Hamburger Disco has returned from our much anticipated trip of the year and… are now feeling a bit of Japan withdrawal. Can you blame us?? Check out the videos to see just why we love this boys’ club country!  Our resident boy genius Mattias was cool enough to record our antics and edit them during the trip on his trusty iPod touch with iMovie.

Dim Sum Asians was a name (not a very cool one, but we had to have something) us friends made back in high school.  It was our dream to experience Japan together after graduation, but then life happened.  Here we were, 6 years later and still friends, finally making the dream come to reality.

Definitely visit our WordPress site to watch the rest of the video blogs if you want to see what type of mischief us boys got into!

Dim Sum Asians hit Japan!

Matt and I visited Portobello West on the weekend to check out some cool stuff.  Portobello West is a new monthly market for Vancouver’s burgeoning fashion designers, jewelers and artists to showcase their designs.  While looking through the stalls we met the authors of this cool little yellow book. Morna Gregory and Sian James have a traveled life, so they decided to take pictures of all the toilets from the many places they’ve visited and compiled them all into this book.

Check out this urinal from Montreal, Quebec.  You may wonder what’s so special about this one, it’s actually a female urinal.  See the attachment? yep, you guessed it!  They even included an instructional “how to” sketch in their book.  Matt ended up buying the book and getting a signed copy because he’s always wanted to compile pictures of toilets he’s seen from his travels.  It’s definitely an interesting read.

Check out the website at Toilets of the World for more!

When boutique hotel chain Joie de Vivre decided to reopen the Best Western Miyako in San Francisco they had a different experience in mind for its unique guests and tourists.  Located in Japantown, this hotel takes its design cues with inspiration from Japanese pop culture and was renamed as the anime infused Hotel Tomo.  

Although still under the Best Western name, the hotel’s 125 guest rooms each have their own identity, whether it be the Playstation 3′s or Nintendo Wii’s, or even simply just the anime murals on the walls.  Step into the hotel at any time of the day and you’ll see tourists in the lobby checking out the flat-screen TV’s playing anime movies or eating at the all you can eat shabu shabu restaurant located in the hotel.

Vancouver is a city that has a strong following for anime, J-pop and the like.  Best Western definitely has been noticing the rise in popularity for the Japanese craze here in North America, let’s just hope that the rest of these big corporations follow suit.

Book your room here at Hotel Tomo