Slightly Darkened Streets of Tokyo [SLYT] By fading back and forth between scenes of pre- and post-quake Tokyo, this time-lapse video by YouTube user darwinfish105 shows how the metropolitan night-scape has been affected by Japan's ongoing power shortages and conservation efforts.
posted by Fizz
on Sep 10, 2011 -
10 comments
blind is a short film (5:17 - in Japanese w/ English subtitles) set in post-nuclear Tokyo. The film may be viewed at the
blind website, at
Vimeo or at
YouTube.
Parents please be advised: although the film features a young child, viewing by young children is not especially recommended, as they may be frightened.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Sep 6, 2011 -
29 comments
The Complaints Choir phenomenon, started by the Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, has
spread all over the world since
last we paid it any attention, from
Birmingham to
Helsinki,
Hamburg,
St. Petersburg,
Poikkilaakso,
Bodø,
Penn State,
Canada,
Juneau,
Gabriola Island,
Sointula,
Jerusalem,
Melbourne,
Budapest,
Malmö,
Chicago,
Florence,
Copenhagen,
Vancouver (
2),
Philadelphia,
Sundbyberg,
Milano,
Åland,
Hong Kong,
Tokyo,
Rotterdam,
Basel,
Umeå,
Ljubljana,
Gdansk,
Arizona State University,
Washington, DC,
Horace Mann School,
Durham-Chapel Hill,
Auckland,
Toronto theatre students,
Kortrijk,
Cairo (
2),
St. Pölten,
Maribor,
Port Coquitlam,
Ústí nad Labem,
Columbus &
Kauhajoki (
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8). For more information, including a
9 step guide to forming your own complaints choir, go to the
Complaints Choir website. Finally, here's the
Singapore Complaints Choir, whose performance was banned by the Singapore government.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 19, 2010 -
40 comments
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)
[more inside]
posted by mkb
on Aug 11, 2010 -
20 comments
"In April 2010, Ashley Rawlings and I used community fundraising to raise nearly $24,000 to breathe new life into our book,
Art Space Tokyo. My goal [
in this blog post] is to outline what we did and why we did it, with the hope of inspiring anyone with an itch, gumption and a good narrative, to do the same. To bring beautiful, well-considered things into the world."
posted by dobbs
on Aug 8, 2010 -
9 comments
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]
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jan 29, 2010 -
21 comments
Tokyo Blues is a photography book about taking a closer look at the ordinary, in this case an omnipresent blue construction tarp which shows up just about everywhere in Tokyo. This is the first book in an apparently planned series by
Do Projects. The book is available for sale or as a
free PDF under the CC license.
posted by malphigian
on Dec 3, 2009 -
16 comments
"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.
posted by digaman
on Jul 23, 2009 -
166 comments
Tokyo Camera Style "People who shoot film simply do because they choose to, and the Photo Culture of Tokyo is full of film camera users. When I meet them out on the streets I ask to photograph their camera, and usually post it here the same day"
posted by chunking express
on May 26, 2009 -
19 comments
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.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Feb 27, 2009 -
41 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
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
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
