This week, the 201st volume of long-running police comedy manga “Kochi Kame” was released after a 5-year hiatus. To celebrate, a series of posters have been created which merge manga artist Osamu Akimoto’s illustrations with the actual street scenes of Tokyo where the the manga takes place.
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All photos by courtesy NOSIGNER (Yuichi Hisatsugu)
For over 100 years, REN has operated a botanical specialty shop in Tokyo’s Mita district. Passed down through four generations, the family business has taken on several iterations but has always been grounded in the world of ikebana and plants. The current owner, botanical artist and designer Nobuaki Kawahara, recently relocated REN, which takes it’s name from the Japanese word for lotus, renovating a 55-year old building and creating the brand’s flagship location.
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Photos: Hiroshi Mizusaki courtesy Case-Real Architects
Within Ureshino, a town in Kyushu’s Saga prefecture, is a historic road lined with whitewashed traditional buildings. It’s inside one of these–a former warehouse–where a unique business has staked out its new home. Milkbrew Coffee, as its name implies is a cafe that brews their coffee with milk, rather than water.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically altered daily life and everyday routines for almost everyone. Japanese Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples were certainly not immune but in order to ensure their ability to maintain operations and continue offering services to their community, many have taken a leap of faith, altering the way they do things that go beyond just a creative use of digital technology.
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all images courtesy Studio Ghibli
In the classic animated film My Neighbor Totoro, the Kusakabe family relocates to a home in the countryside to be closer to their mother, who is hospitalized nearby. Although old and crumbling, the family home is full of Showa-era charm and the two girls, Mei and Satsuki, waste no time exploring it and getting to know all its secrets and inhabitants.
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Ukiyoe, the Japanese form of woodblock prints that flourished during the Edo period (1600 – 1868), were mass-produced artworks intended to bring joy and laughter to the commoners. And while subjects included landscapes and celebrities, it wasn’t unusual for the artist’s own sense of humor and whimsy to creep into the prints in the form of surreal and unexpected creatures. An ukiyoe museum and retailer have now teamed up to turn some of those odd creatures into plushy stuffed animals.
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If you haven’t heard, rice is kind of a big deal in Japan. And around this time of year—harvest season—the grain is front and center on the entire nation’s mind. In fact, according to Japan’s ancient calendar of 72 microseasons (which Spoon & Tamago members receive in their inbox), September 2 – 6 was “Rice Begins to Ripen.”
There are if course traditional ceremonies dating back hundreds of years that pray for bountiful harvests. But more recently, Japan’s national staple has inspired rice farmers to get creative with their grain.
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The story of Hachiko, Japan’s symbol of loyalty in man’s best friend, has been told many times, with varying aims. And the canine continues to live on not only in the form of Shibuya’s most-popular meeting spot but in a multitude of forms that range from sake to Bon-Odori posters. But the next frontier is footwear. A collaboration between Japanese streetwear retailer atmos and Adidas has given birth to a pair of furry sneakers that pay homage to Hachiko.
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Cup Noodle is so excited about their 50th anniversary that they’ve created something that absolutely no one asked for: Cup Noodle Soda. Four of their most popular and best-selling flavors—original, seafood, curry and chili tomato—have been turned into fizzy beverages.
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Masami Yamamoto is a Japanese artist based in Kanazawa largely working in the medium of ceramics. Since around 2011 the artist has been developing a series based on used—often intimate—clothing as a means of creating portraits of the owner of that item. The folds, wrinkles and details are all manually carved by the artist, rendering the ceramic objects in realism that is seemingly lightweight but also possessing strength and density.
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