Paradise: The Gardens of Tokyo. A collection of amazing photographs of Japanese gardens as taken by Tim Porter.
posted on Apr 10, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Feb 16, 2008 - View this thread

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) .
posted on Feb 4, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Nov 14, 2007 - View this thread

Some amazing photos of the storm sewer system in Tokyo. (Further reading)
posted on Sep 4, 2007 - View this thread

Signs in Shinjuku station made with coloured sticky tape.
posted on Jul 30, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Jun 10, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Jun 3, 2007 - View this thread

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 on May 10, 2007 - View this thread

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 on May 7, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Jan 1, 2007 - View this thread

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

Top 10 ad-tricks in Tokyo’s train stations
posted on Oct 20, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Jul 26, 2006 - View this thread

The Tuna Court: Law and Norms in the World's Premier Fish Market. [more inside]
posted on Jun 2, 2006 - View this thread

Weird buildings.
posted on Feb 20, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Jun 18, 2005 - View this thread

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

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 on Jan 7, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Dec 4, 2004 - View this thread

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 on Nov 10, 2004 - View this thread

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 on Jul 9, 2004 - View this thread

Shinsato: Great vacant night cityscapes of Osaka and Tokyo.
posted on Jan 2, 2004 - View this thread

Apple must be putting something in Tokyo's watersource.
posted on Dec 9, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Mar 4, 2003 - View this thread

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 on May 5, 2001 - View this thread