When she loses someone dear to her, she clings to her art as a relic of the close relationship she once had...Luckily, her childhood best friend Kei encourages her to come to his high school and join their prestigious photo club. With nothing to lose, Mako grabs her camera and moves into the dorm where Kei and his classmates live. Soon, a fresh take on life, along with a mysterious new muse, begin to come into focus!

    In the decades since, people have asked endless far-ranging questions about this spectacular suicide. Christopher Ross wondered, What on earth happened to Mishima's sword? And so Ross sets off for Tokyo on a journey into the heart of the Mishima legend---the very heart of Japan. It was a country Ross knew well after nearly five years of living there--but nothing could have prepared him for this. While searching for the fabled sword, Ross encounters the rather startling range of those who knew Mishima...a world, or perhaps more accurately a demimonde, of craftsmen and critics, soldiers and swordsmen, boyfriends and biographers (even the man who taught Mishima hara-kiri). The trail Ross follows inspires a travelogue of the most eye-opening--and occasionally bizarre--sort, a window into the real Japan that is never seen by tourists and the occasion for digressions on, among other things, socks and the code of the samurai, nosebleeds and metallurgy... even how to dress for suicide. Mishima's Sword is a dazzling read--the perfect book for all those intrigued by things Japanese, from gangsters to Genji, from manga to Mishima.

    In this e-book you will learn what exactly is needed to run a successful Design Thinking Workshop which is fun and at the same time generates great results. In this e-book Pauline Tonhauser, founder of designthinkingcoach.de, shares her best practices.

    As much a state of mind—an awareness of the things around us and an acceptance of our surroundings—as it is a design style, wabi sabi begs us to appreciate the pure beauty of life—a chipped vase, a quiet rainy day, the impermanence of all things. Presenting itself as an alternative to today's fast-paced, mass-produced, neon-lighted world, wabi sabi reminds us to slow down and take comfort in the natural beauty around us.In addition to presenting the philosophy of wabi-sabi, this book includes how-to design advice—so that a transformation of body, mind, and home can emerge.Chapters include:History: The Development of Wabi SabiCulture: Wabi Sabi and the Japanese CharacterArt: Defining AestheticsDesign: Creating Expressions with Wabi Sabi MaterialsSpirit: The Universal Spirit of Wabi Sabi

    In The Artful Wooden Spoon, Vogel shares more than 100 gorgeous pieces from his workshop gallery, providing rich visual inspiration along with explaining the principles behind handcrafting spoons and sharing simple instructions and step-by-step photographs—no expertise and very few tools required. With more than 225 photographs of Vogel's stunning specimens, this visual introduction to the craft is an invitation to explore an age-old art and to create a timeless gift.

    This playful and thoroughly researched handbook examines the key styles and subcultures past and present: sailor-suited gangsters, Pippi Longstockings risen from the dead, girls in blackface, teens sporting giant hamster costumes, and more. Each fashion profile is packed with photos and illustrations, history, ideal boyfriends, and must-have items. Also included are a gatefold evolutionary fashion chart, resources, and makeup tips. At last, an in-depth guide to what the girls are wearingand why on earth they're wearing it.

    . . A superb outing from a gifted young critic that will spark joy in many readers." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review“Less is more”: Everywhere we hear the mantra. Marie Kondo and other decluttering gurus promise that shedding our stuff will solve our problems. We commit to cleanse diets and strive for inbox zero. Amid the frantic pace and distraction of everyday life, we covet silence-and airy, Instagrammable spaces in which to enjoy it. The popular term for this brand of upscale austerity, “minimalism,” has mostly come to stand for things to buy and consume. But minimalism has richer, deeper, and altogether more valuable gifts to offer.Kyle Chayka is one of our sharpest cultural observers. After spending years covering minimalist trends for leading publications, he now delves beneath this lifestyle's glossy surface, seeking better ways to claim the time and space we crave. He shows that our longing for less goes back further than we realize. His search leads him to the philosophical and spiritual origins of minimalism, and to the stories of artists such as Agnes Martin and Donald Judd; composers such as John Cage and Julius Eastman; architects and designers; visionaries and misfits. As Chayka looks anew at their extraordinary lives and explores the places where they worked-from Manhattan lofts to the Texas high desert and the back alleys of Kyoto-he reminds us that what we most require is presence, not absence. The result is an elegant new synthesis of our minimalist desires and our profound emotional needs.

    Haiku are practiced by poets, lovers, and schoolchildren, by “political haiku” twitterers, by anyone who has the desire to pin preception and experience into a few quick phrases. This essay offers readers unparalleled insight into the living heart of haiku—how haiku work and what they hold, and how to read through and into their images to find a full expression of human life and perceptions, sometimes profound, sometimes playful.

    The three long poems in Eye Against Eye convey the wrought particulars of intimate human relations, perceptions of the landscape, and the historical moment, tense with political exigencies. Mayan ruins invoke the collapsing Twin Towers, love between parents and child blister with tension, and a bicycle thief shatters the narcotic illusion of a private accord. Also contained is Late Summer Entry, a series of poetic commentaries on Sally Mann's landscape photographs. Eye Against Eye, Forrest Gander's third book with New Directions, cries out an ethical concern for the ways we see each other and the world, the potential to share a vision that acknowledges our commonality. As always with Gander's poetry, suspensions and repetitions drive toward a complex emotional experience, evoking the multifaceted, multi-vocal surge of our present.

    Feminine form of flâneur [flanne-euhr], an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities.That is an imaginary definition.'If the word flâneur conjures up visions of Baudelaire, boulevards and bohemia – then what exactly is a flâneuse?In this gloriously provocative and celebratory book, Lauren Elkin defines her as ‘a determined resourceful woman keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk’. Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse traces the relationship between the city and creativity through a journey that begins in New York and moves us to Paris, via Venice, Tokyo and London, exploring along the way the paths taken by the flâneuses who have lived and walked in those cities.From nineteenth-century novelist George Sand to artist Sophie Calle, from war correspondent Martha Gellhorn to film-maker Agnes Varda, Flâneuse considers what is at stake when a certain kind of light-footed woman encounters the city and changes her life, one step at a time.

    All of the telltale signs are there: the sound of joyful music pipes across the promenade; the smells of popcorn and cookies waft through the air; and the colorful attraction posters depict all the wonderful rides and shows created for Guests by the Imagineers. Poster Art of the Disney Parks is a tribute to those posters, which begin telling the story of each attraction even before Guests have entered the queue area. Disney attraction posters have been an important means of communication since Disneyland began displaying them in 1956. Not only are they eye-catching pieces of artwork that adorn the Parks with flair and style, they are also displayed to build excitement and disseminate information about the newest additions to the Disney landscape. When the first attraction posters made their debut at Disneyland, one such piece of art proclaimed that Guests could have a “true-life adventure” on the Jungle Cruise. And in 2012 at Disney California Adventure, a poster announced the grand opening of Cars Land—the newest thrill-filled destination at the Disneyland Resort. Both of those posters are reproduced within this book, along with posters from every decade in between. As evidenced by the evolution of the attraction posters, art styles and design techniques have certainly changed over the years. These characteristics also differ from continent to continent. Posters from Tokyo Disneyland, Hong Kong Disneyland, and Disneyland Paris exhibit the nuances in presentation that give each Park’s pantheon of posters its signature look. But while artistic interpretations and color palettes may vary from Park to Park and from year to year, the spirit of Disney storytelling is a constant that ties them all together.

    The novel follows the (mis)adventures of its travel-addicted protagonist Zack, and in that respect is similar thematically to Alex Garland's 'The Beach' or Gregory David Roberts' 'Shantaram.' Accordingly, the reader is viscerally transported into the surreal realms of Roppongi, as Zack attempts to come to terms with a series of life-changing events unfolding at rapid pace. In the process, the novel punches through the impossibly glamorous surface of Roppongi and plunges the reader deep into its seedy underbelly ... showing a disturbing side of Japan not often written about in the English language.

    It focuses on critical analysis of the subject through a workbook section and self-quizzes along with prompts to explore the chapter's images and topics through the ArtStudy 2.0 CD-ROM, Web Site, and WebTutor? supplements.

    As his home life unravels, a sexy space assassin becomes his family maid, and his own head becomes a portal for armed robots. Life as he knows it is quickly falling apart, and Naota doesn’t know who’s friend or foe! One thing’s for certain—he has to grow up quick and save his hometown, whether he wants to or not! With Dark Horse’s FLCL Omnibus, fans will not only get every chapter in Hajime Ueda’s acclaimed FLCL adaptation, but this collection will also include revised story pages and over a dozen color FLCL illustrations by Ueda.

    The desire to gain a greater understanding of our past has driven archaeologists, artists, and scholars from across the world to study the vestiges of lifestyles that have vanished in an attempt to capture their mystique and beauty.Originally intended as an examination of the rise and fall of the state hospital system, Matthew Christopher’s Abandoned America rapidly grew to encompass derelict factories and industrial sites, schools, churches, power plants, hospitals, prisons, military installations, hotels, resorts, homes, and more. Through his collection of writing and photography, Christopher has spent the last decade documenting the ruins of one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known: our own. Exploring sites like the charred remains of the Hotel Do De, the rusted cells of the Essex County Jail Annex, the sublime majesty of the Church of the Transfiguration, or the eerie and dilapidated remnants of the New Castle Elks Lodge, the work spans architectural treasures left to the elements and then all too often lost forever.