A couple of goodies I have found or rediscovered on the web during the latest week:

1. This amazing kinetic sculpture of San Francisco. You _have_ to see the video. It is absolutely gorgeous and incredibly impressive!
2. Earth at night. Wow. Look at how lit up Japan is over there!
3. Go make these cute page corner bookmarks!
4. Here is a rough guide about how to order food in Japan if you do not speak any Japanese. Usually I think various guides often contains a lot of odd tips, but this one seemed pretty straight forward and down to the point.
5. Melvin the machine! If you enjoyed playing with dominos when you were a kid, you will love this.
6. Japan has glowing green mushrooms! Maybe the radioactive levels are through the roof after all 😉
7. I generally dislike theme-restaurants and cafes, they are usually more expensive and the quality of the food is often so-so, you pay for the experience, basically. Still, I saw this Alice in Wonderland restaurant, and I almost, just almost, want to go once just to see what it is like.
8. I know I  have linked her before, but whenever I feel out of inspiration, I check out her site. The one and only Linn Olofsdotter. Love. I also like the way she describes her workflow, watching movies while she works, doodle instead of sketching. Sounds like the perfect workflow to me!
9. DaisyDisk is a great utility for mac to find out what files take up most space on your hard drive. Really neat info-graphics and very useful.
10. A bit old, but an interesting 12-minute video about “Japan – the strange country”. It focuses mainly on the negative points about Japan, but it is still an interesting little tid-bit of information.

Another book post, with some more books I am planning to read this summer.

花と苺はいちばん可愛い: This is not really a book to read, it is just filled with wonderful clipart! I prefer to take my own photos when I make collages, but sometimes I just have to buy a small book or two filled with inspiration and just put things together and doodle. It seems like digital clipart is really popular in Japan these days, there tons of beautiful books filled with ready-to-go clipart in the bookstores these days. I will make a seperate post showing some of the pages from this book (coming right up!).

Read Real Japanese: I have been wanting to read more Japanese, and this book has English translation on one side, and the original Japanese text on the other.

Talk less, say more: I have no idea what this book is about, and I simply bought it because the title seemed appealing. If anyone has read it, please let me know if it was decent or not.

Wednsday is indigo blue: This is a book about synesthesia – mixing of the senses. Some people have various part of the brain connected in different ways then the rest of us, and that can lead to some really interesting result. For instance, this German guy could recite the numbers in pi for about 5 hours, and he explained it because he saw each letter as a figure and a color, so when he recited all the letters of pi, it was like walking through a beautiful landscape. There are different kinds of synesthesia, people can taste colors, see letters or numbers in colors, hear shapes and so on. I have been really interested in synesthesia for a long time, but I have not found that many books about it. Looking forward to read it!

Bad Science: I have been wanting to get my hands on this book for quite a while – it is basically a big collection of alternative treatments and why they do not work, Ben Goldachre uncovers alternative flawed treatments one by one, everything from homeopathy to food supplements. I am not one of those people who hate alternative health care, quite the contrary (I’ve had alternative health experiences myself that I can not explain, but which did work for me) , but I do think it is nice to know what is fact and what is simply placebo effects.

I have been wanting to make a book post for a little while now, here are some of the books I am planning to plow through this summer. Binka wrote a good entry (Norwegian) a little while ago, admitting to not be the most avid reader, and I definitely fall into the same category, at least when it comes to fiction. I simply can.not.read.fiction anymore. I used to read a lot of it. I am not sure what happened. It is not that I do not want to, but there is just nothing that holds my interest long enough for me to finish a fiction book. I have been in this state for about 2 years, and it does not seem to change any time soon. I have solved the problem by reading non-fiction, for some reason I have absolutely no problem getting through books as long as I feel like I learn something concrete. (I am not implying that you do not learn things from fiction, I am merely saying that I do not have the patience for them these days.) So here are some non-fiction books I will be reading this summer:

Dale Carnegie – How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: I definitely belong to the group of the population that worries too much, but I am working on it, and I have made an active choice and change it. As Mark Twain said; “I’ve had thousands of problems in my life, most of which never actually happened”. Now I am trying to find books and solutions to the whole cycle of worrying. This Dale Carnegie book seems pretty straightforward and useful, with concrete examples and good structure.

Dan Ariely – Predictably Irrational: Dan Ariely is my absolute favorite speaker I have heard from TED conferences, and he actually makes behavioral economics fun. He explains why we behave irrational and make bad choices for ourself – again and again – in a highly predictable pattern. All of his work is based on experiments, and the way he describes them makes it fun and easy to read. I read the first 91 pages today while drinking coffee, and I can not wait to read the rest of the book. Highly recommended if you are interested in human behavior and choice!

Jonah Lehrer – How We Decide: I do not know much about this book yet, but the beginning of it seems promising. Jonah Lehrer explains why we in fact need our emotional side in order to make choices at all. This is an excerpt from amazon.com: “Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason and the precise mix depends on the situation. When buying a house, for example, it’s best to let our unconscious mull over the many variables. But when we’re picking a stock, intuition often leads us astray. The trick is to determine when to use the different parts of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think.”

Steven Pinker – How the Mind Works: I have to be honest, I don’t particularly like the way Steven Pinker writes – he uses a lot of words to get to his points. However, when he gets to his points, and he does, it is a really great read. From amazon.com: “MIT’s Pinker, who received considerable acclaim for The Language Instinct, turns his attention to how the mind functions and how and why it evolved as it did. The author relies primarily on the computational theory of mind and the theory of the natural selection of replicators to explain how the mind perceives, reasons, interacts socially, experiences varied emotions, creates, and philosophizes. Drawing upon theory and research from a variety of disciplines (most notably cognitive science and evolutionary biology) and using the principle of “reverse-engineering,” Pinker speculates on what the mind was designed to do and how it has evolved into a system of “psychological faculties or mental modules.””

Stephen Hawking – The Grand Design: I am so looking forward to reading this book! Since i haven’t read it myself yet, here is a clip from amazon.com: “In The Grand Design we explain why, according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence, or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. We question the conventional concept of reality, posing instead a “model-dependent” theory of reality. We discuss how the laws of our particular universe are extraordinarily finely tuned so as to allow for our existence, and show why quantum theory predicts the multiverse–the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature.”

If any of you have any good recommendations for non-fiction books, I would love to hear them! I am interested in everything from math and science to psychology and emotions, but I have a particular soft spot for anything that has to do with the human mind.

Everything is a Remix Part 3 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

A new part of this awesome series is out, if you haven’t seen part 1 and part 2, you should watch those as well. Beautifully done, it describes just what I feel about creativity as well. Nothing is original.

Lately I have been thinking that I want to write a couple of things that can be useful for other people to read. Of course it is nice to post pictures and write about what is going on in my own life, I will continue with that as well. I thought that after I moved to Japan I learned a lot of things about how it is to live here that I wasn’t really prepared for, so I decided to write a little list of things I wish people would have told me before I moved. (these are only my own experiences, feel free to disagree with me!)

10 things you may or may not know about Japan

1. The laundry. To do laundry in Japan is a fun experience. There is usually no warm water connected to the washing machine. There is only cold water. When I first moved to Japan I was worried that the clothes wouldn’t get completely clean, but now I think the cold water washing machines are grand. The colors last much longer and the cold water is not as hard on the clothes. And oh, usually the washing machine is placed on the veranda, not indoors.
2. Your clothes and your hair and your apartment in the summer. Speaking of laundry; Japans summer is very humid, which makes it hard to dry clothes. They kind of get almost dry, but not completely. Same with drying your hair. Even when you use a hairdryer, I often find that my hair doesn’t completely dry. The humidity also makes awesome conditions for mold and fungus. And the Japanese black mold is not like western mold. It is mold on steroids. I have no science to back me up on this, but I sincerely believe it can form over night. That is why you usually try to have a gap of a couple of cm between the wall and the furniture, so the air can pass through and no mold will form. And don’t get me started on the dust. I have no idea how or why the dust gathers so quickly, but prepare to clean a whole lot more if you move to Japan.
3. The kitchen. There average Japanese kitchen does not have an oven. You can not roast a turkey or bake a pizza. I am sure kitchens with ovens do excist, if you are willing to pay the rent for such a place though. (A lot of the microwave-ovens here have a toaster-oven function though!) You cook with gas, and I still find the open flame incredibly scary.
4. Smoking. Smoking is forbidden in public places (at least most of Tokyo), however, smoking is totally legal inside restaurants and bars. Sometimes there will be a non-smoking section within the restaurant (especially if it is a family-resturant), but a lot of the izakayas are all smoking seats. Very many bars allow smoking in the entire bar.
5. Eating on the street. Eating on the street is not illegal of course, but it is kind of frowned upon, Japanese people have a tendency to sit down and then eat. You almost never see people eating on the train or the bus, or walking down the street eating. It is kind of strange since Japanese are very busy, you would think they would always walk and eat, but that is not the case. (You can see young people in Harajuku and Shibuya eating crepes and kebabs and walking though.)
6. Drinking on the street. … however, drinking alcohol on the street is totally legal. Hurrah!
7. Opening hours. I have only lived in Tokyo, so I am not sure how the rest of Japan works in this area, but basically, Tokyo does not really close. The bars stay open late, and there are even bars that open when the other bars close, so the staff that works at the first type of bar can go and drink at the second type of bar. Grocery stores stay open until 11, 12, 02 and 05, depending on what grocery store it is. All the combinis (like 7/11, FamilyMart, MiniStop, Lawson etc.) stay open 24/7. However, the last train leaves between 12 and 01 to most places, so the people who do not catch their last train, can stay out drinking in bars (and take little catnaps with their head resting on the counter) until the trains start going at 05 or 06 in the morning and they can get home.
8. Buying bulk. In most other countries, buying bigger packages usually means that the price goes down pr gram/kg. In Japan, half of the time the price goes up. It is often more expensive to buy a bigger package. Example from the supermarket yesterday: 100g pack of chocolate = 168 yen. 400g pack of chocolate = 800 yen. Why? I don’t know. It teaches modesty, at least. (I am sure there are stores like Walmart where buying bulk is cheaper, I am just talking about the average supermarket.)
9. Addressing other people. You probably already know that Japanese people always address people whom they are not very close with by their last name. This is absolutely true. I actually do not even know the first name of half of my teachers, and I would never ever think about using a teachers given name to them. Friends are of course a different thing all together. To stay safe, add -san after people’s last name, but never after your own.
10. Names that end with -ko. Speaking of given names; until about 40 years ago, most girl-names ended with -ko. Yukiko, Aikiko etc. Nowadays there are other names like Eri and Nana etc, but finding a woman over the age of 45 with a name that doesn’t end in -ko is not that easy. To learn the given names of women over 45 is not always easy either (unless you become good friends), see previous point.

If you only read one article about creativity this week, make sure to read Austin Kleon’s How to steal like an artist (and 9 other things nobody told me). One of the most inspiring articles I have read in quite a while when it comes to creativity and how to be able to produce work.

Isn’t this absolutely incredible? I found this in NewScientist, and it is a short article about how spider-trees like the one in the picture above actually prevents malaria. That tree looks unreal.

This girl is so insanely talented. She completely restructures her facial features just with the help of makeup. It made me want to run and put on makeup myself. It kind of brought back the whole idea that a lot of people can look gorgeous if you just put in a little effort.

The Market from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

“Bangkok’s Maeklong Market has been in existence for decades. It remained relatively undisturbed until the later creation of the Maeklong Railway and, contrary to what you might see in the United States and in other parts of the world, there was no eminent domain law forcing market vendors to move.

The result? Every single day the Maeklong Railway line passes through Maeklong – 8 times a day, 7 days per week. The train literally runs directly through the middle of the market, forcing vendors to pull back their awnings and wares while shoppers find a place to step off of the track that serves as their only walkway.”

I know I just posted another video made by Terje Sorgjerd, but I am just so impressed with all of his videos. He makes me want to learn how to edit video… I have no idea where to start though.

Another great talk by Dan Ariely. This talk is about the hidden reasons we think it’s OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we’re predictably irrational – and can be influenced in ways we can’t grasp.