Category Archives: Asia

Start Saving Your Pennies

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Brian D. Butler

VeryFirstTo is a British upscale product and experience website whose motto is “Be the very first to know about and have newly launching luxury products and experiences”. Now they are offering the world’s most expensive vacation package: a £990,000, two-year … Continue reading →

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Watch Where You Walk

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Brian D. Butler

When we travel, it’s easy to overlook the quotidian elements of local infrastructure, such as the lowly manhole cover. But visitors to Japan who watch where they walk are treated to a veritable art show. Japanese manhole covers once looked … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Asia | Tagged , | 1 Comment

On The Road

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Brian D. Butler

If you are a fan of street art, you may enjoy this story of Chinese street art collective IDT ‘s 1,200 mile journey through Southern China and Tibet leaving samples of their work along the way. The project, called “On … Continue reading →

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The True Way Is Along A Rope

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

Are you a Kafka fan? Do you love animation like a kid craves Saturday morning cartoons? If you do, set aside twenty minutes to absorb this fantastic Japanese animated film version of Franz Kafka‘s cryptic story A Country Doctor directed by Koji … Continue reading →

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Literary Snacks

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

Taipei-based web and graphic designer Alice Wang has created the “Quote Vendor” —a novel vending machine that dispenses bottled literary extracts just like snack food. Each plastic bottle contains an individual text quote along with the book’s title and author’s … Continue reading →

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Vintage Murakami

Posted on October 7, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

Vintage books has reissued its Haruki Murakami 15-book backlist with redesigned covers based on a unified color palette of red, black and white, and the use of the circle as a central motif. The original illustrations were screenprinted by Israeli-born … Continue reading →

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The Art of the Book

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

As a collector and seller of antiquarian books, I often marvel at the astonishing binding and printing variants in old books. A favorite decorative feature in many 19th century volumes is the use of marbled paper and cloth for endpapers … Continue reading →

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We’ve All Been There

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

If you’re part of the 99%, at some point in your life you’ve probably resorted to instant ramen noodles in some form for more than one meal. Now the lowly, but filling, instant noodle meal is being celebrated at its … Continue reading →

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Tokyo Aglow

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

Last week we posted an amusing little story about a scheme to make Amsterdam’s historic canals glow via bioluminescent bacteria. Well, Tokyo already set its Sumida River aglow during the first weekend in May. The inaugural Tokyo Hotaru Festival was … Continue reading →

Posted in Asia, Tourism | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Strike

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

On Strike: Today we are joining in solidarity with the workers, students and unemployed around the world in a global general strike. No work, no banking, no business, no commerce for me. If you can’t join the strike, you can … Continue reading →

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