Here is a short film looking at the similarities between the handshaped bindingless movement in snowboarding and the open minding surfing renaissance. Some scenes take place at one of our favorite mountains in the world, Niseko!

Takashi is a skater from Osaka that set out on a journey across Japan by skating. He launched his trip on July 7th. In these episodes, Takashi explains what he will be carrying throughout the trip. Follow Takashi to see the side of Japan you probably don’t know about. Part 2 after the jump:

SOPHNET. has opened their Hong Kong flagship store over the weekend. Hirofumi Kiyonaga of SOPH. and Hiroshi Fujiwara take on some questions in regards to the decision to open in HK and other fashion related questions. via

This weekend is COPA NYC Weekend 2. The semi-final will be held on Saturday and final on Sunday. Weekend 1 of Copa NYC 2010 was a fantastic experience! The games were exciting with NYC soccer at it’s best. This year’s level of game play with increased competition was impressive. It was great to see that fans were into the games to help support. Saturday was extremely hot with temperatures reaching 100! The 16 national teams played well for such extreme conditions. We (NYC Japan) played 3 games against Ireland, France, and Haiti in the prelims. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to make it to the quarter finals.  This was our first experience as NYC japan. We will sure to be back in 2011! Congratulations to the 4 semi-finalists!  They will be playing Weekend 2 at Flushing Meadows this weekend. Let’s enjoy the final two days of the games. We won’t want to miss the action and get a chance to watch the Finals live on TV! This is definitely an historic moment for all of us.

Copa NYC is happening for the next two weekends! Copa NYC is an annual soccer tournament consisting of 16 “National Teams” assembled from a selection of participating communities from the New York area, representing their diverse cultural heritages. The exciting tournament will happen on July 24 (Sat) @ Pier 40: Preliminaries, July 25 (Sun) @ Pier 40: Quarter Finals, July 31 (Sat) @ Flushing Meadows: Semi Finals, and Aug 01 (Sun) @ Flushing Meadows: 3rd Place + Match Finals.

Tokyo Bike is one of the top bike brands in Japan. They have opened up a 6 week pop-up shop in London near Old Spitalfields Market. A variety of bikes from fixed to more casual bikes are available at the shop. You can never be mad at a nicely designed bike shop. via