We’ve just had the opportunity to talk with Andrew Pollard, president of PROJECT, about his thoughts on Japan and its place in the world of retail and design. We’ll be putting together some of his insights in an upcoming post to augment our first post on PROJECT: WOOSTER, but in the meantime take a look at their latest videos on their time in Tokyo and Japan in general.

The office connection doesn’t get more explicit than with the Break on the Desk series from Kirin, which features flavored teas with zero calories. To liven up the break the packaging also features a “break time gallery” of original artwork printed on the side of the box. Collect em’ all!

Aside from the first flavors of milk tea, herb and lemon, and straight tea there are new grapefruit and chocolate varieties.

The canned coffee Suntory Boss Zero features retro packaging and goes with an accompanying campaign for lovers of classic trains. The Japan SL Collection is a series of model trains that come nicely packaged on top of can 2-packs, but the single can trains are a bit more fun. Attached to the end of each can, you turn the product itself into a rolling barrel of a train, perfect for gliding across the desk when you’re done admiring the Break Time Gallery your tea came with.

While it might not seem that beer is targeted at office workers, the Asahi Dry Zero is a new non-alcoholic, low-calorie beer substitute to compete with Kirin and Suntory. In a nice design move they’ve actually made the can look very similar to a real alcoholic can of Super Dry, making it less outstanding to others. Japanese aren’t known for enjoying a beer at lunch, but we’ve noticed a fair amount of office workers (mostly women) having non-alcoholic beers during lunch time around Tokyo. Purely anecdotal on our part, but enough to notice at least.

Yeah, it’s fake beer in every way except the color, but I’ve had a few when having ramen and getting behind the wheel and the crispness definitely beats not having any beer at all. If my dirty little secret is that I don’t hate it, I guess that’s not so bad!

Not sure if this has been done before, but this ad in Shibuya for the single Spring of Life plays the video, but if you want to hear the music you’ll have to plug in your own headphones. Pretty decent amount of people doing it too, all plugged into the same wall.

Of course, what it’s really missing is any interesting way of helping people share the experience. Just buy the album!! ON CD!! For $35 dollars when people in America can get it on iTunes for $12!!! Why?? Because Japan is insane.

They’re lucky that 99% of Japanese have zero idea how to use a PC and torrent music. At $35 it’s impossible to feel even a tinge of guilt.

If you want to see how much Perfume’s label (Universal) just LOVES its home fans in Japan, check out their websites:

Perfume Global homepage

Perfume Japan homepage

I would laugh if it weren’t so depressing. It’s the kind of thing that would give Bob Lefsetz a coronary.

Still, I like the promotion. Reminds me quite a bit of a Singaporean art project that came to Tokyo a few years ago that matched musicians with painters. The final work on canvas had a little spot for you to plug in and listen to the accompanying track, and they had a gallery full of these. I’ll try to find pictures later to put up.

UPDATE: The project was called Dual City Sessions and was held in 2008. The pic below features the collaboration of 4femmes + Fugusan on the left, but not sure about the one on the right.

In the meantime, check out the single for yourself, with headphones or not.

When I first came to Japan I shot tons of film before going digital, but those first few years of photos still contain my best shots because it was all fresh to me and I took my time. While the Lytro isn’t perfect by any means, it does force you to compose your shots the same way you would on medium format film, so you end up with better photos simply out of paying more attention.

While the image quality is below standards of normal point and shoots, as has been discussed in many places so far, these aren’t photos made to be printed, but actively shared and interacted with. Lytro calls them “living photos”, and if you just click around in the images below you’ll see why. The change in focus and perspective can be dramatic when framed properly.

You can see a bunch of these and more on my Lytro page where I’ll be updating when the mood strikes. Luckily we’re in cherry blossom season at the moment, which gave me tons of nice people and places to capture.

CLICK on objects in the images to refocus

On Saturday, COEDO Brewery had a great hanami party in Yoyogi Park. This guy brought his leg guitar.

…and these guys brought real instruments. COEDO is actually a great hanami beer.

The depth of the bubbles is a tricky one, but fun to play with.

Buddhas in Kamakura

On the train on the way home…

“When a bike becomes a DJ” is the tag line of the Turntable Rider which consists of a small fader box on the handlebars, a jog wheel stick on the wheel and a handbrake soundpad. A rider is able to mix and change pre-recorded sounds from DJ Baku depending on how he or she rides the bike, for example a sound pad activated when the handbrake is used or scratching while jogging the wheel back and forth. The video shows Japanese pro BMX rider Kotaro and friends creating their own personal mix as they perform their own tricks and stunts.

Interactive artist Toshiyuki Sugai the designer of the Turntable Rider comments in the “making of” video that the biggest challenge wasn’t producing the device “but to make a computer device that mixes well with street culture and is fun to play”. Cogoo have managed to align themselves nicely therefore with this young urban culture in an attempt to bring the bike sharing concept to a more modern market. The video even shows the unlocking of the bike through the Cogoo smartphone app, highlighting its own innovative use of technology in the bike sharing market.

The company also uses SNS and crowd sourcing to generate hype in a very clever way. Those who think the product is a cool enough idea are encouraged to like the product on Facebook and if it receives 5900 “likes” they will then put the Turntable RIder into mass production for the public to buy (so if you want it, get liking it!). A number of brands recently are trying to tap into this urban youth market and we have seen some great campaigns come out of it. Similarly the Turntable Rider is both a nicely developed marketing idea and a fantastically innovative product.