The Shoji Ueda exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography ends tomorrow, February 5, and realizing this morning that I wouldn’t be able to go there tomorrow at all, I headed over to Ebisu this afternoon. I’m glad I made the time, because it was definitely worth seeing — as is just about every exhibit the Tokyo Met “Syabi” ever puts on.

I also had planned to peruse the Vietnam 1954-1975 exhibition while there, but having gotten a late start (as usual for me recently) and having spent so much time looking at the Ueda photos, I ran out of time to see it before they closed for the day. But thankfully that one will still be running for a couple more weeks (through February 19), so I can still go back and see it.

Note: If you go to the museum, make sure to go in through the main entrance, so you can check out the mural-size photos that line the walkway up to the entrance – currently including one of Ueda’s images (see photo).

Just now stopped by Higure17-15cas in Nishi-Nippori to check out the Etsuko Miura “Deserted Factory of Gishin” doll exhibition. It runs through February 19, but I found it pretty disappointing, so I’m not sure I’d recommend making the trek out there to see it unless you’re already a fan of her work and/or really, really into the whole goth/”bride of Frankenstein” aesthethic. Even then, I bet you’ll be disappointed by this particular show. Her creations don’t seem at home in the setting.

You can find some more information online.

Blog from the wrestlers in Tamanoi Beya. I’m not particularly well-informed on sumo, so if someone can post follow-up information as to exactly who they are, please do!
Even if I don’t know anything about sumo, the blog is fun to read and look at, with pictures of every day events and friendly sense of humor.

Wednesday of this week marked the beginning of the twelve-day long
Canadian
Style (TAB
page and 日本語)
event that design maven Jean Snow

is producing at Cafe Pause in
Ikebukuro. There’s an opening party this Saturday night, February
4, starting at 7pm. I plan to be there for it to find out just
what the hell this thing is all about – so hope to meet some other
curious and interesting people there too.

To get to Cafe Pause for the event, just make your way to the
Ikebukuro JR station, take the Seibu East exit and follow the
directions in the map below. (It’s only a 5-minute walk.) Or see the
Tokyo Art Beat page for Cafe
Pause, where you’ll find other maps and a QR code you can use to
access and store directions on your mobile phone.

And since Cafe Pause is after all a cafe, in addition to the normal items on its menu — light meals, snacks, sweets, and a full drink menu ranging from lemonade, “lemon cola”, “triple berry soda” and a variety of tea and coffee drinks, to beer, wine, and cocktails (including some of their own original cocktails, with names like “May”, “Lily”, “Jun”, “Teany”, and “Florent”) — a few special Canadian-themed specialities will be available, including a special meat pie and a bunch of maple stuff, even a maple-flavored cocktail.

As far as what else to expect, here are a handful of details from Jean:

… various installations (the main participants include
designer Sonia Chow
and photographer/DJ Marc Xavier LeBlanc)… video projections,
compiled themed mixes of Canadian (most independent) artists, and an
interactive installation, “Red + White/Read + Write,”

But to find out more, well, you’ll just have to head
there on Saturday night and/or before the event concludes on February
12 and see it for yourself.

Note that Jean has also created a Flickr
photo set for the event and is posting
up-to-date details at his site as it proceeds.

Some time back, Tokyo Art Beat asked five internationally known
artists and designers – Jonathan Barnbrook, Paul Cox, Power Graphixx
(Masahito Hanzawa), Noboru Tsubaki, and the Buro Destruct crew from
Berne Switzerland – to each create an original T-shirt design in
celebration of Tokyo Art Beat’s one-year anniversary.

The result is a set of
limited-edition T-shirts, each with a unique design not available
anywhere else, in any other form. Only a very small number of the
shirts was printed, and Tokyo Art Beat is making them available
only through the end of this month (February 2006). Given the
small quantity produced, owning one is a bit like having a print
directly from the artist, restricted to a extremely small number of
copies. So the phrase “collectors item” is a
more-than-appropriate term to describe them.

And given Tokyo Art Beat’s rapid rise to success and ambitious
plans for the future, you definitely won’t have any better chance to
acquire an artifact that’ll mark you as a someone who’s been hip to
Tokyo Art Beat since “back in the day”.

So head on over to the Tokyo Art Beat site now and place an
order (日本語版). 5000
yen gets you your choice of any two shirts in any sizes you’d like
(XS, M, L). Note also that they take international orders and can
ship internationally.

The ordering page also has details about each of the artists who
created the shirt designs, as well as links to detailed images of each
design. Or follow the links below to get directly to those detailed
images.

	Jonathan Barnbrook			Power Graphixx
	Buro Destruct			Paul Cox
	Noboru Tsubaki

Note that all proceeds from sale of the shirts goes to Gadago (the non-profit organization behind Tokyo Art Beat) and so will fund feature improvements at the site, and help them to cover more events at more galleries and museums and other art venues.

MOTHER 3 is going to be sold on 20/4/2006 !!
It revealed on ほぼ日刊イトイ新聞 last week. And they says, Nintendo would announce this soon.

What is MOTHER ?
This is a 2D Role Playing Game and you act as a master.
You make your team, talk to people in town, stay in a hotel, and fight with animals, strange guys, ojisans, obasans, etc.
However, you never kill anyone, just knockout :)
In your team, you have genius boy and psychic girl, he sometimes invents funny weapons, and she encourages team in many ways with her psychic power in the battle — like the FORCE.

Sometimes you phone to your mum or dad, while you are questing, just to say hello or to ask some money :)

MOTHER series ( now, I would say MOTHER trilogy ?) are sort of cult game.
And I am still a Big FAN, REALLY looking foward to playing new MOTHER 3.
Maybe I am a bit weird….

Today is quarter-finals day of the largest women’s tennis tournament in Asia, taking place at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium in Shiubuya-ku. Defending champion Maria Sharapova and four-time winner champion Martina Hingis are both in action today as they remain on course for their possible semi-final showdown, which would take place tomorrow.
Play starts at 13:00 and tickets on the door are priced from 4000Yen.
Visit the Pan Pacific website for more info.

It seems that WiMAX could be on its way, with the news from Digital World Tokyo, that NTT Docomo is planning to start WiMAX trials here next month.
WiMAX is a technology for broadband Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks, an enhanced version of WiFi.

Fotologue.jp is a Japanese community photography site and you will find some amazing photos of Japan in there. For example, Jyune has been taking his Tilt/Shift lens round Tokyo with some incredible results.

Over the weekend I went on a short trip to Hakone, a region famous for its many onsen and spectacular view of Mount Fuji, as well as providing the backdrop for the yearly Hakone Ekiden. Hakone is about 90 minutes out of Tokyo, in the westernmost part of Kanagawa-ken. Though it’s not technically in Tokyo, it’s one of the closest resorts around for Tokyo denizens.

Getting to Hakone is cheap enough, but don’t let that fool you. It’s a tourist area just like any other, and once there you’ll find yourself paying for all variety of buses, cable cars and boat rides just to find something to do. The best thing to do is purchase the Hakone Free Pass and a spot on the Romance Car heading out of Shinjuku Station. It’ll cost you around 6500 yen, but it’s worth it unless you stay inside your hotel the entire time.
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