Posts tagged with Japan
October 28, 2009 | New Music | 
by Casper Johansson 
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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.
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October 27, 2009 | New Design | by Alison Zavos |
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
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October 20, 2009 | Video | 
by Zolton |
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.
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October 19, 2009 | New Products | by The Uncool Hunter |
The new Japanese battery — NoPoPo — ensures that you will never run out of energy, even in those unexpected moments. This promise is made possible because you can charge them by inserting either water, urine, blood, apple juice, beer and saliva into their base with a teat pipette which is included in the package. So now you know it! Is this a way of turning drunks into real plants that generate energy? Their operation is possible thanks to the reaction produced by the magnesium and the carbon of the urine. According to the online magazine The Register, these batteries are only being sold in Japanese stores and the date of the arrival to the Western markets is unknown. Unfortunately they can only be charged between two and five times — an ambiguous number — and the price is not cheap at U$15. Read more
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October 15, 2009 | New Design | by Zolton |
Who said Hello Kitty wasn’t real? Well, as real as plastic can get, anyway. These Hello Kitty Anatomy toys have been designed by Dr. Romanelli and open a window to the inner workings of these iconic Japanese characters. Read more
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October 7, 2009 | New Art | by Gerry Mak |
Ikeda Manabu is the perfect example of why the arts need to be funded. How could the Japanese artist have had time to develop his style of impossibly detailed drawings while simultaneously holding down a full-time job? Read more
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September 30, 2009 | New Food and Packaging | by Zolton |
I want to live in Tokyo, to be immersed in a city where quirky is cool and everything can be turned into cute cartoon characters. This awesome packaging of tiny baby crabs with a spicy topping may be a little literal, but it’s more fun that anything Birdseye have ever released.
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September 17, 2009 | New Illustration | by Ilana Kohn |
The moment Japanese artist Fujita Minako’s site comes up, and I get a load of that adorable floating island, I think Howl’s Moving Castle! I’m hooked. Diving into the rest of her site, I’m even more won over. She has such a way with landscape vignettes and little buildings. This stuff is straight out of my most pleasant day dreams. Read more
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August 13, 2009 | New Products | by Casper Johansson |
Now, we could all do with one of these. The Japanese Popping Edamame Keychain has three beans, the middle one coming with any one of twelve random faces [see below] on it. What’s more, the ‘beans are connected to some sort of elastic band, so they pop back in to be popped again as many times as you want. It sounds silly, but trust us, these things are highly addictive’. Ah yes, perfect for the next boring office meeting. Read more
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July 23, 2009 | New Trends | by Gerry Mak |
From the various responses I got from my previous post about hipster hate being misguided, most people defined a hipster as people who are very young (let’s say below 25), live off of their parents, and don’t contribute to the scene they glom onto. The problem I have with this is that in my personal experience, this is not how most people define hipsters. Read more
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July 22, 2009 | New Fashion | by The Uncool Hunter |
Cosplay, an activity for lovers of comics and science fiction, was born in Japan in the 70s. The word derives from the combination of two British words: costume and play. So the translation would be ‘costume to play’. It consists of wearing the costume of some fiction character and dramatizing and acting like that character. The design and preparation of the costume also counts, as does the body shaping in order to make the costume fit and make it as ‘real’ as possible. Cosplayers take part in mass conventions around the world in order to decide the best of them. The most important of them is the World Cosplay Summit, which takes place in Japan every year. Read more
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July 16, 2009 | New Events | by Zolton |
Dalek’s paintings were originally populated by Space Monkeys, creatures inspired by the artist’s childhood and teenage years in Japan. His most recent paintings have metamorphosed into incredibly complex abstract works, emphasizing his meticulous attention to detail and amazing sense of colour and composition. Dalek’s work has been widely exhibited internationally, and he recently spent a year as an assistant of Takashi Murakami, probably the most famous artist in the contemporary art scene. His latest exhibition Dalek and Delta, runs at the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms from August 28 to September 26. He’ll be contributing guest posts to Lost At E Minor over the next two weeks on the art and music that’s inspiring his own work right now. Read more
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July 11, 2009 | New Trends | by Casper Johansson |
Snapped in Aichi, Japan, at a Truck Show for kids, this photo by Roger Snider captures a customized refrigerated delivery truck with around $100,000 worth of artistic enhancements. According to Snider, on this day, some ‘300 of these Art Trucks from various truck clubs showed up to help fund-raise for less fortunate kids’.
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June 29, 2009 | New Fashion | by Casper Johansson |
Japanese designers Keiichi Muramatsu and Noriko Seki founded the Tokyo-based fashion label, Everlasting Sprout, in 2005, based on their mutual interest in knit design. Each intricate creation in their Spring/Summer 2009 range took up to a week for them to construct. Read more
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June 25, 2009 | Video | by Zolton |
There’s just something so enticing about this manga version of the Deee-lite classic, Groove Is In The Heart. Yup, I just want to crawl inside this video and become one with my happy, smiling dancing buddies.
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I wish I could remember where I first stumbled across the work of Oregon artist and illustrator Evan B Harris, but I’m glad I did. There’s an innate sweetness, a comforting whimsical quality in Harris’ work that, coupled with his rich narratives, makes me want to hunt for that old teddy bear I used to curl up with and wash down the nostalgia with strong mug of steaming hot chocolate.
Hotly tipped by a handful of soothsayers to take 2009 by storm, Trembling Bells are an altogether different and refreshing musical experience to much of what seems to excite people at the moment. On first listen, it’s fairly easy to ignore — one could casually shrug it off as some limp take on Scottish baroque folk. Yet, there is something more to it. Rarely do you hear that high-pitched, warbling voice in mainstream music. Likewise the marching band cacophony going on in the background is both daring and highly intriguing.
Simple, colorful and somewhat esoteric, I really dig the work of New York illustrator, Rich Tu, a new SVA graduate student. It was something else to see his finely textured images blown up to poster size and beautifully displayed at the recent SVA student show. Read more
I almost had a heart attack the first time I entered Published Art. And I’m not even an architecture and design nut. This place is the shiz. As the name of the store suggests, Published Art is art published in book form. Their spectacular array of art, design and architecture books will bring a tear to the eye of any admirer of beauty. For Published Art, less is more. They make sure that they only keep the latest titles in stock so that every single one of their gorgeous hardcover books can be viewed from any part of the store. Read more
God save the Queen. Oh, and Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Steve Jones and Paul Cook too. Read more
As if this season’s dresses weren’t delightful enough, here’s another reason to liquidate some stock and ruin your credit rating. First Prada and James Jean, now the top end retailer, Nordstrom: the exploration of art by fashion is long overdue, but well worth the wait. The Nordstrom campaign brings together three great things: the Cuban illustrator Ruben Toledo, the fashion photographer Ruven Afanador and the elvin Jenny Sweeny. Just looking at it makes me want to wrap myself in Cavalli and paint my walls bone shell white.
UK music journalist Everett True comes from the Nick Kent school of writing: live the life and hope to come out the other end with one hell of a story. And he has. In this case, the story of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. In this exclusive piece, he talks about his association with Seattle’s finest and his friendship with the perennially troublesome Courtney Love. Read more
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Italian-born, New York City-based photographer Paolo Ventura creates fairy-tale like pictures out of amazingly constructed, miniature dioramas that almost trick the eye into thinking he’s a tilt-shift photographer. Read more
Yum, yum, cupcakes are fun. These creations are so clever, so arty, so damn bizarre that it would almost be a shame to eat them. Almost! Read more
Good thing Kris Kuksi channelled the trauma of growing up with an alcoholic stepfather, his disdain for ‘the typical American life and pop culture’, and his fascination with the macabre into obsessive, baroque assemblages, paintings, and drawings. Read more
T-post: the world’s first wearable magazine
So here’s the scoop. Every six weeks, T-post subscribers get a new t shirt issue in the mail, with a news story on the inside and an artist interpretation of that story on the front. Yes, we agree. It’s clever, clever. Read more
Check out Mike Stimpson’s Lego reinterpretations of classic photographs. Stimpson’s version of Malcolm Browne’s iconic 1963 photograph of the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc is particularly twisted. Read more
Wolfmother. Rock n roll. Mystical lyrics. Heavy riffs. They have a new album out, Cosmic Egg, and we have five copies to giveaway, along with their debut album. To enter, tell us your favorite Wolfmother song and the city you live in. Yo! Two fingered salute. Read more
Made from 100 percent organic cotton and eco-friendly, this super soft tee celebrates a sinister world of kaleidoscopic colours and ripples of psychedelia, of serenading Queens, of dancing flamingos, of unimaginable euphoria. It’s all the work of Sydney label, Das Monk and it’s available through the Lost At E Minor online store for just US$40. Now, there’s one hell of a Christmas present, even if we do say so ourselves! Read more
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