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This collection of articles and creative writing by the HeadSpace authors tackles issues on arts, culture, and life in Japan.

We are always on the lookout for talented writers, so if you’d like to submit some written work, please drop us a line.

I met up with fashion/textile designer Yoshi-wo at Headspace, and a collaboration was born. Her ideas based on metamorphosis, cocoons and layers, or ‘skins’, fit with m... READ...

The night of the reception came round so fast but I was really happy with the outcome that had been informed by the massive inspiration that Japan offers. We had a really fun night... READ...

The day before the expo reception myself and Amy (the missis) who had arrived in Japan a few days earlier went up to HeadSpace mountain HQ again to do some farming, eat some food g... READ...

This time my trip into Osaka was to paint fake tattoos on people at a clubnight put on by a friend of the HeadSpace team, what I had planned to be an early night turned into an all... READ...

When i first started on my work the first thing I did was work on and send some pieces to some artists in Tokyo for collaboration, I needed to get the finished articles so I took t... READ...

These photos are from my day with the HeadSpace crew and the Satoyama massive at a farmers market in Yamato Yagi, not far from Nara city. The night before I cut some tee shirt sten... READ...

A few days after my trip to Hiroshima I met up with local writer KT to go and paint another wall, he knew of this great spot by the old abandoned theme park and we went and made th... READ...

My first trip away was to visit Suiko in Hiroshima and to paint a wall there, this was my first time on the Shinkansen (bullet train) and that in itself is an experience, it only t... READ...

After the first few days in the city Jamie and Aiko invited me and some other up to Kayamori House, the new HeadSpace HQ in the mountains by Hasedera, about 40 minutes from Nara. ... READ...

With as much tattoo history as Japan has I thought it rude not to get some work done while I was here, I had already booked my appointment at Three Tides Tattoo in Osaka, one of th... READ...

Headed into Osaka to pick up flyers, meet Celio and Goldie at SoHo gallery and run some errands (well Jamie did, I just wandered around taking it all in) there is so much going on ... READ...

On my first full day myself and Jamie took a trip on the bikes around Nara, specifically to go and check out the temple Nara is famous for along with the second largest pagoda in J... READ...

Blog posts by the 5th HeadSpace artist in residence, Mark Goss 21st Feb – 25th March 2011 BLOG 1 – NARA “…On my first full day myself and Jamie took a trip on... READ...

On this morning On this morning お風呂あがり まどを　開けて 外を見つめた この朝 もたれ まどから半分体を出し ゆきを この朝 Mesmerised by the... READ...

One of the best things about headspace is its artists community. Here are some of the excellent people i met along the way View all of Ellie’s blog posts [gallery] ... READ...

A visit to the soon to be Headspace HQ 2! Jamie and Aiko are moving to Nara Prefecture to start an artists community in the mountains. watch this space… View all of EllieR... READ...

View all of Ellie’s blog posts [gallery] ... READ...

View all of Ellie’s blog posts [gallery] ... READ...

Headspace is such a great place to meet artists and interesting people. In my first week here I met fashion/textile designer Yoshiwo, and our ideas worked really well together. I h... READ...

On my previous trip to japan i was struck by the amount of plastic waste I saw, and the ambivalence i felt about plastic. colourful, super-shiny, but deadly, clogging the seas and ... READ...

In the studio I have begun to coat things in plastic and paint, and to use the colours patterns and icons i saw in directive and warning signs. Firstly to draw attention to them, (... READ...

Nara was Japan’s capital before Tokyo, and my time here co-incides with the Sento Sai festival, celebrating 1300 years since the Emperor lived here. By far the most popular p... READ...

After a madly busy first week I started to get my bearings in and around the studio in Saidaiji, where Headspace shares premises with Mr Q’s bar, a cosy and friendly place to... READ...

Leaping straight into action, HeadSpace asked me to make some work to sell at the HeadSpace Gallery stall at the Akinai Festival at Osaka Castle. These pin badges were inspired by ... READ...

The work and adventures of Ellie Doney while staying with us here at HeadSpace. 7th October – 17th November 2010 Blog 1 – Osaka Carnival Badges “…I saw th... READ...

A life of privilege; a life tailored to us This is the life intended for us Such comfort in an existence so effortless Lifestyle, not life; not lived, but experienced We pass our t... READ...

The sun rises and it calls and it pleads I hear its pleas To surrender our bodies to its glare, its heat To the heat of the summer beat The lazy pulse that summer keeps The stillne... READ...

they said that this would be the peak of my life they said that I would be in my prime who said? well, no-one said but it was implied, it was most definitely implied. And so we are... READ...

It was May. According to the Daily Yomiuri foot-and-mouth disease had befallen the cows and pigs of Miyazaki prefecture, and there was a vet shortage. This brought me back to my st... READ...

He begins in mid-sentence, as if the brush and colours were a furtherance of something begun long before and left alone to find itself again. The brush a whisper against canvas, t... READ...

Read part 1 Colours tumble through his mind, suspended stones, each turning in the light, until he has selected the one to begin with. The first strokes attach themselves like butt... READ...

HeadSpace’s second artist in residency, Josephine Dimbleby, tells us about here trip up to Tokyo to see Design Festa I don’t think I had any concept of the scale of the... READ...

A steady stream of schoolgirls stirs the candle-smoke as they drift by, drawn in a line through the wide wooden doorway of the Todaiji Temple. The barking of their guides (stolid o... READ...

The first one finds him on the twenty-fifth of March, working on a shallow shelf in Juco Minami, the staff member calling back through the open door. He looks up, swivels in his ch... READ...

A male deer, his antlers shorn and capped with rounded nubs, nuzzles a spray of fallen branches, as if trying to reattach them. A rope-curtain’s braids swing unaided. Sun-sha... READ...

Green lakebed balanced on a fish’s back. Tall pines nodding heads together, silenced by laughter. Willow bough weeps green leaves onto turtle shell. Splayed giant’s fin... READ...

One day I was hanging around the train station and a man came up to me. He barked something I couldn’t make out. I handed the mysterious sound bite to my brain. Engines whirred. ... READ...

The turtles are back, ascended from whatever green depths have kept them, hidden, throughout the winter. Last week there were three or four. Today i counted forty on one log alone... READ...

I got off at Osaka-jō-kōen, the big park around the castle. Very soon, cherry blossoms were expected to color this stretch of land pink, erupting into fountains of roseate spring... READ...

I can hear his howl as soon as I walk in. He must have smelled my perfume since we passed Otsu on the motorway. He greets me with an ecstatic wag. Half his body has become tail, sh... READ...

When i first came to Japan i felt like i had died and gone to heaven. Those were my exact sentiments verbatim as my plane descended over Kansai International Airport past great wa... READ...

When we rise from the heavy warmth of our futons, it is past pure powder tracks. But we are out for fun. We groove down warm up runs on the Gelaende, carve up a fiery race through ... READ...

Our winter tires take us safely into Nozawa Onsen and through its slushy ups and downs, narrow lanes full of other tourists looking for pubs, dreaming of powder, and locals clearin... READ...

I’m sitting on my bed, listening to Thelonius Monk on my record player, drinking strong, delicious, better than Brazilians get Brazilian coffee blended by the Japanese coffee mag... READ...

Some people say that Japan is a land of superstition. I don’t like that word because I think it fails to describe the full curiousness and wonder of what actually goes on. For ... READ...

When I was in Canada on vacation I was at Walmart shopping, as thanks to the magic of Walmart there are no other places left to shop in my hometown. That’s why I was in Walmart,... READ...

Japan can be a depressing place. I should know, I spent my winter vacation sobbing on my living room floor. It’s January now, and I’m in a better mood teaching a small class ... READ...

I have never consciously had a panic attack before in all my 28 years and here I am, standing in line in a Japanese Starbucks, when it hits me like a sheet of acid… Double dipped... READ...

We visit the monkeys first. A large banner reads: Jigoku Dani Yaen Koen – Hell’s Valley Wild Monkey Park. Entrance 1.6 km, ca 25 min. The second kanji in ‘koen’ –... READ...

Frothy milk and creamy latte from my personal plastic cup. Morning joy. With a side of Daily Yomiuri. WORLD. Port-au-Prince. 100,000 thought dead in Haiti. People loot toothpaste t... READ...

Somehow I am always lounging around in awfully comfortable clothes, drinking coffee and enjoying a book or a movie with my feet up on a Thursday morning– when the doorbell ri... READ...

We want people to get involved in Studio HeadSpace as much as possible and one such way is to contribute an article to the site.  You could write about arts, culture, life in Japa... READ...