Julia Barnes, who is running Nakaochiai Gallery and my good friend, appeared on a segement on tv show "Tokyo Eye", NHK. She introduced her gallery and her neighberhood in Ochiai area. It's on YT.

via http://jeansnow.net/

Ond day, at Starbucks in Shibuya, I ordered a my favorite coffee drink, Iced Cafe Latte with Soy Milk. I wanted to have the drink at home, so I asked to make it to-go and put it in a paper carrier bag.

At home, my eyes spotted a internal code jotted down in a black marking pen like below : SL and one "down-pointing arrow".

From my daily Starbucks habit, I know that they have some things on the side of the cup to show what the order was. S stands for Soy. L stands for Latte. But.... What is this the "down-pointing arrow" means ? They gave a thumbs-down to me ? :-(

I a while, I found that the arrow represents "a paper carrier bag" in Japanese. In Japan, it's said like "Te-Sage Bukuro".

"Te" = hand.
"Sage" = down
"Bukuro" = bag

So the code means "Soy latte in a carrier bag" in total. It was a mix of English and Japanese abbreviations! Interestingly funny.

a Starbucks paper carrier bag.

On last Sunday, I went to Apple Store Shibuya, Tokyo to check out Instant Drawing Machine. It's a live art performance by "Crust and Dirt" hosted by Julia of Tokyo Nakaochiai Gallery.

Crust and Dirt is a unit formed by two individual artists, Oliver Halsman Rosenberg and Clint Taniguchi. They often got together in the US, but now Clint lives in Tokyo and Oliver lives in New York. They reunit again here in Tokyo for their art show "Inter-dimensional Trading Table " at Tokyo Nakaochiai Gallery from May 19 to June 9.

Instant Drawing Machine is an interactive art event. It happens in two places - Tokyo and London, this time - connected using Apple iSight and iChat. The artist side (Apple Store) stands by with a large sketchpad on an easel in front of the audience. The other side of the iSight camera is set up with event participants.

Once the show began in Apple Store Shibuya, the artist asked the Londoners to share their dream or wish via the Internet. Then, the artist instantly manifested it right before them (through iSight) as a drawing. One by one the artist deployed people's mind into an artwork. Each of the words participants said were small personal things like "I about to play a concert but violin is broken...". IDM integrates such daily things into art, surely. It also states that the art work can be made even when the mind and body separated in far away places.

Glad to see the show went well. If you are in Tokyo, be sure to check out their show starting this Saturday at Nakaochiai.

http://www.nakaochiaigallery.com/en/next/

Pepe California's tune "Meli-Fali", one of notable songs from their early works, is now used in a TV advert for a new product line of Kirin Beverage. Kirin is a huge beverage company in Japan.

http://www.beverage.co.jp/kitchen/
Very exciting to hear my all-time-favorite-song in a big TV commercial campaign.

Pepe California is a Tokyo based, 3 men independent band with nice 'n' true do-it-yourself spirit. They mostly play instrument music with good melody.

I first found them in a promotional 3cm CD attached with Relax magazine about 7 years. All the tunes was good, but the best was "Meli-Fali." I was totally stunned by the strong, fresh, chillin' atmosphere the tune had. The catchy whistling sound was on repeat in my brain for a while. Later, the song was included in their 2nd album "LLAMA", which literally I run to a record store to buy my copy.

Without "Meli-Fali", I wouldn't become Pepe California's fan.

Buy "LLAMA" including "Meli-Fali" at iTunes (US)
Or download mp3s from Pepe's web site. (near bottom of the page).

Pepe California's latest album is "Yes, I do". That's their mood for now. Very housey - which are nice too.

Their my space http://www.myspace.com/pepecalifornia and their blog http://www.pepecalifornia.com/.

NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest cell phone operator, started their new advertising campaign in town with the new massage "DoCoMo 2.0".

The red star-shaped, (China like ?) 2.0 logo spreads in ad spaces like in trains, at stations, in newspapers and on TV with a bit provocative words to the rivals like au, Softbank.

Although DoCoMo is trying to get people's attention by using "2.0", the service has nothing to do with Web 2.0, of course.

http://docomo2.jp/

Former CEO of Tower Records Japan, Mr.Keith Cahoon is standing at the entrance of iTunes office in Japan?

see this photo of Joi's moblog/flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/487740664

A very interesting shot.

Through his long career at Tower far east, Mr.Cahoon has been connecting the east and west of the music business world together. He brought oversea's artists to Japan and introduced Japanese artist to the world.

And more importantly, he loves music very much. He is the music culture. Something good may happen for iTunes Japan...

I am in San Francisco now. I will be checking aournd WEB 2.0 expo. It's been some years since I visited here last time. Looking forward to seeing some new stuffs. The weather is a little nicer here. I will be in the city until 18th.

I'm tonotype.