Tokyo drifts ...

carter — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:26:34 -0800

Tokyo drifts ... cat2525jp has a neat YouTube channel of voyages through Tokyo transit systems, set to electronica. They include timelapse (e.g. Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line), and the lovely mirror effect "Tokyo Sky Drive" series (e.g. 1 2), and povs of high-tech automated parking systems with bowing attendants.

Ms. Roboto

lauratheexplorer — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:51:19 -0800

A robotic teacher, Ms. Saya, conducts her first class at an elementry school in Tokyo. Before becoming an elementary school teacher, she found work as a secretary. She can express six basic emotions - surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, sadness and is multilingual. Here is a video of her working (which, unfortunately, does not appear to have subtitles.)

DIY Outlet Shopping at Akihabara

Mach5 — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:45:40 -0800

Insiders Tour of Akihabara. The guys over at toykohackerspace provide us with a guide to the ultimate in geek shopping; whether it's custom CNC'ed radio enclosures, every tweezer imaginable, or you just want to buy a robot, Akihabara is the place to be. [via /.] Don't forget to visit Super Potato!

Tokyo Twitter Techno

mkb — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:36:50 -0800

Dommune is a fairly new nightclub in Tokyo. It's only open Sunday through Thursday night and they close at midnight. The room only holds 50 people. Nevertheless, the place attracts top-flight talent; Jeff Mills, Derrick May, Claude Young, Prosumer, and Shed have all performed. What's the gimmick? Every party is streamed live. (from mnml ssgs) From the source:

the result is a rather interesting dynamic: both people at the club and those watching at the home are using twitter throughout the party. being at the club this made for a weird situation where probably half the people on the dancefloor had an iphone in their hands the whole night. so more interaction with people on the interwebs, less with those around you - real virtual partying (or something like that). the other consequence of the live streaming is there is some serious attention whore action going on, as partygoers do their best to get on camera.

The Seat Monopolizer

griphus — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:43:49 -0800

The three annoying train monsters shown in the poster are Nesshii (the sleeping monster), Asshii (the leg-crossing monster), and Shinbunshii (the newspaper-reading monster). Tokyo Subway Manner Posters, '76-'82

Dochira made ikaremasu ka?

armage — Thu, 27 May 2010 00:40:44 -0800

Taxi top lights, called andon (行灯) in Japanese after the Edo-era wood & paper lanterns, come in a variety of shapes and colors. Although originally used in the mid-1950s to discourage robberies, andon are now used as company logos or to advertise.

The Illusiveness of the Entirely Useless

zonkers — Fri, 07 May 2010 17:15:20 -0800

So, there's a Japanese artistic concept called a Thomasson. In short, they are "defunct and useless objects, attached to someone's property and aesthetically maintained." But a more nuanced explanation involves artist Akasegawa Genpei, baseball player Gary Thomasson, and a whole generation of Japanese kids who wandered around Tokyo, looking for architectural abnormalities. Now that the book has found its way to English, American readers are submitting some pretty fascinating discoveries of their own . An extremely influential writer and visual artist, Akasegawa Gempei started as a founding member of the neo-dada group Hi Red Center in the 60s, staging a lot of public performances. When Tokyo launched a series of "Let's Clean Up Our City" campaigns for the upcoming Olympics, Akasegawa and company took it a step further by dressing in lab coats and cleaning single cobblestones with rubbing alcohol and toothbrushes. As a sculptor, Akasegawa became interested in making things with money. This eventually earned him a counterfeiting charge, and he appeared in court to defend his work as "art"--the formal opposite of currency. Lacking a stringent legal definition of art, Akasegawa called on his friends from Hi Red Center to provide "expert testimony." This involved Nakanishi Natsuyuki appearing with his body covered in closepins and other such performances, and quickly turned the trial into a performance piece. Akasegawa demanded that all of his friends' "testimonies" be treated as proper evidence, and the court had no choice but to carefully photograph and document each of these performances. The result is retroactively known as "The 1000-Yen Trial Incident," and is one of the 20th century's most seminal works of Japanese art.

Stray Cats in Tokyo

misozaki — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:45:49 -0800

Stray Cats in Tokyo as seen by professional photographers. The group project moved from here, where there are lots more. More from the individual photographers, though not just in Tokyo.

QR Code Facade

netbros — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:35:06 -0800

Behold the N Building, a new structure in a Tokyo shopping district that at first glance looks kind of like a giant Tetris screen until you realize that the fancy geometric design on its facade isn't merely ornamental: It's code—QR code, to be exact. What that code allows passersby to do is quite unique. [via, via] If a QR Code is static, what could we do with a dynamic device like the iPhone? Our proposed vision of the future is one where the facade of the building disappears, showing those inside who want to be seen. As you press on the characters their comments made on online appear in speech bubbles. You can also browse shop information, make reservations and download coupons. Rather than broadly tagging, we display information specific to the building in a manner in which the virtual (iPhone) serves to enhance the physical (N Building). Our goal is to provide an incentive to visit the space and a virtual connection to space without necessarily being present. — from the developers teradadesign and Qosmo

Otaku in Love

digaman — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:53:07 -0800

"Nisan didn’t mean to fall in love with Nemutan. Their first encounter -- at a comic-book convention that Nisan’s gaming friends dragged him to in Tokyo -- was serendipitous. Nisan was wandering aimlessly around the crowded exhibition hall when he suddenly found himself staring into Nemutan’s bright blue eyes... 'I’ve experienced so many amazing things because of her,' Nisan told me, rubbing Nemutan’s leg warmly. 'She has really changed my life.' Nemutan doesn’t really have a leg. She’s a stuffed pillowcase — a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo." The New York Times' Lisa Katayama on "2-D lovers" in Japan, the latest outgrowth of otaku subculture.

Squeeze in, get online for a better life

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:54:48 -0800

Newly jobless and homeless former members of the Japanese upper or upper-middle class are turning to a distinctly 21st century version of the flophouse, the net room: a tiny cubicle, rented by the day, with that all-important feature... an internet connection and a computer. See this video followup on Ito Hidefumi, who, ironically, has been able to move into somewhat nicer accommodations, thanks to his new job cleaning temporary dwellings for other jobless/homeless displaced workers in Tokyo. Here's some bite-size infobits on Japan's current economic/jobs malaise. Oh, and none of this is to be confused with this Net Room, which caters to foreigners, but may well decide to change their name if the "net room" phenomenon really takes off and becomes a household word...

Ramen Girl. No really. No joke! Seriously!!

gen — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:38:08 -0800

Kaiju Shakedown points us to the trailer of Ramen Girl, starring Brittany Murphy as a American who decides to learn how to make the perfect bowl of ramen noodles (what?!?!) after she is dumped by her boyfriend in Tokyo. Tampopo this isn't. Hat tip to Ivan Ramen, who is the real deal foreigner who has a succesful ramen joint in Tokyo. See Chowhound, Food and Wine - Tokyo, Day 2: Japanese Éclairs, Perfect Ramen, Sake Fix, Soba Heaven, or the WSJ: Trying to Out-Noodle the Japanese for more info.

The Resting Place of the Fallen Flowers of Yoshiwara

gomichild — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:42:25 -0800

浄閑寺—Jokanji, the "Throw Away" Temple "From the street, it looks like many other Tokyo temples, but behind the new main building is an old cemetery that has one particular point of interest, a crypt and monument to twenty-five thousand prostitutes interred there."

The Japanese Garden

Effigy2000 — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:54:57 -0800

Paradise: The Gardens of Tokyo. A collection of amazing photographs of Japanese gardens as taken by Tim Porter. Impressed and want to see more Japanese gardens? Look here and here for more links to more photos of some beautiful Japanese-style gardens from around the world. For further reading, check out Meditations on the Japanese Garden and The Modern Japanese Garden. And if after all of that you feel inspired to turn your garden into a Japanese garden of your own, The Japanese Garden Journal has you covered. Mind you, building the bridge sounds kind of tricky...

Reinvent yourself with an MBA.. in farming

your mildly obsessive average geek — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:30:57 -0800

Trying to get unemployed youth interested in farming, Pasana O₂ boasts a slick website (Japanese only unfortunately), a vision statement, a newsletter and oh yeah, an underground farm covering one square kilometer inside a former bank vault. [Via our very own]

Low-bit gal from 'round Tokyo-way.

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:38:25 -0800

There is a small but very dedicated and enthusiastic group of people around the world making music with Nintendo Game Boys and other cheap electronic gadgetry. While many of them are consciously fitting their low-bit sonics into relatively straightforward and predictable dance-oriented forms, some others are taking a rather more whimsical and less predictable approach. One such favorite of mine is the utterly charming, Tokyo-based henna dress. Then there's her alter ego, beta dress. Then there's her 3rd alter ego, CAMEBOY (of GGG) . Wikipedia page for Game Boy Music