9 posts tagged “design”

CHINATOWN, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

MOTOMACHI, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN A BATHING APE: BAPE STORE YOKOHAMA COOL CAR...This looks like the tofu delivery car (Toyota Trueno) from the popular anime Initial D. This is NOT the actual car. This is a different model from the actual car model. This was the figure infront of the Precious Moments store. I just HAD TO take a picture. So cute! And that's me...trying to give a high-five. WEST YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

A little glimpse of DAIKANYAMA...

Some more of Harajyuku. This is mainly the "Urahara" area, which is the neighborhood behind Omotesando street & the Omotesando Hills shopping center. There are also a few pics of Omotesando street... As you can see...I love Japanese architecture. The buildings are so unique and amazing; and since there are less strict construction and land laws/restrictions/codes, the architects have more creative freedom to create even more beautiful, crazy designs.

CHINATOWN and its surrounding areas

MOTOMACHI BAPE STORE YOKOHAMA (by A Bathing Ape)

Konnichiwa! It's me again! I'm back...and I'm ready to tell you all about our day in Daikanyama. Ok, so not a lot of travelers head to Daikanyama...mainly because it is not a widely known district, nor is it extremely popular like Harajyuku or Shinjyuku...but it's a great place to just relax and get away from all the busy crowds. Daikanyama is a newly marked place for some good boutique shopping, and there are plenty of good sidewalk cafes you can pop into for a cup of coffee and a small pastry or a satisfying set lunch.

Jian and I love to head to Daikanyama because it's mostly a suburban neighborhood with quiet streets filled with interesting boutique stores and fun sidewalk cafes. Also, one of our most favorite denim boutiques, Evisu, is located in Daikanyama. We went to the store today, but they were closed. Apparently, they are closed on Mondays. Who knew? Well, anyway...this place is really great if you want a custom pair of jeans...and I mean really C-U-S-T-O-M (but be prepared to shell out some serious moola if you want very high-grade quality). Last year, Jian came to this store on a mission to snap up a pair of high quality jeans. The Evisu store is the foremost place to find quality denim. They've got lots of different types of denim in various denim colors (i.e. black, white, blue), lots of waist sizes, and a variety of cut styles (e.g. bootleg, skinny, straight-leg). However, the catch is that all jeans come in one length size only. But wait!!! This is where the customization process begins. Here are the basics on getting your own pair of custom Evisu jeans...

• First, you pick whatever basic pair of jeans you want in whatever style and/or color/wash you want.
• Next, you pick your waist size (sorry...the length of all pants will always be 34". no exceptions.)
• Then, after purchasing your fresh pair of jeans, you take your jeans to the "an Evisu Tailor" store.
• At the "an Evisu Tailor" store, the tailors their can cut your jeans to whatever size/shape you want.
• You can even have a custom design or custom Evisu logo stitched onto your jeans. (but you can only choose a design from their catalog.)

 

Tada! That was easy and painless, right? Er...except on your wallet. Joke! Seriously speaking though...all jokes aside, Daikanyama is a really relaxing place to visit when you want to just wind down for a bit. It's a mostly suburban place with nice, quiet streets, but a good getaway place from all of those distracting neon lights and buzzing hordes of people.

And after visiting Daikanyama...we headed back to Harajyuku with 2 friends for some seriously FANTASTIC chicken. I'm not kidding. There's a great specialty chicken restaurant in Tokyo called Toriyoshi. There are approximately a dozen locations scattered around Tokyo, and the one that we visited is hidden among all of the urban boutiques in Ura-hara. Toriyoshi is a restaurant that specializes in chicken and home made tofu. When we went there, we each ordered the 9-course set meal. Yes...I said NINE course meal. On top of that...for an extra $10 bucks per person, you can add on an "all you can drink for an hour" set to your meal. So, it's safe to say that we pounded 4 PITCHERS of beer in an hour's time. And just for reference, this is what our 9-course meal consisted of:

• some sort of complimentary appetizer natto dish (not included in the 9-course set meal)
• fried chicken wings topped with sesame seeds
• grilled chicken w/ green onion stalks on skewers
• cherry tomatoes wrapped in black forrest bacon on skewers
• soy sauce flavored, soft-boiled quail eggs
• steam bento box with black forrest bacon, thinly sliced daikon radish, cabbage & thinly sliced carrots
• house made tofu with sesame oil & 2 kinds of salt
• more chicken on skewers (which I think was either gizzard or heart...I forgot)
• cold soumen noodles
• dessert tofu covered in matcha powder with a sweet sauce drizzled on top

 

After such a kick ass chicken dinner...everyone was pretty much buzzed from all the beer. So we decided to sing some karaoke. Oh yes....drunken karaoke is always appropriate at a time like this! We headed back to Shinjyuku so we wouldn't have to mind the last call at the train station. and went to Big Echo...which is like a chain store of karaoke bars. We sang for approximately 3 hours before heading back to our hotel rooms in a drunken stupor. So, I'd say we had a pretty relaxing day overall.

This was one crazy...drunk...karaoke night at Big Echo. And I must say...Big Echo is the BEST karaoke joint! Room Service, food & alcohol, and a song selection you wouldn't believe. I mean, they had the Coldplay song "Viva La Vida" 2 weeks after it hit the radio station airwaves, and they had the music video version....not some crappy bootleg ripped version!!! They had a H-U-G-E English song selection...and they even had older songs from artists like Johnny Cash & Bad Religion...wow!

Until tomorrow! We're heading back to my dad's hometown...YOKOHAMA! And we're going to be visiting a close friend of ours..............Later!

Hello. Welcome to Odaiba!!! We have now traveled to the lovely island for some fun in the sun...and some major video game action! Today we visited Sega Joypolis, Aquacity and most importantly..........RAMEN STADIUM!!! In case you guys don't know about Ramen Stadium...it's an aisle in the food plaza of the Aquacity shopping mall, where the best ramen chefs in Japan host their ramen restaurants to compete to see who is the best ramen chef of the year. Also, we had ramen made by the only female chef in the whole Ramen Stadium.

 

So anyway...we're here at Odaiba...and what is Odaiba usually famous for??? GAMES AND RIDES! I gotta tell you...for those of you out there who love to play video games...this place is a really great place to visit. The Sega Joypolis hosts some of the most interesting games and rides you'll ever imagine. For example...Jian played the Initial D Stage 4 car racing video game....and this isn't your average ordinary video game. You don't just sit in a seat and press the gas pedal. This video game is set in a REAL car! No joke. The Initial D Stage 4 video game is unlike any other virtual reality game where the seat just vibrates and wiggles around. In this game, you actually get to sit in a real car with fully functional gagues (i.e. speedometer) etc. Except that the gear stick is replaced with a video game joystick. Other games include a haunted house full of creepy dolls, a small rollercoaster ride where you get to wear virtual reality goggles, and a skateboarding ride where you get strapped on to a swinging skateboard-style platform and swing side-to-side as though you were on a skateboarding halfpipe ramp. Those are just a few of the fun rides and games available at Sega Joypolis.

 

There were plenty of other fun attractions to visit in Odaiba...such as the Fuji Terebi building...but the most visited attraction would be Aquacity. Aquacity is most widely known for hosting the Ramen Stadium (which is explained at the top of this post). Other than the Ramen Stadium, this place is like any other shopping mall in Japan, but with a lot of American brand names such as: Gap, Stussy, Brooks Brothers, Aeropostale etc.

 

 

I think in total, Jian and I spent half the day at Odaiba...and the other half of the day was spent in Shibuya. Now, I know that Shibuya might be the last place on Earth that Jian would want to visit on purpose...since most of the stores are geared towards high school girls...but there are a few choice gems scattered about Shibuya that perks up Jian's interests. One of the main reasons for visiting Shibuya is that there's a new Bathing Ape store that just recently opened excatly across from the PARCO department stores. However, we didn't get a chance to take a peek inside because there was a line in front of the store, and we were NOT about to queue in a line in the blazing hot weather.

Another treasure hidden behind all of the hoopla and glitter of the Shibuya 109 crossing, behind the 109 department stores, behind the Seibu department store, behind the HMV music store...and tucked away from all of the crowded streets is the official Medicom toy store called Project 1/6. This store showcases many (if not all) of Medicom's finest creations including a few limited edition items. I was able to snag Jian a much sought after Project 1/6 with Choro-Q collaboration Bearbrick. This cute little bundle of joy only cost me $20 bucks...where as in the States, this little fella goes for $60 bucks minimum........MINIMUM! So, it's fair to say that I got a good bargain. Well...by then, our day was ending for the most part. We were hot, hungry and ready to head home early. So we ended up having an early dinner at an organic pasta restaurant (which Jian deemed to be too girly), and then we headed home.

 

These are some of the awesome toys at Medicom's Project 1/6 store in Shibuya...check out the 1:1 scale Saw doll...kowaii ne.

A few fun things we happened to catch in Shibuya. Sweet car. Funky computer mouse...shaped like boobs...and of course, the famous 109 crossing (a.k.a. Hachiko crossing).

Pictures from the organic restaurant we ate at in Shibuya. I forgot which street this was on, but it's in the basement of a building....located behind the Seibu Department store. Jian caught a picture of me right when I started to eat. The last picture is of Shibuya at night.

Tomorrow we're going to Daikanyama...for some relaxation (and quiet time). Later!

It's day two everyone!!! Yes, we were back to our old "stomping grounds" again. Harajyuku desu. It's always Ura-Hara and the quiet streets of Aoyama, the posh suburban district of the ever-bustling Tokyo.

Ah...I almost forgot one more thing!! We ALWAYS gotta make a trip to eat at the lovely BAPE Cafe!? (and yes, this restaurant's name has an exclamation mark and question mark in it...don't ask me why...it just does.) This cafe always showcases the Simpsons collaboration artwork drawn by the Original Fake artist KAWS (a.k.a. Brian Donnelley). This series of artwork is titled "the Kimpsons". Not only that...but the food is pretty good, and the prices are very affordable, even for kids on a tight budget. If you ever get a chance to go to Harajyuku and/or the Ura-hara side...you should definitely make a trip to BAPE Cafe!? . If not for the food, then for the incredible artwork....and pretty much everything's got a Bathing Ape print, logo or design on it...right down to the ice cubes.

I don't know. Whenever I stumble upon interesting information, stuff that I think would be fun to share, then I post it here....as long as it pertains to this blog. Oh, and I must say...Metropolis and Pingmag are my two most favorite resources for cool and interesting information from or about Japan. So, naturally, most of the articles I share mainly come from those two sites.

And that's my lovely introduction just to say that I have brought you another exciting article from...Pingmag! Yay!

 

Link: http://pingmag.jp/2008/03/31/japanese-school-uniform/
Article Title: Design & Mystique of the Japanese School Uniform
Written by: Michael Mahoney
Provided by: Pingmag
Article Snippet:
"The U.K., Malaysia and Ireland have nice school uniforms, but how come Japanese school attire seemingly takes it to another level, leaving the students looking like little sailors and marching band leaders?... ...I’ve been amazed by the variety of uniforms as well as the ways students customise them as far as they are allowed. PingMag shows you interesting details in fashion and the social performance that accompany this apparel to a point where the traditional Japanese school uniform has developed beyond the schoolyard and into pop culture."

Yep...just like I had promised...there's a PART 2 to my previous post about Omotesando Architecture!!! And since you've all been good boys and girls, I'm going to reward you with this delicious treat............

 

Link: http://pingmag.jp/2008/03/19/omotesando-architecture2/
Article Title: Architecture in Tokyo: Omotesando Steet, Pt II
Written by: Chiemi
Translated by: Natsumi Yamane
Provided by: Pingmag
Article Snippet:
"Walk by some of the finest architecture in just twenty minutes: In the first part of our little Architecture in Tokyo: Omotesando Street special, we tried to share with you some of the archtectural profile of Omotesando Street, beginning from the recent luxurious GYRE complex, up to the chic Louis Vuitton Omotesando building (completed in 2002). For today, we take a stroll up the road beyond Tod’s Omotesando, past the crossing of Aoyama Street, towards the Nezu Museum."

I am a lover of many things, and two of them would be 1. cool & unique architecture design and 2. Omotesando Street in Harajuku, Tokyo, JP. So I guess Pingmag (my favorite design culture website) must have read my mind, because they wrote this KICK-ASS article about...what else....unique architectural design on Omotesando Street in Harajuku! Seriously folks, this is a very interesting (and informative) article about all the cool buildings that line up like lego blocks on the main strip of Omotesando Street....It's not only the fancy, high-end shopping malls or the brand name department stores....it's also the universities, academies, churches and even living spaces that neatly pepper the booming street!

So come and check out this awesome article provided by Pingmag (with pictures and references) here.

Link: http://pingmag.jp/2008/03/12/omotesando-architecture/
Article Title: Architecture in Tokyo: Omotesando Street, Pt. 1
Written by: Chiemi
Translated by: Natsumi
Provided by: Pingmag
STAY TUNED...THERE WILL BE A PART TWO TO THIS ARTICLE!

 

And if you still can't get enough of the design culture in Japan...check out this cool article (also by Ping mag) about unique taxi-cab lights that flood the streets like the neon signs in Las Vegas...

Link: http://pingmag.jp/2008/03/13/taxi-lights/
Article Title: Flashy Lights: Taxi Illumination in Japan
Written by: Ryoko
Translated By: Kevin Mcgue
Provided by: Pingmag
Article Snippet:
"Prowling the city of Tokyo are hoards of taxis, chasing down lonely passengers on their way, to and fro. Characteristically, all are equipped with automatically opening doors and a driver’s white gloves. However, little distinguishes these roaring vehicles, classically Japanese, outside the small glowing beacon perched on the center of their tops - each company from every region set themselves apart with their own special logo and shape. How practical, since, from far, a passenger can see what type of ride they are in for that night! Today, PingMag spots some of the great variety of roaming lights for you."