TOKYOMANGO

Tomoko Sawada: Artsy Cosplayer from Kobe

This is Tomoko Sawada. She's a Japanese artist who likes to dress up in different Japanese female roles and take pictures of herself. Pretty awesome stuff—it's super creative, yet it evokes the spirit of the PuriKura culture—the majority of young Japanese girls who document every single moment in their lives with sticker pictures. Here's how she explains her work:

I was bound by an inferiority complex. When I started to take pictures, I loved my image taken in photos, which looked attractive and cute. I could make myself look like a model or an actress in pictures. As I looked at my pictures again and again, the gap between my real image and my image in a picture widened. In other words, my appearance could be changed easily, but my personality did not change.

Danish Geeks Throw Mario Party at Campus Bar

Did you know there's a Mario-themed bar in Copenhagen? I guess it was only for one night, but students at the IT University in Copenhagen went all out and made Mario brick decorations, cocktails named Yoshi and 1UP and Big Mario Shot, and jumped around all night with one fist up in the air saying "poing!"

(Thanks, Kris!)

Pittsburg Boy Tears Up Japanese Country Music Scene

Jero is a 26-year old African-American enka singer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He's a quarter Japanese, and he promised his now-deceased Japanese grandma that he would become a famous enka singer. In 2003, he moved to Tokyo and started entering singing contests. Soon enough, he got picked up by a record label and some really famous songwriters helped him kick off his career.

Here, he performs his debut single, Umiyuki, which broke the record for debut enka single on the famed Oricon charts this week with 3.5 million copies sold.

TokyoMango is a Snack Stand in Ueno

OMG! I had no idea I had haphazardly stolen the name of my blog from a snack stand at Ueno station. (Or did the snack stand steal the name from me?) From this picture a reader sent me today, it looks like Tokyomangoes are actually  limited edition mango cookies and wafers. Yummmmm. I think I have to quit blogging and go work here.

(Thanks, John-Mark!)

People Squeezing into an Elevator

These people really want to catch this elevator going down to the Tsukuba Express platform in Akihabara. You'd think they'd give up because they obviously won't fit—but in Japan, we're really good at fitting more than the human eye may deem possible into really small spaces. This scene was a good portrayal of this concept, so I snapped this photo.