Tag: weird
IKIMASHO! x The obscure micronation of Austenasia
by joostay
Auste-what? Learning about this tiny country from its new Consul General for Northern Ireland. Stories really don’t get any more obscure and fascinating than the one I am about to share with you regarding the tiny micronation of Austenasia – a landlocked country whose border with the UK is merely a line separating a driveway from a footpath in the south London suburb of Carshalton. The country has a flag, a border and a government. It even has an Emperor […]
Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: allan wilson, austenasia, bizarre, blogging, country, fitness, ikimasho, independence, japan, jonny blair, micronation, story, tokyo, travel, uk, weird, wrythe
Ami Yamasaki / “till a quiet room sings”
by joostay
“Every space has its own sound, according to its shape and material, and it has already been singing long before you entered it.” A few weeks back I attended the Tokyo Experimental Festival where I saw a performance by vocalist and cross-media artist, Ami Yamasaki. The space was limited to 20 people, the walls covered with thousands of origami feathers to catch and diversify the sounds of the room. Of course, a quiet space is never truly quiet, and so […]
Categories: Art, Music & Culture • Tags: Ami Yamasaki, art, blog, culture, ikimasho, installation, japan, Ochanomizu, performance, surreal, TEF, till a quiet room sings, tokyo, tokyo experimental festival 2015, Tokyo Wonder Site, voice, weird
Daikoku Matsuri: Tokyo’s Answer to the Ice Bucket Challenge
by joostay
“It’s a cold January morning in east Tokyo and as soon as I leave Shin-Ochanomizu station I’m cursing myself that I didn’t bring my gloves. Even the dog on the pavement beside me is wearing a coat, though I’m not entirely sure the color suits him. On this particular morning I’m on my way to the nearby Myojin shrine to watch a load of naked men throw buckets of ice water over themselves—It’s moments like this when I wonder what […]
Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo • Tags: aqrticle, asia, blog, city, cold, culture, Daikoku Matsuri, festival, ice, ikimasho, japan, japanese, matsuri, tokyo, tokyo weekender, traditional, weird, writing
In the Belly of Buddha
by joostay
Going Deeper Underground: Exploring the Tokyo temple with a dark secret What was I doing last Sunday morning I hear you ask? No, I wasn’t writhing about in my bed hungover. Guess again. Church? No, I wasn’t at church either – but I guess you could say I was having a religious experience of sorts, exploring the secret underground tunnel of a temple nestled deep in the Tokyo suburbs. This is a tunnel so secret that not even some of […]
Categories: Art, Music & Culture, Daily Life in Tokyo • Tags: blog, Denentoshi, Gyokushin Mitsuin, ikimasho, japan, japanese, religion, religious, shrine, suburbia, suburbs, Tamagawa Daishi, temple, tokyo, unique, unusual, urban, utako-Tamagawa, weird
FRANCIS BACON / Tokyo Exhibition
by joostay
“You can’t be more horrific than life itself.” Your last chance to catch the master of the macabre in Tokyo. Described by Margaret Thatcher as “that man who paints those dreadful pictures,” Francis Bacon was one of the most exalted, most disliked artists of the postwar era. His abstract images of psychological and physical brutality still have the power to unsettle today – achieving on canvass what David Lynch achieves on film or what Beckett did on paper. The Tate gave […]
Categories: Art, Music & Culture • Tags: art, asia, bizarre, culture, drawing, francis bacon, japan, modern, popes, retrospective, south east asia, surreal, tokyo, weird
IKIMASHO! 