Author: greg

Muji doesn’t inspire ecstatic fandom so much as subdued dedication. Otherwise, I’d turn into a screaming screaming junior high school girl every time I walked into one of their stores.

This Muji modular shelving system is one of five Muji products that received International Forum Design Awards in Hannover, Germany this year. Made from stiff, square-edged, recycled cardboard, and flush-fitted matte plastic joints, the system snaps together easily in a myriad of configurations. It’s clean and extremely functional, but yet it’s not thoroughly boring like most shelving. And it’s cheap, too.
You can see all the components online at the Muji net store [in japanese]
Square paper tube rack system [ifdesign.de]

A gravestone shop I pass on the way from the hotel to the supermarket offers cute gravestones as an alternative to the traditional obelisk variety. I asked, and they’re not just for decorating your Japanese garden. Couldn’t bring myself to ask if they actually got permission from Sanrio and Disney for these, though. It didn’t seem polite.


They’re about 140,000 yen each, and look like they were computer-carved from a smaller doll. The Kitty actually has a bow in contrasting red granite, and an actual hoodie, much like Degas’ Dancer has an actual tutu. Yes, I just compared Hello Kitty to Degas.

My thumbnail generator’s on the fritz, but here are some pictures I’ve taken around Tokyo using my Sharp TM-150. It’s pretty sweet for a phonecam, because it has a rather rare combination of decent megapixel camera and removable SD memory for cheap and easy mass image transfers.
First up is this Business Software Association commercial running on the Tokyu train:

Translation: “Company presidents who make you use illegally copied software are the worst!!”

“Hello, is this BSA?”

First of all, this whole Bathing Ape thing? Chill the flip out, people, it’s just not that cool. Bape is just Gap for the overly self-involved.
Anyway, TMN‘s mention of hopstop.com, a site for figuring out subway-to-subway trips in the city, reminds me it’s time to post about Norikae-Annai, aka Transfer Info, which is the same service for Tokyo.
It’s insanely helpful, if not as easy to start using cold; it gives you multiple trip options, indicating the fastest, cheapest, shortest on-train riding time… For untangling the spaghetti bowl that is Tokyo’s train/subway system, it’s pretty much indispensable.
I’ve got picture of Tadao Ando’s controversial new Jingumae apartment buildings nearing completion on Omotesando, the treelined main st of Harajuku. Ando’s concrete grid with a milky glass skin is starting to peek out of the scaffolding. Unfortunately, much of the opposite side of the street is now glass skin, too, so the street’s getting homogenized pretty quick. The interesting part of Ando’s buildings may be the courtyards, though. [Mori–who else?–tore down the Dojunkai Aoyama apartment buildings, revolutionary but crumbling 1927 concrete-and-ivy structures that served as incubators for much of the neighborhood’s alternative art and design scenes over the years. Oh well.]

Those penguins are everywhere. Remind me to include subjects in my next documentary that translate into cute plushtoys, because they have marched into every corner of the city.

Hedge funds are a lot like trucking companies: they’re usually started by one rather strong-willed guy who gets fed up with his bosses and decides he’s going to work for himself. One of the first things these egotistical entrepreneurs do is come up with a name and an identity for their companies. In both cases, the process is entertainingly amateurish, at least from a branding professional’s perspective.
Trucker logos–which I study regularly from my driver’s seat on the turnpikes between DC and NY–are achingly literal; I can easily imagine a trucker dictating the logo to his “artistic” sister-in-law [“It’s got a map, with a scroll on it, like the Declaration of Independence. And a cross.” “Put my name on a scroll, like the Declaration of Independence.” “It’s gotta be classy, with my coat of arms on it. And old-style writing.”] They’re little windows into what one man sees as important to get across: his ambition, his faith, his name.
So when the Wall Street Journal says hedge fund managers are trying to come up with names that are “soaring, mighty, fast or majestic,” –and that they frequently use their own initials–it feels familiar.
The hedge fund guys who put a lot of time into it also try to sound erudite and exclusive, like they’ve already arrived. They feel their fund’s name must somehow communicate not just their strategy or methodology, but their outlook on life; their firms are extensions of themselves. They try to assure potential investors–high net worth individuals and other fund managers–that they understand how these things are done. They’re a particular kind of unabashed lifestyle marketing, with a personal touch.
And so what’s important to hedge fund managers, besides Greek gods? There are the formative writers from college–I’ve seen Thoreau, Melville and Proust references–they presumably don’t have time to read anymore. But what’s most important to hedge fund guys, it seems–besides themselves–are luxe vacation spots: Aspen; mountains in Maine; that river in Idaho or Argentina where they go fly fishing; the peak near Val d’Isere with the double black diamond helicopter skiing. The Good Life. [thanks, TMN]

This afternoon just after 4:30, we heard a low rumble and felt everything sway and tremble for about 15-20 seconds. It was strong enough to make you stabilize yourself, but not so powerful that people realized it right away.
We were at Open Campus Day at ISAS/JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Agency’s mission control center for Jean’s X-ray telescope satellite, Suzaku. We were in the lobby of the building; the sheet glass handrails along the central staircase all wavered back and forth throughout the quake.
In the mean time, a bunch of train lines across the Tokyo region were shut down, which backed up human traffic, even to Machida, on the west side of Tokyo. [Of course, watching the news, it turns out that Yokohama, on our side of Tokyo Bay, and opposite the epicenter, registered at least a 5 on the Richter scale.]
Anyway, the only real effect we’ve had is having to heft the stroller up five flights of stairs at the hotel because the elevators aren’t working anywhere.