April is the time when new students arrive at Tokyo’s universities. I took a couple of photos in Waseda, where bookshops and noodle shops are putting up posters welcoming the freshmen. Clubs are eager to catch new members and making parties. Near Waseda station or Takadanobaba station you can see them gather. Four years of fun ahead…?

We hereby invite you to take part in the first International Metroblogging Streetart Contest.

Streetart is a fancy name for Graffiti. I’ve never seen any Graffiti in Tokyo either, but hey, we like challenges.

Thanks to till in Berlin for this.

In his words, here is how it works:

Metroblogging means global, which implies that all submissions of participating cities will first run against each other “locally” and then the top compete on a global level to find out where’s the hottest spot for streetart in the world.

To participate, follow those steps:

1) We setup a flickr pool – metroblogging streetart
http://www.flickr.com/groups/metrobloggingstreetart/

Feel free to join.

Each one of your submission should make it in the pool. If you don’t have/like Flickr – feel free to email them in to tokyometblog’at’yahoo’dot’com – I’ll post them for you. In this case, let me know whom to give credit to (photographer and streetartist).

2) The contest runs for two weeks. Then a voting process will start to find a city’s Top 3 streetart pieces.

3) After the local heros are chosen, we run another global contest to crown king of all. Top of the world, Master of the Universe – you know the deal! The Top 3 from each city will enter this contest. Watch this blog for more information.

Tags: Tokyo, streetart, contest

Japan in Amber is looking at some ‘facts’ of life as a Gaijin in Japan. These are commonly-held views, so it is interesting to see them addressed:

Whites have it easier than other foreign races
Once a gaijin, always a gaijin
Activists, such as Debito are counter-productive

I came across this exhibition today of Tezuka Moderno, an attempt to create “cute” characters from the famous Atom manga & anime. Libro at Parco in Shibuya is one of my favourite bookshops, and this tiny art space called Logos usually has something fun going on.

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>Softbank cell phone 812SH has 20 colors collaborated with PANTONE. Last week a fashion show Tokyo girsl collection was held. They also collaborated with the show, all model have one color of Panton (check link). It’s pretty cute. Their tv ad is lovely. BGM is Nolans – “I’m In The Mood For Dancing”. (the 70s?!) Softbank official site doesn’t have it, but Cameron Diaz and Brad Pit appreares other softbank TV ad. Cameron is really cute. Check Youtube.