Japan – in Almost Motion

 Jean Snow has a very interesting videopresentation of Japan. Below is a blurb on Jean from his webstite:

Jean Snow lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming in Tokyo — sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for the following online/offline publications: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred,Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco,Kateigaho International Edition, Wired’s Game|Life, PingMag, andThe Japan Times. He also manages the gallery space at Cafe Pause.

The photo on this post is from Andrea Innocent, an Australian illustrator/designer who is, as she writes on her site, a “self-confessed nipponophile and otaku.”  

Tracking Japanese manhole covers with Google Maps

Interesting story from James over at Japan Probe:

“Mainichi reports about a new website that uses Google Maps to track the locations of cool and unique manhole covers in Japan:

Contributors can add photos of manhole covers directly from their mobile phones, along with global positioning system (GPS) data to mark its location on the map. The website can be seen here (Japanese).”

I would have never thought that I would (waste) spend 30-minutes looking at manhole covers!

Zurui’s Japan via Flickr

 

I have a ton of pictures and video on Japan and never took the time to upload them to Flickr. Now that I revised the website, I have a good reason to share my various pictures of life in Japan. I will try to upload new pictures and video a few times a month!

Click here to view the slideshows. Enjoy!

Tokyo Property Purchase

Here is an old (but informative) article from Danny Choo on the pros and cons of renting/purchasing a home in Tokyo. I know the economy sucks right now but for those that can afford it, it may be a great time to acquire property in Japan!

“I wrote an article on buying a house in Tokyo a while ago and have been getting mail re the subject ever since. Rather can continue to copy and paste my replies, I thought I would write up something with more beef answering many of the frequently asked questions… 

After living in Japan for six years, I decided to buy a house because I just got fedup with renting.

Why I decided to buy?

• Apartments for rent are generally of poor quality – the walls are thin and materials used in general are dirt cheap – this is so that the landlord can make as much money profit as possible. The most rent I have payed is 220,000 yen per month and the walls in that place were so thin, you could hear the people next door sneeze. This is the main reason why I decided to buy – I just cant stand other people making noise for me to listen too – especially when its people running, jumping and sneezing!

• We tried different types of rented apartments – mansions, apartments and terrace houses – all literally made of paper and noisy as hell.”

The Japanese art of useless homes

 

Another interesting post on housing in Japan. Philip Brasor at the Japan Times writes:

Last spring, when the effects of the American sub-prime loan disaster were being felt but the world economy was still relatively OK, there was an article in the Asahi Shimbun written by one of the paper’s financial reporters who recalled several years earlier a visit from a friend living in the United States.

The friend worked for a real-estate company and he told the writer just before he returned to America that he and his colleagues appreciated the Japanese people, because they were investing in U.S. mortgages as securities, and therefore helping poorer Americans borrow money at low rates so that they could buy better houses.

The writer mentioned this episode to point out the irony of the situation, since it was the failure of those securitized mortgages that led to the burst of the U.S. real-estate bubble and the current worldwide recession. However, there’s a deeper irony to the story: The Japanese people, whose housing is, for the most part, inferior in quality to that of American housing, were making it possible for Americans to purchase nice homes. But who is helping the Japanese buy nice homes?

Japan’s Good Design Awards 2008

I love architecture and design. Business Week has a great story on Jun Aoki, winner of the 2008 top design award in Japan. Check out his story and the stories on the other 15 best designs in Japan.

Every year since 1957, the government-funded Japan Industrial Promotion Organization (JIDPO) has lent its prestigious Good Design logo to a list of new products. Most people tend to associate design with aesthetics. But while high-tech products perennially sweep the top awards—known as the Best 15—the 74-member committee of designers, architects, writers, and academics doesn’t limit its picks to whiz-bang gizmos and good looks. Often, it’s the products with tiny improvements that win the highest praise. This year’s grand prize went to Toyota’s iQ, a small car whose roomy interior is a marvel of engineering and space-saving design. Past winners were Sanyo’s Eneloop rechargeable batteries and Mitsubishi Motors’ “i” compact car.

JIDPO says winning products should “improve lives, foster industrial development, and promote export and trade by enhancing the quality of products on the market.” That vague objective only seems to encourage selection committee members to scour a broad array of sectors. This year’s winners reflect “images of life in the near future and designs that lead the way to next-generation lifestyles,” JIDPO said in a press release. The Best 15 and the winners of four other award categories get the lion’s share of media attention. They beat out a field of 3,023 entries. But ultimately more than 1,000 products in this year’s competition will get to carry the Good Design G-mark symbol, a decision that, critics say, dilutes some of the award’s prestige. Be sure to check out the Best 15.

Terrie Lloyd Reports on Oji Homes

Courtesy of Japan, Inc. Magazine, Terrie Lloyd reports the following scoop:

” It is common knowledge in the expat community that the three Oji Real Estate condominium complexes in Minami-Aoyama:  Oji Palace, Oji Homes, and Oji Green Hills are extremely popular with out-of-town CEOs and their young families. Oji Homes in particular draws a long waiting list of young families thanks to its 20m outdoor swimming pool and it’s convenient location right in the middle of fashionable Omote Sando. There are approximately 20 apartments in that complex, and over the last 25 years, we imagine that more than 200 families have lived there.

That’s 500+ tenants who rented their luxury apartments in the knowledge that they had a rock-solid landlord and the building was safe — or so they thought.”

Home by Tomoyuki Sakaguchi

I found this slide show on Black Otaku (it’s not what you think). I think I will purchase his book for a glimpse into a potential future neighborhood:

“I stumbled on a online gold mine. A talented guy named Tomoyuki Sakaguchi took some amazing photographs of his neighborhood. In his new photo book entitled Home, he captures 84 pages of Tama, the largest planned residential development in Japan.

Tama is a prefect of Tokyo. It’s famous for the Sanrio Puroland, the indoor, Sanrio theme park. It’s also the setting for that crazy anime movie, Pom Poko. Tomoyuki took all of these when the town was asleep. I think it give the photos a sort of magical look. My favorite time of day is that twilight time when you can’t tell if the sun is rising or setting.

“I had done a lot of central Tokyo photographs in the past, skyscrapers and trains,” says Sakaguchi, “and so I wanted to try a different location. I went to normal homes and photographed them at night. When I saw the results I was surprised, I felt as if I was looking at another world.” – Tomoyuki in a Japan Times article

Sakaguchi was a runner up for the Aperture Portfolio Prize.

His book would make a perfect coffee table book. Purchase it here.

Visit his Web site for more photos.”