Magazine Wall (雑誌の壁)

Do you collect magazines? If you do and you have tones of them, you can do this: make it a wall!

Designed by Elding Oscarson, the interior walls of this graphic design office in Stockholm are made up of literally thousands of magazines! I like how this original idea of a wallpaper reflects on a creative business company. Simple yet stunning!

{images via vectroave.com}

Announcement

{image via Fosten Greetings}

As many of you already know, the Japanese masking tape company MT has a new exclusive distributor in US now, which means I won't be able to sale the tapes I brought back from Japan on Etsy once my current inventory is gone. The new overseas version of the tape is 10m long while the Japanese version is 15m. I also won't be able to sale the new designs since it's not open to the overseas market yet. If you want these tapes, act now while they are still available!

Letterpress Dice Prints (サイコロポスター)

{images via Stukenborg}

These letterpress dice prints by Stukenborg are stunning! These are printed by hand in his studio. The compositions were built by arranging 720 dice on the bed of the press, and ink was rolled directly onto the face of the die for each impression. It is printed on a very light green Japanese handmade paper called Kitakata (喜多方紙), which has a deckle on all four edges.

This is absolutely lovely, such a simple idea with a beautiful outcome. I would like to have one in my living room! Isn’t letterpress great?

Umbrella Street (傘の町)

[via fuluk]

[via fuluk & Josè Rafael Navarro]

[via lizuc]

I saw this post on Lilli's blog That Saturday dot com and I just have to re-post it! J and I have been thinking about going to Spain for a long time but we haven't have time to make it happen. I want to go to Spain, of course for the architecture of Barcelona or the streets of Madrid, but I didn't know about this Umbrella Street in Alicante, Spain until now. When I saw these images I was overwhelmed. To tell the truth, I am not a romantic girl who likes rain. Usually unbrella made me sad because it associated with gray, rainy days….But this one is totally different! These made me feel happy, isn’t it amazing?

MT's Newest Masking Tapes!

{Red and Blue Tiles}

{Green and Lavender Colorful Dots}

{Red and Blue Marbles}

{Red and Green with Gold Diamond}

{Red and Light Blue with Cross}

{Colorful Stripes}

{ Pink and Yellow Argyll}

Finally I received my shippment of MT's newest masking tapes. I have posted part of them to my Etsy shop and will post them all by next week. Here are sneak peeks. If you are interested, please click here!

Gummy Bears (ガミーベア)

I have this horrible addiction to gummy bears. I cannot eat just one and stop. I can't eat 10 and stop. I have a ritual where I need to alternate different colored gummies--first the lighter one, then the darker colored one. There's no rhyme or reason for this insane behavior... I just do it. So on any given day when I've indulged myself into buying them...which isn't too often nowadays since they are not good for my teeth, I'll start out with the clear one, then move to the yellow, then the orange, then the red, then the green... etc. You get the point. Believe it or not, the first time I encountered these gummy bears was in a Zakka store in Japan. Why in a Zakka store? I am not so sure, I think it's because at that time only Zakka stores imported foreigh candies...? In the beginning I didn't think I would like this stuff in that they looked weird and it seemed cruel to chew on the little bears. But once I tried it, I got hooked.

Who created these tiny chewy morsels of pure sugar heaven? According to Wikipedia, the gummi bear originates from Germany where it is popular under the name Gummibar (rubber bear) or Gummibarchen (little rubber bear). As I write this, I am chewing on Gummy Sour Worms.... This is my new addiction, and I thought I'd expand my universe....

Valentine’s Day is not for Japanese women!

{image via flickr}

{image via flickr}

{image via flickr}

{image via flickr}

{image via flickr}

{image via flickr}

{image via flickr}

{image via http://blogs.japanesepod101.com}

Before I moved to US, I didn't know that Valentine's Day is also for women too.

In the US, Valentine's Day celebrations are generally geared towards couples, with a slight bias towards women when it comes to the marketing of chocolates, flowers and other gifts---a bias that is meant to have women encourage men to buy gifts for them. In Japan, things are a little different. The Japanese celebrate St. Valentine's day in a rather unique fashion---Women give men gifts of chocolate as well as other gifts. The chocolates and other Valentine's Day items are marketed towards women, but they're marketed for them to buy and give to men, rather than the other way around.

From mid January, grocery stores, department stores, and convenience stores start selling many different kinds of domestic and imported chocolate. More than half of the chocolate sold in a year is sold around Valentine's Day in Japan. Women buy chocolate for their co-workers, bosses, male friends, brothers, father, husband, boyfriends, and so on. These gifts of chocolate are divided into two types: giri-choco (義理チョコ, obligatory chocolate) and honmei-choco (本命チョコ, chocolate for the man the woman is serious about). Giri-choco (義理チョコ) is given by women to their superiors at work as well as to other male co-workers. Many men feel embarrassed if they don't receive any chocolate on Valentine's Day. Women usually make sure to give giri-choco to men around them so that they don't feel left out. That's why it is not unusual for a woman to buy 20 to 30 boxes of this type of chocolate for distribution around the office as well as to men that she has regular contact with. The average price range for a giri-choco (義理チョコ) is from 200 yen to 500 yen each.

Women tend to give special gifts, such as neckties and clothes with an expensive box of honmei-choco (本命チョコ) to her special someone. Honmei-choco (本命チョコ) is more expensive than giri-choco and is sometimes homemade. It's considered lucky if a man could receive a honmei-choco (本命チョコ).

While all of this may seem quite one-sided, confectioners in Japan - never ones to miss an opportunity to sell more - took advantage of the Japanese feelings of obligation and created White Day in 1980 to help assuage the guilt feelings of those poor obligated males who received chocolate on Valentine's Day. On March 14th, exactly one month after Valentine's Day, men who were lucky enough to receive gifts of chocolate have the chance to return the favor by giving the women who gave them gifts of chocolate a more expensive box of chocolate or sweets (for some reason, these return gifts seem to be priced slightly higher than those the women purchase). The stores provide plenty of reminders of the approach of this day so that even the most forgetful man cannot say that it slipped his mind. The gifts of chocolate that men buy are in white boxes (after all, it is White Day) and come with separate shopping bags to put them in.

In recent years, many Japanese young women exchange chocolate gifts with their female friends. These chocolates are called tomo choko (友チョコ friend chocolate).

I am glad that I don't have to do this giri-choco (義理チョコ) thing any more. I wasn't good at it and didn't enjoy it at all. Especially I was working for a company with about 100 male co-workers! Imaging that! Of course I didn't buy Giri-choco (義理チョコ) for all of them. In fact, I ususally skipped that day....

Now I just need to get one honmei-choco (本命チョコ) for my lovely husband, and I enjoy it!

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

QR Code (QRコード)

If you have been to Japan you must have seen this. You can see it everywhere: on the billboards, postcards, posters, print advertises, flyers, bottles, packages...etc. This is called QR Code. The QR is derived from Quick Response, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.



The original barcode was invented in America, but the technology was improved in Japan. This QR Barcode was invented in Japan and it's very common in Japan. If you use your Japanese cell phone to scan the code, you can read this code with the camera and access the website without typing the URL manually. Actually, one of the interesting thing I observed is that in Japan, a lot of time, instead of telling you the URL, they either give you this QR Code or tell you how to search it. For example, Japanese Coka-cola advertise, instead of spelling out www.cocacola.co.jp, they would give you the QR code on their priducts or tell you to type in コカコーラ (Coka-cola in Japanese) and search for it. Since I don't have a Japanese cell phone, I can't access the site but search for it.

Pantogar Memo Pad

{image via directdaily.com}

Losing hair gradually is a problem people tend to neglect. A specially designed memo pad is made to engage people with the problem of hair loss. As users tear off memo sheets every day, the illustrated person’s “hair” becomes thinner and thinner, alerting them of possible hair loss. They then remind them to face the problem before it is too late and that Pantogar revitalizer is the best solution.

This memo pad is designed by JWT, Hong Kong. The guy's face looks really sad gives a very strong impact. Would like to see other version if there is any.

Japanese Masking Tape Business Cards

{images via Mint}

{images via Mint}

{images via Mint}

Check out these beautiful business cards by Ellie. These cards are customized with your contact infomation, printed on cover stock, then embellished with my favorite Japanese masking tape and a string around the middle! How simple but pretty! You can purchase some in her shop, Hello Tenfold.


I just recived my shipment of boxful of Japanese masking tapes. Ellie's Business Card inspires me to do some hand stamping (Gocco-ing) + Japanese Masking Tape embellished business cards for myself. Don't know when am I going to do it, but it's on my to do list now.

Above is my favorite set of the tapes. If you want to do some cards for yourself and you need some tapes, you can purchase some here.