Matsuya Ginza opened its POKÉMON COLORS exhibition on July 22 which is set to run until August 11. The event is a kaleidoscope of bright colours and shapes of Pokémon and Pokémon motifs, with four activities and one installation to enjoy, as well as 160 original pieces of merchandise for fans to buy.

Logo mark

Art Deli Key Visual | ¥4,400

Pikachu Design Pouches – Assorted Pokémon Design Pouches | Small: ¥1,650 Each, Large ¥3,300 Each

Get your hands on a range of vivid and stylish Pokémon items, take photos at the many different photo spots dotted around the event, and learn the latest news about the Pokémon franchise.

Indigo dye art piece

Dangling from the first floor atrium is a 20-meter Pokémon art piece made by the dye group BUAISOU who used the traditional Japanese art of indigo dyeing to create it.

©2021 Pokémon. ©1995-2021 Nintendo/Creatures Inc./GAME FREAK inc.
ポケットモンスター・ポケモン・Pokémonは任天堂・クリーチャーズ・ゲームフリークの登録商標です。

The Shinjuku-based cultural facility Bunkamura is currently promoting French culture and art as part of its monthly event which focus on different countries each month. Titled Bunkamura Bon Bon – Bunkamura France Monthly 2021 –, the event features artwork and commentary by Japanese graphic designer Atsuhi Ito as well as a Paris-themed menu.

Artwork on the walls at Bunkamura

Artwork on the columns at Bunkamura

Wagon Shop | Running: July 10, 2021 – July 18, 2021

Performance by Jester | Running: July 17, 2021 – July 18, 2021

The title of the artwork decorating the inside of Bunkamura is PLAYTIME and is a collaboration with MAPP_, an art project group known for their diverse artwork including the use of project mapping. The designs were created by graphic designer Atsuhi Ito who has captured the essence of Paris. The facility’s cafe is also serving up a special French inspired menu with bistro classics to seasonal fish, summer vegetables, and more.

Atsuhi Ito | Comment

“The inside of Bunkamura is decorated with fictitious Paris artwork with life-size illustrations on the walls, columns, elevator and elsewhere. We’re living in a time right now where we can’t just freely go abroad, so I hope with this people can find something nostalgic about Paris, snap some photos, and feel like they’re on a fun trip.”
パリの街並みを感じることができるアートワークやイベントをチェックしてみては？

Key Coffee has recreated its coffee from 1920’s when the cafe chain first opened. Named the Yokohama 1920 Founding Blend, the coffee was released on July 20 and will be available at their 54 branches up and down Japan until August 24, the same date when the coffee shop first opened.

Yokohama 1920 Founding Blend

A picture of Key Coffee’s Yokohama branch in 1936 when it was known as Kimura Coffee

Retro Showa-style espresso con panna

Milk Brûlée

Yokohama 1920 Founding Blend recreates the same flavour of coffee that the cafe served in 1920 when it first opened in Yokohama, an area bustling with restaurants serving both Asian and Western cuisine. It uses Brazilian coffee beans at its base, a type which was circulated a lot at the time. It has a distinct sweet fragrance and goes well with milk and sugar.

Back them, coffee was a commodity yearned for by the people of Japan. After releasing their hit coffee syrup in 1921, Key Coffee began serving coffee in a way that was simple, tasty, and accessible to everyone such as drip coffee and their Noi coffee-making series. In the 1930’s their products began to line the shelves of department stores as they began to develop as a spearhead for the emergence of coffee culture in Japan. They also began selling TOARCO TORAJA in 1978, a highly-regarded premium coffee. Today, the chain continues to be a hub for coffee lovers, and is creating new coffees and techniques.

Japan has been a boom in junkissa in recent years, a classic cafe which blends the atmosphere of the Meiji and Showa periods. Key Coffee is showcasing two coffees on their recipe page which capture this flair including an espresso con panna and milk brûlée.

The UT GRAND PRIX (UTGP) is a design competition that started in 2005. The contest uses the T-shirt as a creative medium and invites everyone to freely express their creativity. This year, the competition is themed on the Peanuts comic strips by Charles M. Schulz which first hit the scene in the US back in 1950, over a hundred years ago.

Create your own Peanuts tee design

Artists are invited to unleash their imagination and bring their own Peanuts creations to life using UNIQLO’s UT brand as their canvas. Designs will be judged by the Charles M. Schulz Museum and a team of Charles M. Schulz creative associates.

An internship at the Peanuts studio

The Grand Prize is $20,000 and all winning designs will become products sold in UNIQLO stores worldwide in the summer of 2022. The winners of the top two prizes will be invited to the USA. There will also be an internship opportunity to be a member of the Charles M. Schulz creative associates team.

Sign up to the competition and submit your entry for the chance of your artwork being featured worldwide.

Tokyo Midtown’s annual MIDTOWN ART PALETTE has returned again for the summer, opening on July 16 and running until September 5. This year, the event delivers a Digital Art Garden with gorgeous dream-like digital artwork.

Digital Art Garden

Last year’s event

Experience a distinctively Japanese way to stay cool and refreshed on a wooden veranda with light and mist dancing through the outdoor space inspired by traditional Japanese rock gardens. Find yourself bewitched by an enchanting summer evening as the digital art transforms throughout the day.

This year’s event is being held with all proper social distancing measures in place.

Take digital art home with you with AR fireworks

Locate five QR codes dotted around Tokyo Midtown which when accessed via your smartphone will award you with artistic AR fireworks, allowing you to enjoy fireworks with you wherever you point the camera on your screen, including at home.

Sanrio’s popular character duo Kiki & Lala, also known as the Little Twin Stars, are have brought their dreamy, pastel-coloured world to Tokyo Tower with a special summer event titled “Little Twin Stars Summer Night Fantasy Meets Kiki & Lala Exhibition produced by LIDDELL” which began on July 10.

At the event entrance, guests are given a special ‘passport’ notebook which is stamped before entering, allowing access to Kiki & Lala’s world in the clouds above.

Guests are guided by Kiki & Lala’s voice through the rose-coloured “Star & Rose-Coloured Cloud Fantasy Gate” were they are met with five different booths.

At Kiki’s Star Catching booth, visitors can experience one of Kiki’s favourite past times by ‘catching’ stars. The stars that are caught can be taken home as a fun memory.

There’s also the Starry Sky Light Shower booth which is decorated with mirror balls that reflect the light as well as a wall featuring words and phrases said by the twins, the pink and light blue-coloured Kiki & Lala’s Playroom where you can snap cute photos, the Glittering Moviegenic booth which uses your smartphone to watch an animation of Kiki & Lala, and more.

Fans of the twins can enjoy an exhibit of various artworks too, including the 8-meter tall Fantasy Wall which depicts the world above the clouds.

The day before the exhibition began, on July 9, Tokyo Tower was lit up in blue and pink Kiki & Lala colours from 19:30 to midnight. It was a special one-night experience.

If you’re in Tokyo this summer, soar up high into Kiki & Lala’s world at Tokyo Tower.

©‘21 SANRIO 著作（株）サンリオ

Japanese creative company NAKED opened its ‘NAKED SKY CRUISING’ projection mapping performance at Chubu Electric Power MIRAI TOWER’s observation deck on July 1.

NAKED has used its projection mapping technology at towers and observation decks up and down Japan such as Tokyo Tower, Abeno Harukas, and Sapporo TV Tower, combining it with each location’s nightscape and catering each performance to the seasons at various themes. Chubu Electric Power MIRAI TOWER has hosted seven night-themed experiences at its observation deck to date, but NIGHT SKY CRUISING is the first one to be held after the tower underwent refurbishment in September 2020.

Visitors can enjoy a magical projection mapping show on the tower windows with Nagoya’s incredible evening city view in the background.

teamLab Planets TOKYO revealed two brand new, original blue-coloured phalaenopsis aphrodite orchids on July 8 as part of its new Floating Flower Garden exhibit. The flowers are the first of its kind in the world and there are no plans for it to be sold, meaning the only way to see them is by visiting the Tokyo-based digital art museum.

Unique, never-before-seen orchids

teamLab has named the flowers Phal.‘teamLab Sunshine Star’ and Phal.‘teamLab Moonlight Star’ in cooperation with Haruhiko Kato of the Lama Orchids Center.

The flower enjoys a full bloom for around a month. The reason why this orchid is so special is because until recently only four types of phalaenopsis had been found to be blue. The fifth, Phal.lueddemanniana coerulea, was discovered in recent years, and this brand new version was born from it.

The teamLab: FIRE smartphone app lets you take flames home

The new app ‘teamLab: FIRE’ has been created for teamLab Planets TOKYO’s Universe of Fire Particles – Continuity exhibit which lets you enjoy the piece on the go. When you launch the app and approach a specific artwork or a fire held by another person, your smartphone will light up with flames. When you bring the flame close to another person’s teamLab: FIRE, the flame will connect. As you connect the flame you received with another person, and they connect that flame with someone else, the flame will spread all over the world.

Drawing on the Water Surface Created by the Dance of Koi and People – Infinity

The museum’s Drawing on the Water Surface Created by the Dance of Koi and People – Infinity exhibit will transform into bright colours for the summer season from July 21 to August 6. The digital artwork sees koi swim on the surface of water that stretches out into infinity. Visitors can walk into the water. The movement of the koi is influenced by the presence of people in the water and also other koi. When the fish collide with people they turn into flowers and scatter.

teamLab Forest Fukuoka is getting a makeover for the summer season from July 17. Look out for seasonal digital installations including a bed of bright yellow sunflowers, animals made of summer flowers walking around, and more.

Summer Digital Artworks

Shifting Valley, Living Creatures of Flowers, Symbiotic Lives

Animals of Flowers, Symbiotic Lives II

Soft Terrain and Granular Topography, 2020

Flutter of Butterflies, Ephemeral Life

For summertime only, teamLab’s Athletics Forest presents Shifting Valley, Living Creatures of Flowers, Symbiotic Lives – A Whole Year per Year where various animals made from seasonal flowers, such as sunflowers, roam the area. There’s also A Whole Year per Year / Soft Terrain and Granular Topography – A Whole Year per Year where visitors can see varying levels of three-dimensional soft terrain, and Flutter of Butterflies, Ephemeral Life – A Whole Year per Year, where butterflies flutter in summer colours.

The teamLab Athletics Forest and Catching and Collecting Forest are new museums by teamLab. In the Athletics Forest, visitors use three-dimensional thinking using the body, while in the Catching and Collecting Forest, they capture the wonder of catching and collecting things as children.

 
teamLab’s artworks are not pre-recorded images that are played back; they are created by a computer program that continuously renders the artwork in real time. As a whole, they are continuously changing, and previous visual states are never replicated. The picture at this moment can never be seen again.

Japanese men’s brand TENEO and Shibakusa Pottery, which was founded in 1841 in Hida-Takayama, are set to begin their first exhibition tour on July 9 which aims to make traditional Japanese craftsmanship part of our modern lives as contemporary art.

FULL HAND MADE with HAMAMOTO 

TENEO is rooted in the concept of combining and evolving the differing cultures and backgrounds of Japan and France. Shibakusa Pottery has been producing pottery in Gifu’s city of Takayama since the Edo Period and operates on the motto of “Handing down tradition is on the decline; tradition is the continuation of innovation.” Both TENO and SHibakusa have come together to launch a project that aims to develop and advance traditional craftsmanship, and so they are opening a series of exhibition pop-up shops beginning at DiEGO Omotesando in Tokyo on July 9 before heading to Discover Japan Lab. in Shibuya PARCO, g GIFT AND LIFESTYLE in Roppoingi Hills, and elsewhere.

Pre-orders for the products to be showcased at the pop-up shop are now available to pre-order online in Japan at TENEO and will be shipped in October. Exhibits include works by the young bonsai master Yusuke Hamamoto, flower arrangements Ayayoshi Ozono who maintains long-time traditional Japanese styles and techniques, and more.

The project will  collaborate with the international tattoo artist Hiro in October as well as many other traditional artists and craftsmen from inside and outside Japan. The pop-up shop also sees the release of the ‘GAS MASK POT/VASE.’ The purpose of these works is to show people new forms and ways of expressing tradition.

As part of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) project, Shiraraso Grand Hotel is offering a new experience for guests to create shades for warosoku traditional Japanese candles from July 7 to August 31.

Warosoku aren’t made with ordinary wax, they’re produced from plant-derived Japanese wax. Wakayama was once the biggest producer of this wax. Guests at the hotel will ghet to make their own shade decorations for these candles using decorations like the sea, food, hot springs, and panda.

The hotel is also offering free panda bookmarks to those who post a photo of their shade on Instagram, Twitter, or Instagram with the Japanese hashtag #白良荘グランドホテル.

Takashimaya Yokohama Store has announced a special exhibition centred on the Japanese animation studio Eiken. Titled “50 Years With the Sazae-san Series: The World of Eiken’s Animation,” the exhibition will begin on August 4 and touch on Eiken’s long history of animation such as Sazae-san which has been running since 1969, Tetsujin 28-go, 8 Man, and more.

Chapter 1: Eiken Classical

This section of the exhibition will feature 11 nostalgic anime series such as Tetsujin 28-go and 8 Man.

Chapter 2: 50 Years of Anime History

Cel animations and manga artwork for 27 series from the past 50 years, such as Glass Mask, will be showcased.

Chapter 3: 50 Years of Sazae-san

170 works, such as cel animations and background artwork, of Sazae-san, which has been airing since 1969, will be displayed.

Tetsujin 28-go Photospot

Commemorative Merchandise

A4 Folder | ¥440

Dolomite Coasters | ¥1,100

Sazae-san Ivorn Tote Bag | ¥3,520

Manga Design A4 Folder | ¥385

The exhibition will be split into three ‘chapters,’ or areas, with around 400 pieces of animation and artwork displayed. Fans of Eiken’s series can also get their hands on exclusive merchandise, snap a photo at the photospot, and more.

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