Tokyo Designer's Week & Design Tide Tokyo (pictured above) kicked off today and Core will be on the ground over the next few days seeking out the freshest work and talent. Design Tide wins hand down for exhibition design, it's hard to tell from the photo but the stands divided by sheets of transparent fabric--a commercial cloth material used in water filters--are entirely suspended by balloons filled with helium. It looks awesome and yes the base is weighted to hold it in place. Click through for more pics.

>> View all Tokyo Design Festival posts here.

I didn't spend long at Tokyo Designer's Week, just enough to register and meet Micheal Young who curated this year's show, check out his new bike for Giant and a sweet looking speaker system for the iPhone that launched today (video coming shortly).

Offsite in Shibuya, Clear Gallery are previewing Mutant Attack, a series of chairs by Claudio Colucci that will be shown at this year's Design Miami.

Any finally, Toyota launched their ultra-compact 'iQ' car which will be available in Japan next month and in Europe next year.