For something really different this weekend, here are three videos showing Tamasaburo’s performance of Sagi Musume, with English voice over comments.

Slate.com has a nice gallery of Hiroshi Hamaya photographs to accompany a post about his retrospective book (Fifty Years of Photography 1930-1981).

Born in 1915, Hiroshi Hamaya began his career studying aerial photography and started his Yukiguni (Snow Land) series, which focused on farming practices and daily life in the remote mountains of Niigata prefecture, in […]

When Westerners first began to visit Japan in the mid-1500s they were struck by the refined beauty and quality of the country’s arts and crafts. It was a kind of beauty and quality that they had never seen before.
This special quality of Japanese things was so commonplace that the Japanese themselves did not consider it […]

The Tokyo Design Festa is a semi-annual event where artists, craftsmen, performers, musicians, film-makers, and what-not gather from all over the world to exhibit their creations.
It’s a weekend of artistic chaos!
It’s up for votes on Current TV.
Help a Blogger out, why doncha?

The Tokyo Design Festa - a chaotic ensemble of art

Tokyo Design Festa

Anime fan wearing an all handmade costume

Click here to read more. . . »

As I entered the futuristic-looking Tokyo Big Site building on Odaiba […]

Here’s a little avant-garde weirdness from Tokyo Design Festa.
She’s from Taiwan and was one of the performers at the Design Festa - vid coming up soon on that!

Music by SevenCycleTheory

NPR’s All Things Considered has an interesting biography (audio, 7:30 min.) of Japanese hibakusha (Atomic bombing survivor) artist, Ikuo Hirayama, who is now in his 70s.
Many of his friends died. Hirayama grew ill from radiation sickness and his white-blood-cell count plummeted, but eventually he recovered. He left Hiroshima, adopted Buddhism as a way of […]

Popee is a brilliant series of animations that is longer being made, apparently because of complaints that it might be bad for kids. It is no more violent than Tom & Jerry, but certainly creepier and incomparably esoteric.
For better or worse, my daughter loves these. The same animator also made a series called Stain, well […]

Takashi Murakami’s life sized hentai action figure has sold for $15,161,000 according to Sotheby’s website.
The piece of part of his show currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum. I went to see it a couple of weeks ago and it’s a really fun show.
A picture of the piece is below (NSFW):

[…]

May Day in Kyoto not only involves a parade honoring International Worker’s Day, but also marks the opening of verandas in restaurants in Pontocho along the Kamogawa River.

A pair of maiko (apprentice geisha) shoes at the entrance of a Pontocho restaurant.

The restaurant where I ate had a little screen separating our area from the […]

Japan’s oldest “modern” robot — the 10-foot, 6-inch GakuTenSoku — has been awakened in Japan. Gone are the inflatable rubber tubes of the original 1928 android build by biologist Makoto Nishimura. The bot now tilts its head, moves his eyes, smiles, and puffs out his cheeks thanks to a $200,000, computer-controlled, pneumatic-servo makeover. While nothing […]

I’m pretty sure TPTB meant “No graffiti.” But the most appropriate English phrase in Japan is often rewritten to become what a Japanese person feels would be the correct expression, if only English were spoken as it is supposed to be. Or so a certain translator tells me.
(Photo taken at Himeji.)

Once upon a time, train stations in Japan clicked and clattered. It was common to give your ticket to a ticket man who clipped a hole in your paper ticket. While waiting for the next passenger, the ticket man rattled his hole puncher rhythmically. Icoca, Suica, Pasmo and other automated systems have mostly rendered the […]

Something to relax by this weekend.

This was from a monthly dance event in Tokyo called Tokyo Decadance where people dress in wild outfits and such.
This guy wore a combination of Predator and Optimus Prime which he called Preda-Prime. He had two light sabers which he swung around the dance floor.

Music by Koko T.

If you are in New York you might like to know that the Brooklyn Museum is hosting an exihibit of the work of Takashi Murakami.
Who knew that the first Louis Vuitton boutique in Brooklyn would touch down smack in the middle of an exhibition in one of the borough’s most venerable art institutions?
But there it […]

From Pink Tentacle:
Swedish furniture giant IKEA has converted the Kobe Portliner Monorail into a moving showroom before the April 14 opening of a new retail outlet at Port Island. The redecorated train, which features a colorful exterior, bright upholstery and fancy curtains, will carry passengers in style until May 6.
I wish they would have pulled […]

Kinryu-no-Mai or Golden Dragon Dance is performed every year in Asakusa, Tokyo to celebrate the founding of Senso-ji Temple.
On March 18, 628 AD two fisherman found a small gold Buddhist statue in the river. Supposedely, a Golden Dragon appeared in the sky to mark the event. A temple was built for the statue and Asakusa […]

A blog called Dark Roasted Blend has posted a report on creative barcodes by a Japanese company named D-Barcodes.

As cool as these things are, I can not recall ever having seen them in use. Has anyone else ever seen them on actual products?
Thanks to Richard Chmura.