Keyword results: Japanese
Spanish Talking Watches
We'll be honest. When you look at these watches it's hard to believe they are actually made for the blind. It's like Inspector Gadget and the design team for Casio keyboards collaborated on this puppy. Was that mini-speaker built to amplify the synthy stabs of a Casio demo mode?
No sir, not this one.
CIBI
It doesn't matter that CIBI is at the sneaker-warehouse end of Smith Street, or that it's hidden in a backstreet between overgrown houses and factories. This spacious café/design-nerd paradise could be poking out from any industrial suburb and it'd still be poking out with pride.
CIBI is a big space, split into two areas.
Kanga Kanga
Tucked away above Russell Street, Kanga Kanga stocks - in their words - "Cool Asian Magazines". Visiting the store is like taking a crash course in Japanese youth culture in all its loud, fickle and furiously paced glory. From the retina-searing design of Nail Venus (a bi-monthly nail art publication) to the austere coolness of the design quarterly +81 there's something for all tastes.
Powershovel Cameras
Welcome Powershovel, the Japanese camera brand that has created, fact, the first 110mm fish-eye lens camera. ‘Demekin', is small enough to fit right in your pocket - it could be a spy camera if not for the massive lens. The ethos of Powershovel is to use the camera not just as a machine, but a sketchbook of everyday life.
Millsbucks
This shop might be small and the selection limited, but what is being done here (with two and a bit tables) is being done well. Millsbucks has a seriously small menu, but at least the detail necessary to make something that appears simple is actually being watched over.
In Caledonian Lane, just a skinny-panted shuffle from Jeromes, Millbucks has light and filling Japanese based dishes for a nominal cost.
Tezuka – The Marvel of Manga
Before there was Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon and Shirow Masamune’s Ghost In The Shell there was Astro Boy and his creator Tezuka Osamu. Widely considered the father of manga, the physician turned illustrator is as revered as Walt Disney in Japan, but little known in the West.
Vanishing
Kyota Takahashi's exhibit is part of the ‘Rapt!: Contemporary Art from Japan’ super-exhibition. Showing Melbourne and Sydney how Japanese art extends beyond the meditative (Mori) and cutesy (Murakami), Takahashi's abiding interests are in architecture and light, and Spacement's subtle angles provide a perfect arena for Vanishing.
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