hmmn

This is one of a series of “installations” created by IKEA along a tree-lined boulevard that leads to the Outer Gardens of Meiji Jingu near Gaienmae subway station. Called “IKEA 4.5 Museum,” basically each box (there are 14 of them) presents a 4.5-mat tatami room and shows various ways you could decorate it with a [...]

Here’s another entry for the “Japan doesn’t have to be expensive” file: Tokyo Museums – Grutt Pass 2004 (Japanese site here) The “Grutt” pass in a nutshell is this: for ¥2,000 ($18USD), you get a booklet with free entrance coupons to 44 different art and history museums in the greater Tokyo area, as well as [...]

Old style toy shop, Nippori, Tokyo, April 17, 2004. Bessa-L, CV 21mm f/4, Fuji Neopan 1600. Click for additional images. Last weekend we went to see something that in a short time will be no more: the last remaining vestiges of the once thriving Dagashiya Yokochou (literally “Mom and Pop Candy Store Alley”) in Nippori, [...]

It being Christmas and all, here’s a shoping-related post for the “Japan doesn’t have to be all that expensive” file. Yesterday I bought 39 rolls of the above-pictured Konica Centuria Super color negative film, all of them 36-exposure rolls, and all of them in-date, some not expiring until as far off as 05/2005. The outlay? [...]

My brother Kimo is in town from L.A. with his friend Ryk, who’s apparently a big star in the hardcore silver jewelry business, and who has just opened a showroom dedicated to his designs, called Starling Gear, in trendy Tokyo neighborhood Daikanyama. I wrote earlier that I thought my brother was tagging along as “official [...]

This is a detailed shot of a drink vending machine on a train station platform. I don’t know why exactly, but I find this combination of colors and imagery so potent, so irresistable, so effective. The marketing and creative boys did good on this one I think. Even though it was probably around 10ºC (50ºF) [...]