Two weeks from now FINALROUND XV will kick off in Atlanta, Georgia. AO, AGEO JOE, ABELITY and FRIEDA will be the Japanese team representing FINALROUNDBATS JAPAN and are ready to show the American players what the Japanese game is all about. To a certain extend so am I since I will be joining TEAM JAPAN on their road to victory as I will be shooting the entire event this March.

I am really excited to be on the team and even though I will be focused on directing the camera teams mostly, I will be rooting for our guys quietly from behind the viewfinder. 頑張れ日本！

TOKYOFACES.COM

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UAMOU

The second trailer for the upcoming TOKYO X CREATIVES series of interviews.  TOKYO X CREATIVES explores the creative side of Tokyo and is scheduled for release in April 2012.

Studio UAMOU can be found near Akihabara station at the 2K540 AKI-OKA ARTISAN and it houses a little space alien called UAMOU and his ghost sidekick BOO. I went down there one day to talk with its creator Takagi Ayako and her brother who runs a BOO themed cafe next door. You can read more about her HERE. The full interview will be released this spring under the TOKYO X CREATIVES banner. Please enjoy the trailer until then.

The track “Wavy Glass” is courtesy of Podington Bear. The kid is a Genius!

FAMI-MODE is a chiptune event held yearly at Kichijoji. The kanji for MODE in FAMI-MODE is the same Kanji as the one for HATSUMODE which is the first temple visit to greet the new year with family and friends. The people visiting FAMI-MODE each January do something similar but 8bit fueled music is their temple and videogame subculture is their celebration. This year was also an amazing night but first off have a look at my new trailer!

Last Saturday I was there to shoot material for my upcoming TOKYO X CREATIVES series. TOKYO X CREATIVES will be a series of interviews with different creative people living in Tokyo and one episode will feature Sakagami Satoshi who is the man behind FAMI-MODE. The first episode of TOKYO X CREATIVES is scheduled for release in April 2012 and if you want more information about the shoot with Sakagami san I invite you to click here. Until TOKYO X CREATIVES is ready to launch you can enjoy the first of a series of trailers that I will be releasing in the coming weeks.

This trailer gives a short but intriguing glimpse of FAMI-MODE. The artist featured is OMODAKA and he performs a song called HIETSUKI BUSHI. On stage he used his mac, a gameboy advance, nintendo ds and psp.

Music is courtesy of OMODAKA: http://www.fareastrecording.com/mt/

UAMOU and BOO.

In my final interview for TOKYO x CREATIVES I talk with illustrator and designer Takagi Ayako who introduced a little alien called UAMOU to our planet. While graduating at Camberwell College of Arts, she ran a little boutique in London where she sold her work to a ever growing crowd. But staying in Europe was never her intend to begin with, she likes Japanese food too much she explains to me giggling.

After returning to her native Taitoku she brought UAMOU to Japan. And now she runs a little Boutique at the 2K540 AKI-OKA ARTISAN near Akihabara station. So who or what is UAMOU? Well, he is a little space-traveler who got lost on a foreign planet. During his travels he encounters many hardships. Luckily he befriends a little ghost named BOO who not only helps him out but stays by his side on his ever during exploration. The ghost is a girl, Takagi explains to me.

It was very interesting to hear Takagi’s stories about her experience as a Japanese exchange student in London and it reminds me of my own experience being a foreign student in Tokyo. Listening to her personal history the story of UAMOU started to make a lot of sense to me. Because in a certain way Takagi san and me as well are visitors from another planet.

Her brother runs a bar named after the little ghost directly connected to her store and is completely styled by Takagi’s work. The bar sells a Shochu named BOO with the little ghost on the label and her father, being an artisan working with jewelry, created custom made gold-plated bottle-holders with boo engraved on the front. It is heartwarming to see how her family is involved in her work and it is not hard to fall in love with UAMOU. I enjoyed talking with Takagi san very much, and I look forward to having some drinks in cafe BOO in the near future.

Please look forward for the full interview scheduled somewhere after March.

Coffee and Famicom games.

For the second interview in my upcoming TOKYO x CREATIVES series I visited Meteor in Kichijoji to talk with its owner Sakagami Satoshi. The first time I heard about Sakagami was years ago when I watched “Points01+”, part of the excellent video series “Points” created by Jason de Groot. Owner of the small boutique Meteor and organizer of the infamous FAMI-MODE and FAMI-CASE events, Sakagami has dedicated his career to video-game sub-culture.

His shop is a small boutique near Kichijoji station. It specializes in chip-tune music, famicom games and designer clothes depicting and celebrating 8 bit pop-culture. For my interview I spend a couple of days at the store drinking Sakagami’s excellent home-brewed coffee and reminiscing over the good old days. We talked about his career as a designer, a shopkeeper and also about how his love for gaming culture brought him to organize FAMI-MODE and FAMI-CASE. Sakagami is friendly and very chatty and I look forward to revisiting his store both as a customer and a neighborhood kid wanting to play famicom games. If you are in the area I highly recommend visiting his store or if you are lucky, attending one of the events he organizes under the Meteor flag.

Please look forward to the full interview scheduled to be released somewhere after March.

I would like to thank Jason de Groot and Nakamura Kahori for bringing me in contact with Sakagami san. And I would like to invite you all to watch “Points” if you haven’t done so already. Even though too short, in my opinion the best video series covering Japanese video-game subculture to date.

MY VERY FIRST VIDEO PRODUCTION.

A long long time ago in the middle of ancient Rome I shot a documentary about Centro Gatti di Roma, a Cat Center located in an archaeological area in the heart of Rome. Even though the volunteers take care of over 250 cats, their main concern is the promotion of sterilization.

Released in 2008 I finished shooting this document in January 2007. To commemorate the documentary’s 5th anniversary I decided to re-post it on my main page. Looking back at it after many years I am still very satisfied, concidering that back in those days I could barely handle a camera.

The wonderful piano scores are performed by Keiko Kotari, Kanako Inoue and Shumpei Tanahara at the conservatory in Utrecht.

TOKYOFACES ファションブログ。

市ヶ谷でTOKYOFACES.COMの撮影に参加してくださったの皆様、まことにありがとうございました！今日の写真をアップすることはちょっと時間がかかります、その時までにぜひTOKYOFACES.COMをご覧ください。よろしくお願いします。

FIRST OF THREE.

Last week I shot an interview with Jean Snow at Klein Dythams’s in Ebisu. We talked about his life in Japan, his career and his involvement with PechaKucha and Pausetalk. It was really nice to see where he works amidst the many scaled paper models of several structures and it resulted in quite an interesting conversation. This is going to be the first of a set of three interviews I will be shooting during January. I will update about each interview in the coming weeks running up to the planned release in March.