Japanese Train Pushers

80kidz remix of Metric’s Help I’m Alive

Japanese DJs, 80kidz, have added their touch to Metric’s hit Help I’m Alive. Having already created remixes for CSS, Simian Mobile Disco, Phenomenal Handclap Band, and Dan Black, 80kidz have taken Metric’s original recording and added catchy synth loops and bouncy drums. We have it available for free download via our Music Download section [psst, it's in the third column of the site]. Read Metric’s Secret Playlist, where they write about their eight favourite songs right now.

Face Food Bento Boxes

While perusing Kinokuniya Bookstore on my lunch break, I came across the book, Face Food by Christopher D Salyers. Face Food documents very elaborate Bento boxes called Charaben in which food is made to look like anime characters, animals, plants and flowers. Everyone from Piglet to Pikachu is portrayed, with foods such as broccoli, ham, carrot, cheese, egg, imitation crab meat, and more. I’m blown away by the creativity and time (anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours) that mothers — and father, sometimes — dedicate to making these works of art for their children to take to school. Read more

Panic Face King, a tortuous Japanese game show

From the same TV world that brought us Human Tetris comes this terrifying reality prank show where unsuspecting people are filmed while they think a real-life shooting is going on around them. In this particular installment, a man is ‘tricked into thinking that he’s filming a documentary about telephone scammers’, during which a fierce sniper attack is launched on the room. Funny? Kinda. But cruelly so.

James Mackay’s Even Though I’m Free I Am Not

Award-winning photojournalist James Mackay’s latest project comes at a time when the world’s eyes are fixed on Burma and the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi. By photographing former political prisoners displaying the names of their colleagues and friends who remain behind bars, Even Though I’m Free I Am Not exposes the enduring pain faced by Burma’s opposition movement. Over 2,100 activists, journalists, lawyers and politicians languish in prisons across the country, and on Friday Aung San Suu Kyi will likely join them. Read more

Secret Supper Clubs

The blind date of the food world has finally arrived, and it’s proving more palatable than the awkwardness of an evening spent in superficial conversation. Secret Supper clubs are springing up in the backstreets of London: what are attics and living rooms by day get converted into makeshift restaurants catering for an evening of surprise tastes and conversations. Read more

Adam Farlie

Young British designer Adam Farlie takes a leftfield approach to how people experience interaction with objects, often taking everyday items and toying with their potential to harbour deeper meaning and greater usage than first perceived. He transforms a bed into a ‘vessel that captures and contains the audio-memories of past occupiers through sound’, allowing those who lie on the bed to recall past intimcaties or conversations from years ago, while his take on a chest of drawers’ purpose of holding records of people is similarly intriguing.