Cafe Uniforms Become Designer T-Shirts

The popular Japanese social commerce recycle shop has come up with another great concept of turning the old and used into design desirables. The new idea will see the staff uniforms from Tokyo’s popular cafe Soup Stock, recycled as new t-shirts featuring exclusive designs.

Both Soup Stock and Pass the Baton are the brain child of the Masamichi Toyama, who also runs the neck tie clothes range Giraffe. Pass the Baton works as a kind of vintage flea market, where members can sell there items which they have become attached to but no longer need, putting a note with a story of why they loved the product being sold. Mostly a social web commerce site they also have two stores in the fashionable districts of Omotesando and Marunouchi (both designed by Wonderwall’s Masamichi Katayama).

Toyama is well known for his design and artistic flair having designed all 35 of the Soup Stock cafe interiors himself. The t-shirts, which would normally go to waste as used items, have been redesigned and given a new lease of life by designer Tetsuya Chihara, who has worked on a number of fashion designs in the past. There are 4 different designs to choose form including “Tokyo Borscht”, my personal favourite t-shirt name!

The idea of taking iconic old uniforms and redesigning them into limited edition items is a great idea. This could easily be expanded into other areas such as the delivery companies uniforms or convenience store shirts. Collaborating with famous designers this wouldn’t just be a nice bit of CSR for the companies but actually a decent source of revenue from what would normally just go to waste.

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Soup Takoyaki

Takoyaki, The Osakan snack has spread across the globe as a signature Japanese dish. But surely this soup takoyaki has got to be one of the lesser known variants.

Takoyaki, the savory fried octopus balls most enjoy with a generous topping of crispy bonito flakes is probably the last thing you’d expect to find served soggy. But we found this street side vendor outside Osakako Station serving bowls of soup takoyaki.

The elderly store owner must have seen her fair share of foreigners passing by these streets. She chatted up all stray tourists who had curiously stopped by her shop this evening.

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Japanese drama : Ouran High School Host Club

Ouran High School Host Club Drama series is adopted from the popular manga by Bico Hatori. This drama series is about a scholarship student, who comes from a poor family, enter the most prestigious school locared in Bunkyō (Tokyo), Ouran Academy. The other actors are the other members from a popular Ouran Academy host club. These members usually tend to be the smart student in the class, and come from the wealthiest family in Japan.

The scholars student, named Haruhi Fujioka accidentally broke the antique vase in the Third Musis ROom, a place where the six members of the host club gather to entertain their female clients. This results in a huge debt for her. The six members mistakenly thought she is a male student. And they all agree to pose as a host in order to repay her debt. This begins the story of her to be acting as a male host in the club.

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Japanese drama : Tempest

This story is about a young woman named Mazuru, during the reign of the Rukyu kingdom (19th century), who desires so much to further her studies.

Unfortunately, there is a gender restriction for woman to study. Thus she disguise herself to be a Eunuch named Son Neion.

She passes the government examination, and is appointed to be on of the royal government official.

On this drama, she will be playing both role for male and female. Her supporting cast includes her lover (Tanihara Shosuke) and her enemy (Takaoka Saki).

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Japanese Food : Sushi and Sashimi

These two dishes are often thought to be one and the same. Sashimi consists of thin slices of raw fish or other seafood served with spicy Japanese horseradish (wasabi) and shoyu while sushi consists of the same, served on vinegared rice, but also includes cooked seafood, vegetables and egg. Another form of sushi is norimaki, or sushi roll, in which the filling is rolled in rice with a covering of nori. Cheap sushi is available at supermarkets or at kaiten-zushi restaurants, where customers sit at a counter and choose what they want. Watch Sushi and Sashimi Video here :

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Japan Nanotech Fashion

The folks from Japanese research collaboration Life Beans yesterday displayed their nanotech fiber clothes at the Micromachine/ MEMS exhibition at Tokyo Big Sight. On display was a dress that incorporated nanotechnology which can be used to heat or cool the wearer, and ultimately allow the whole dress to become an electrical device itself.

BEANS or Bio Electomechanical Autonomous Nano Systems, is a collaboration project between a number of universities and science institutes throughout Japan and are the same team responsible for the glowing glucose tracking mouse ear. The technology on display yesterday incorporates a new fabrication process that allows more flexible layers of conductive cells within clothes. Woven into dresses or protective vests, for example, mean that the wearer can be cooled or heated depending on the temperature by activating the nanocells and also enable the transference of electronic data through the clothes themselves. 

The nanotechnology in the clothes is capable of being utilized in a variety of ways, including turning the article of clothing into a mobile phone complete with GPS, recording data for sports and health care, or even ubiquitous data exchange by using the fabric as the circuit board itself. With the advancement in flexibility and the ability to weave the layers of conductive materials into fabrics, wearable technology could be integrated into normal everyday clothes.

Communication clothing is a growing area where, as we are increasingly seeing, fashion and electronics become closer combined together. As we rely on electronic data and portable devices more and more in our lives and jobs this type of advancement in technology will be pushing the boundaries of how we communicate with our devices in the future. 

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Unagi - Grilled eel

Grilled unagi is a relatively expensive in Japan, prized not only for its flavor but also for its legendary stamina-giving properties. It's traditionally eaten during the hottest part of the summer (on the "Day of the Ox" on the lunar calendar) to provide strength and vitality for the rest of the year.

Well-prepared unagi combines a rich flavor, a bit like pate, with an appetizing texture, crisp on the outside but succulent and tender on the inside. The cooking process is what makes the eel crisp and tender: The eels are first grilled over hot charcoal, then steamed to remove excess fat, then seasoned with a sweetish sauce and grilled a second time. In the Kansai area (around Osaka) the steaming step is omitted and the eel is grilled longer, burning off the excess fat and producing an even crisper skin.

The ingredients in the sweet basting sauce are important to the final taste of the unagi, and different restaurants maintain their own secret recipes. The quality of the charcoal used is also important: The best charcoal is made from hard oak from Wakayama in central Japan, and the aromatic smoke adds a special flavor to the eel as it's grilling.

Watch Unagi video here!

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