"The beauty in chaos." Photographer SATO Shintaro's Tokyo Twilight Zone and Night Lights.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth on Nov 15, 2008 - 17 comments

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."
posted by gomichild on Oct 30, 2008 - 14 comments

NextBus uses GPS to tell you the predicted time of the next bus. Google maps show buses in real time, and you can get updates on your phone/PDA. The coverage is limited to certain agencies within the US, so these other sites might be useful: Hopstop covers subways and buses in NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, DC, and more. (mobile version) Google Transit has many US metro areas in addition to Canada, Europe, and Japan. (previously) Many more locations inside. [more inside]
posted by desjardins on Oct 21, 2008 - 36 comments

Google now has the megacity of Tokyo photographed at the street level. Coverage is reasonably impressive, from the end of the road a couple of hours out of Musashi Itsukaichi, itself a couple of hours from Tokyo by train, to Narita Airport, down to Enoshima, and many, many, many, many, many points in between. . .
posted by yort on Aug 9, 2008 - 49 comments

According to the photographer's daughter, "All photos in this collection were taken by then Lt. and later Capt. George S. White, my Father, while he was serving in the Pacific as a pilot. They are generally between 1945 and 1948 from what is documented." My favorites? The barmaid or postwar Tokyo or wrecked planes and airplane graveyards.
posted by zzazazz on Jul 5, 2008 - 10 comments

Paradise: The Gardens of Tokyo. A collection of amazing photographs of Japanese gardens as taken by Tim Porter. [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 on Apr 10, 2008 - 6 comments

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]
posted by your mildly obsessive average geek on Feb 16, 2008 - 6 comments

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) . [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite on Feb 4, 2008 - 21 comments

The Tokyopia Wedding Game A work of love for friends executed in late 2006, via "Greggman"'s generally excellent blog. [more inside]
posted by panamax on Jan 18, 2008 - 7 comments

Meet Rob Pongi (sometimes known as Evil Pongi) an american, doing something different in Japan. Sometimes he's chillin with some sexy and beautiful Japanese women enjoy a very exciting Tokyo dance party! Other times he translates North Korean soap operas into english for our edification. He just finished his first Hollywood movie, and he's very proud of it. Join his fan club here. You can watch all of his videos here.
posted by bigmusic on Nov 14, 2007 - 21 comments

Some amazing photos of the storm sewer system in Tokyo. (Further reading)
posted by dersins on Sep 4, 2007 - 26 comments

Signs in Shinjuku station made with coloured sticky tape.
posted by WPW on Jul 30, 2007 - 17 comments

Behold the Uniqlock. (flash, sfw)
posted by boo_radley on Jul 27, 2007 - 65 comments

Painter and comic artist Jun-Pierre Shiozawa visited the Tokyo National Museum recently to view da Vinci's Annunciata which created protests in Italy when the Uffizi Gallery lent this artwork to Japan. Shiozawa then created a fantastic "manga review" of the experience for Tokyo Art Beat's TABlog. You can see the steps Shiozawa made to create his manga review on Shiozawa's Flickr account or blog.
posted by gen on Jun 10, 2007 - 9 comments

Sheets of kombu (kelp) covered with herring roe; big white sacs of octopus roe. Among a biochromatic wealth of mysterious mollusks and other sea invertebrates of unknown nature, I see the weirdest creature I've ever seen. Now, that's a fucking organism. Tom Asakawa looks at it awhile, too. Hoya, or sea pineapple. "Sea pineapple," he says. "Attaches to rocks in the ocean. Tastes something like iodine. Sendai people like it." It looks nothing like a pineapple. It looks like something that could exist only in a purely hallucinatory eco-system. It looks like, I don't know, maybe an otherworldly marital aid of inscrutable purpose for the brides of Satan. "I need to eat that," I say. "I'll see what I can do," Tom says.

Nick Tosches visits Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market for Vanity Fair. [previously on mefi]
posted by monju_bosatsu on Jun 3, 2007 - 36 comments

Hisaharu Motoda’s “Neo-Ruins” series of lithographs depict the cityscape of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, where familiar streets lie deserted, the buildings are crumbling and weeds grow from the broken pavement. More here, here & here.
posted by jonson on May 10, 2007 - 39 comments

Hitotoki.org (Japanese for 'a point in time') is a "new literary site collecting stories of personal, singular experiences in Tokyo." If you've visited Tokyo, please consider sharing a part of your Tokyo experience at hitotoki.org. If you plan to visit Japan, please peruse what will be an interesting collection of personal stories of life in Tokyo.
posted by gen on May 7, 2007 - 23 comments

The Rising Suns PV I found this techno PV (Japanese for 'promotion video') by Takkyu Ishino (of the band Denki Groove) to be pretty impressive (assuming the people are real & not CG). [youtube]
posted by Heywood Mogroot on Jan 3, 2007 - 11 comments

In America, some rang in 2007 by watching (a propped-up) Dick Clark rockin' the Eve away alongside Ryan Seacrest & his crush (yeah, right), Christina Aguilera. Ho hum. Japanese television on the other hand? Well, my friends... television viewers in Tokyo enjoyed this little extravaganza (It's SFW, they're wearing bodysuits.) Yokatta koto!
posted by miss lynnster on Jan 1, 2007 - 58 comments

"Dear Tokyo, why don't you have a building like this yet?" There are a lot of other ideas found on Ironic Sans.
posted by myopicman on Dec 6, 2006 - 21 comments

The UBS Bank calculated how long it takes an average worker around the world to earn enough to buy a Big Mac. Workers in Tokyo were the fastest: Tokyo 10 minutes, New York 13 minutes, London 16 minutes, Hong Kong 17 minutes, Paris 21 minutes, Moscow 25 minutes, Rome 39 minutes, Beijing 44 minutes, Manila 81 minutes, Jakarta 86 minutes. Is this a fair comparison? Is it something that will change people's perspective about the rest of the world?
posted by PetBoogaloo on Nov 17, 2006 - 53 comments

Joe Nishizawa Photographs. Pingmag interview. [related previously]
posted by hama7 on Oct 20, 2006 - 4 comments

Top 10 ad-tricks in Tokyo’s train stations
posted by Tlogmer on Oct 20, 2006 - 32 comments

Quicktime VR photos of Tokyo - tunnels - night - large drains - buildings - etc. The nav is mainly in Japanese but the "VR List" link, lower right, seems to be the main index.
posted by carter on Jul 26, 2006 - 9 comments

The Tuna Court: Law and Norms in the World's Premier Fish Market. [more inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu on Jun 2, 2006 - 20 comments

Weird buildings.
posted by angrybeaver on Feb 20, 2006 - 64 comments

New Year's Eve From Around the World. Beautiful 360^o panoramas from the first few minutes of 2006 in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Minneapolis, Ljubljana and elsewhere. [Note: Some of the panoramas also have sound]
posted by Ljubljana on Jan 1, 2006 - 12 comments

Tokyo Times is an insightful, well-written blog dedicated to Japanese culture, books, current affairs, news, sex, random images and observations of life, as seen through the eyes of an English expat living in Tokyo.
posted by darkstar on Jun 18, 2005 - 13 comments

Nekobukuro is a place in the Ikebokuro neighborhood of Tokyo where people without pets can pay 500 yen to hang out with cats.
posted by gottabefunky on Feb 14, 2005 - 28 comments

Harajuku Street Style. Oh those crazy cool Japanese kids! The streets of Harajuku are as much a fashion playground as they are an exhibit of Why You Should Never Pair White Boots with Gold Chains. This is, of course, in line with the existing weirdness of the brilliant Katamari Damacy, mayonnaise-and-squid pizza, and the "no caption required" homoerotic dating sim "le, Tatemasu!",
posted by riffraff on Jan 7, 2005 - 34 comments

Old Tokyo. Photographs from the early decades of the twentieth century.
posted by plep on Jan 3, 2005 - 12 comments

The G-Cans Project is a massive project, begun 12 years ago, to build infrastructure for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city (A serious problem for Tokyo during rainy-season and typhoon season). The underground waterway is the largest in the world and sports five 32m diameter, 65m deep concrete containment silos which are connected by 64 kilometers of tunnel sitting 50 meters beneath the surface. The whole system is powered by 14000 horsepower turbines which can pump 200 tons of water a second into the large outlying edogawa river.
posted by joelf on Dec 4, 2004 - 24 comments

Night Windows Gorgeous images of night-time urban Japan (Japanese titles, English alt tags, 1024x768 images available). Includes: sleeping bullet trains, trams, cats, Tokyo Harbour tunnel, bridges, tail lights, Narita airport, offices, Mount Fuji, Tokyo Disneyland (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and many more.
posted by carter on Nov 10, 2004 - 13 comments

Home is where the heart is. Karl Taro Greenfeld, journalist and author of Speed Tribes, among others, has a nostalgic piece in Time Asia (Aug. '03) recounting his heady youth in Tokyo alongside his thoughts on his ailing Japanese grandmother.
posted by gen on Jul 9, 2004 - 5 comments

Shinsato: Great vacant night cityscapes of Osaka and Tokyo.
posted by hama7 on Jan 2, 2004 - 11 comments

Apple must be putting something in Tokyo's watersource.
posted by Robot Johnny on Dec 9, 2003 - 47 comments

Baby you can drive my car. Mini RC cars are all the rage but how often do you get to control a RC car in Tokyo from your browser. Bascule created a web interface for controling an RC car in their office, hooked up a couple of web cams on the track and now allows anyone with the Flash 6 plug-in to log in and drive their car for 60 seconds.
posted by DragonBoy on Jul 23, 2003 - 7 comments

The Most Delicious Food That's Also Very Good For You - - in fact, to my mind, the best food in the world, including all the tastiest unhealthy ones, is sashimi. And sushi comes second. But sometimes it's late at night or too early in the morning; you're broke; the restaurants are closed; you're nowhere near Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market and all your sushi etiquette, memories and knowledge; your favourite sushi websites; your well-thumbed sushi books and your fishy wishlists...are of no darn use to you. Then you remember it's late or early enough to hit your local fish market... And it's then that this ideologically incorrect and Hawaii-leaning, California-dreaming, somewhat Englishly-challenged set of video tutorials comes into its own! Truth be told, for the price of one fresh mackerel, one sardine, a slice of salmon... and sashimi is yours! [But who am I kidding? It's just not the same. Oh well, Windows Media required for the vids.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Apr 19, 2003 - 28 comments

Hints of a secret city beneath Tokyo Japanese foreign correspondent Shun Akiba says that after examining various maps of Tokyo, and finding large inconsistences, he has found evidence of a huge network of tunnels beneath the city of Tokyo. A large underground city beneath an aboveground one is not unheard of, as Beijing has this one, but the odd part is, (assuming this story is true,) is that Shun says there has been a coverup and a "...conspiracy to silence [me]," with officials being "...defensive and noncooperative..."
posted by Snyder on Mar 4, 2003 - 30 comments

with all the discussion about chemical or biological warfare, i can't help but be reminded of the sarin attack on tokyo subways in 1995. many of the people directly affected by the attack acted strangely. (more inside...)
posted by sugarfish on Oct 1, 2001 - 8 comments

A Tokyo breakfast like none you have ever seen. I saw this and laughed as I watched it. Warning, some people may find it offensive as the basic premise is the over use of a common racial slur. But it brings up a bigger question. Have we really moved to the point where racial slurs have become an acceptable part of pop culture?
posted by summer1971 on May 26, 2001 - 32 comments

as if Godzilla wasn't enough, now citizens of Tokyo have to worry about a guy in a panda suit killing people. what's the world coming to? When cosplay goes too far!
posted by fuzzygeek on May 5, 2001 - 4 comments