Jon Siegel // 米岡 ジョン

This particular building was found down a side street near Shirokane Takanawa, and it’s design exudes the classic stylings of an 80’s sports car. The stripes running along the front and along the entryway are reminiscent of the tones you would find on an classic Dodge Charger. Surrounded by typical concrete Japanese apartments, this building’s eccentric exterior and unique surrounding space adds to the curiosity of what the owners motivations are.

I don’t think any other country on earth takes dessert as seriously as Japan. It’s easily on the level of a fine art, with painstaking attention to every tiny detail. Last night’s dessert was a fine example of such ingenuity. In many cases, crushed nuts are used to add texture to a dessert, but often fall flat, as the nuts are either salted(revealing the cheapness of the ingredients) or wet(poorly stored in a damp location). The feature of the dessert I enjoyed last night was the rich layers of chocolate, coupled with vanilla and caramel gelato. Yet, the key to the whole dish was the dry nuts. Perfectly dry, not a grain of salt on them, nor a hint of moisture. They provided an excellent balance, if not a perfect harmony not only to the entire presentation, but to the core flavor as a whole. No doubt such consideration is given to desserts in many other countries, but nothing can top the seriousness and dedication of the Japanese patisserie.

15,000 yen will get you a tiny CMOS sensor with some tweaked settings that give a sort of washed out “Lomo” look to it’s little 640 x 480 videos. It can handle microSDHC up to 16GB and it’s pretty much set on auto pilot the whole way. You can see some of the monochrome videos it can shoot here.

Not sure if this is really worth 15,000 yen when you can buy a used digital pocket cam for about half the price and get the same shoddy results tweaking it in FCP.