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")?
posted by DecemberBoy
on Aug 1, 2012 -
132 comments
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.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jul 29, 2012 -
112 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
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
"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
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
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
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
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
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
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
