all photos courtesy yourhighschool_kimitsu
There’s a large swath of Japanese manga and anime that takes place in high school. There’s also a large and growing fan base of Japanese manga outside Japan. Plus, Japan just happens to have a lot of abandoned schools owing to their shrinking population. All those forces have converged, resulting in Kimino High School (君ノ高校), a full-day immersive experience that lets you live the life of a showa-era Japanese high schooler.
Continue reading
Wow, it’s actually back. DesignTide Tokyo, the annual design event held each fall from 2005 to 2012, is returning to Tokyo this week to reclaim it’s rightful title of “A Place to Trade Ideas.” The last time we wrote about DesignTide, London had just hosted the Summer Olympics and Obama had been reelected as U.S. President. Japan, though, was still reeling from the 2011 tsunami and nuclear fallout, which crippled tourism and travel. And a slew of unfortunate events, from a tragic fire to a pandemic, cast doubt on the future of design festivals in Tokyo. But with DesignArt Tokyo filling the vacuum and now DesignTide being restarted, we are so back.
Starting on November 27th and running through December 1, 2024, the event will host 30+ exhibitors who will present their most recent projects, along with various panel discussions and even a selection of student artwork, all on display at Nihonbashi Mitsui Hall. Here are just a few things we’re excited to see.
Continue reading
Wasara, our favorite brand of sustainable and compostable tableware, is launching a new brand called Casanet. A riff on the Japanese word for stacking (kasaneru), the new brand features the same elegance, minimalism and eco-friendliness, but applied to transportable food containers with lids.
Continue reading
What happens when a specialty paper company opens a specialty coffee shop? Well, you get the utterly delightful PAP Coffee, located on a small, quiet backstreet and removed from the bustle of Harajuku. The unlikely owner is Sanyo Shigyo, a 55-year old Tokyo-based paper company whose bread and butter is specialty paper and printing.
Continue reading
photos courtesy Karimoku Research Center
Karimoku, the leading manufacturer of wooden furniture in Japan, recently opened a new exhibition and archival space in the Nishiazabu neighborhood of Tokyo. Driven by the company’s ethos of “high tech and high touch,” the Karimoku Research Center combines a mixture of technology and hands-on craftsmanship to survey, archive and innovate the many different ways people live.
Continue reading
Randoseru are Japanese backpacks typically reserved for schoolchildren. Known for their quality and durability, randoseru are meant to last a lifetime. Leather craftsman Noriki Okada decided to create an even more sustainably-minded randoseru using scrap parts discarded from the production process. And for visual inspiration, he turned to the historic armor worn by samurai warriors.
Continue reading
all photos courtesy ARKO
Another discovery from last month’s DesignArt Tokyo was ARKO, a Tokyo-based, self-described ‘straw artist’ who has been applying her creative approach to traditional craft since 2002.
Continue reading
DesignArt Tokyo was back again this year from Oct. 18 to 27. The sprawling annual celebration sees Tokyo transform into a living, breathing museum with venues all across the city opening their doors to artists and craftspeople. This year’s theme, “Reframing,” challenged designers to address the commoditization of ideas that has resulted from our instant access to vast amounts of information.
From kumiko furniture and smoke sculptures to furniture for robots, below are five of our favorite things from the event.
Continue reading
all photos by @husky_003 | used with permission
Almost 15 years ago, on a tiny plot of land in eastern Tokyo, a young architect named Keisuke Oka began to construct a tower of concrete entirely by hand. Located just a short walk from Mita Station, the Arimaston Building (蟻鱒鳶ル) is an intricate, organic structure whose uniqueness has earned it the nickname, the “Gaudi of Mita” after Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí.
Continue reading
Happy Jimi Halloween to everyone who celebrates. It’s that wonderful time of year when our favorite Japanese festival, Jimi Halloween, is on full display. Mundane Halloween, as we coined it back in 2018, is when people dress up in costumes so mundane they have to be explained.
The tradition was started in 2014 by a group of adults at Daily Portal Z who kind of wanted to participate in the festivities of Halloween, but were too embarrassed to go all out in witch or zombie costumes. So instead of the flashy and flamboyant costumes they had been seeing gain popularity in Japan, they decided to dress up in mundane, everyday costumes.
You can comb through social media using the hashtag #地味ハロウィン but below we present to you some of our favorites from this year’s festivities. We’ve been covering this event since 2018 so you can also take a look at some past years too!
Continue reading
