Many restaurant facades bear a cartoon depicting the main dish served, like a perky eel or cute cow.

Even bathroom doors have creative signage.

On the natural side, the mountainous Korean terrain inspires a terraced pattern for landscape architecture.

Ancient designs can pack the biggest wallop. The eaves of Buddhist temples are decorated with exquisite detail and color.

We all need dragons guarding our doors.

But here I am, typing my post from home while watching the latest re-run of Family Guy. Two of my fellow nuggeteers are also out of the office at the SXSW conference in Austin.

I hope we all get an update tomorrow from Daniel’s next post. By the way, have you noticed a pattern yet? We have taken to blogging more regularly so that all of our dedicated readers can wait excitedly for their favorite IMA author’s post.

Back to the business at hand…On a tip from Noelle, I am working up a post centered around an article in the most recent Wired magazine, but in my mini-vacay state-of-mind I would prefer to keep this one more casual. So look for that next week.

This week I am looking for some perspective and spending some time selfishly trying on shoes and other similarly indulgent endeavors like surfing the web.

Are you similarly looking to waste time or find yourself? Here are some websites that will help you on either journey:

BAPE – Getting in the mood for Breaking the Mode? When I think of Japanese fashion, I first think of street fashion. This site is one of my favorite surfing experiences and also features an awesome hip-hop influenced Japanese street design brand, A Bathing Ape. You have to download some stuff for the site to work, but you should. It’s worth it for the soundtrack alone.

http://cubo.cc/
This one is amazing. Recommended to me by my endlessly interesting boyfriend (that’s not sarcasm), it is fun and unique. Click on the link, give it a moment to load and then cursor around the screen. Not for those with slow internet connections. You can click the link for more info, but you won’t get any. You will get a whole new kind of crazy fun, though.

Maken Trance Project – This is my favorite JPOP song right now. I can listen to it over and over again in my car, singing all the parts I know and making stuff up for the parts I haven’t yet memorized. And the video is giggly and fun. This song make me want to create my own para para choreography. Maybe I can spend some of my vacation time working on that.

Kid Robot – Love contemporary art? Then you might like this…it might be too low-brow for you, but for me, well, it is just right. There is room in my life for admiring contemporary art that I can’t afford AND buying little toys that I can. Besides, if vinyl toys as art is wrong, then I just don’t want to be right. On a related note, the IMA store is starting to stock some of this stuff. You know the best way to encourage that? Buy some.

Hope you enjoy visiting some of these sites and find something new to obsess over. Until next week…