Koohan Paik is a talented independent film/video writer and producer based in Hawaii who has used YouTube very cleverly for political messages about tourism and the environment. Here is a recent video she made on YouTube about “greensumers”.

Ms. Paik says of the character she plays in the YouTube video, Miss Li-ming Mui:

“In the 1950s in Hawaii, us kids would challenge ourselves to pop a li hing mui plum into our mouths and see if we could possibly retain a face free of the reflexive squint and pucker of the unbearably sour/bitter/salty “treat.” They came about seven or eight to a small cellophane sack, and you could roll one from cheek to cheek for the duration of a whole class period. They not only lasted a long time, they were also a symbol of camaraderie; you could always bum one off a friend, and you always had spares to offer others. I think they came from Taiwan.

Does anyone know how to translate li ming hui into English?

Here is a website with startling images of what life might look like in the future, say year 2500 or so. The artist is a Taiwanese illustrator who was commissioned to do the artwork.

Would love to hear reactions from readers regarding the artwork. Do the images seem like science fiction? Could this be Tokyo in 3007?

Imagine this: A robber goes into a bank with a gun and threatens to kill anyone who moves. He tries to flee after grabbing the money. While the robber is scurrying out the door, however, a net drops from the ceiling and the robber is wrapped up like a dumpling.

Similar scenarios have already appeared in comic books and movies, but up until now that is where they have stayed, writes Shelley Shan in the Taipei Times today.

But now, Hsieh Kuo-cheng, who runs a security firm in Taiwan, has turned this seemingly fantastic idea into reality. He is now known as the inventor of “A Net Trapping Device to Catch a Bank Robber Immediately” and winner of one of the 2007 Ig Nobel prizes handed out by the Annals of Improbable Research in Boston.

You can view a video demonstration of the system by going here and clicking play on the video insert.

In those old Tora-san movies which still play on late-night TV sometimes in Japan (48 were made in the series that had the running title “It’s Not Easy Being A Man”) the main character Atsumi Kiyoshi often ended his goodbyes to friends and loved ones, especially his lady friends, with the word “abayo”. It basically means “goodbye”, but it’s not used very often today. I asked some friends where the word comes from, and this is what I learned:

An online etymological dictionary (in Japanese) has this to say.

“Ambai wa ikagateska ? 按配はいかがですか？” would be like the French phrase “Comment ça va ?” [How’s it going?]

A friend who used to be a street musician in Japan ten years ago arranged the music and hired the singers and recorded the song in his home studio, and the words sort of wrote themselves. There are call outs in eight foreign languages, including Japanese, “akemashite omedetto” (listen for it).

The song was being released the other day on a free music site from France, with a video of some clown in a sushi jacket lipsynching the song. It’s titled “New Year Dance 2008″. I know it’s a bit early days, but hey, before you know it, it will be 2008, and then 2009….

[Save this for a rainy day.]

Staged photos or true?

The New York Times, and virtually the entire US art blogosphere world, seems to have been fooled by a press release circulating about Kohei Yoshiyuki (a famous Japanese photographer’s pen name, er, staged name). Do you think these photos are real documentary-style photos or staged, yarase-style photos? Read the New York Times article here and leave your educated guess below. American art critics and bloggers seem to have taken the N Y Times article at face value. True or false? You be the judge.

HINT: The Japanese term “yarase” might have something to with Kohei Yoshiyuki’s photos. One of my friends in Tokyo tells me this photographer was known for his yarase-style photos back in the 1970s, which is when these photos date from.

Audio here: look and listen:

Google: N Y Times headline: “Sex in the Park, and Its Sneaky Spectators”

A savvy advertising industry blog in New York has finally caught up with “girls with mops”. In Japan.

The advertisement in question is promoting a Japanese TV drama called “Life”. You know the drill.

She’s back!

Hillary Raphael, who divides her time among a dozen cities around the world, including Tokyo, where the seed for her first book I Love Lord Buddha (reviewed here on Japundit) came from, has a new book out titled Backpacker.

The subtitle says it all: “New York, Seoul, Phnom Penh, Sapporo, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Mexico City, Maputo, Tokyo, mon amour”.

It’s a story about gorgeous redhead with a dead Japanese boyfriend, a dominatrix mentor, and a flair for threesomes.

Got that? And her name is Helena, whose only real interest is travelling to new corners of the globe where she can smoke hash and hear techno.

160 pages of pure fun!

Jennifer 8. Lee, a reporter for the New York Times, has a new book coming out next March about Chinese food, titled “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles”.

On her book blog, she recently discussed an interesting new phenomenon: a hot new Chinese restaurant with a Japanese chef: Yuji Wayika.

Read the blog entry here.

After you read this restaurant review by Robbie Swinnerton, you will never look at tonkatsu in quite the same way again.

SNAPPING: The Daily Yomiuri is reporting that “Bad manners are making people snap” more and more, noting that over the past few years there has been an increase in acts of violence committed by people who have lost their tempers in the face of people around them displaying bad manners.

Case in point: A 28-year-old high school teacher was arrested for allegedly striking a young woman on the head while riding a train. Before assaulting her, he reportedly told the woman, who was sitting with her legs crossed, that she had brushed his leg with her foot and her manners were poor.

Philbert Ono grew up in Hawaii and now lives and works in Tokyo. His parents are natives of Shiga Prefecture, which is hardly known
outside Japan. So Ono decided to make an English-language website about the prefecture, to introduce it to foreign visitors. Since Shiga has several sister city relationships with cities in the USA, Ono decided to write English lyrics for a famous Shiga area song called “Lake Biwa Rowing Song”.  [”Biwako Shuko no Uta”]. Then he found two American JET teachers to sing it for him, and after they applied to appear on the weekly ”Nodo Jiman” amateur singing show on NHK, the song gathered more and more acclaim. Ono is releasing an indie CD worldwide on June 16.

When asked how he found the two Americans, Ono told Japundit in a recent email: “They are twin sisters from Illinois working in Japan on the JET Program as ALTs. The blond one (Jamie) is teaching in Shiga, and the other is in Kagawa-ken. Both have been singing in choirs since childhood and both are members on their local choirs in Japan. In January 2006, Jamie found my Web page in English introducing the song and emailed me. She told me she was a choir singer in Shiga, and I immediately asked her if she would be willing to sing my English version of the song. She said yes, and that she also had a twin sister who could sing. They did it on it volunteer basis. They were thrilled to help me out, and it turned outto be a unique experience for them in Japan.”

“Later, they sent in a postcard to apply for ‘Nodo Jiman’ on NHK. Out of thousands of postcard applicants, they were selected for the audition held the day before the ‘Nodo Jiman’ show. “

Chunichi Shimbun has an article in Japanese, see comment 2:

Continuing our travels with U.S. cartoonist Bill Griffith, who writes and draws “Zippy” in hundreds of newspapers around the world, including the Taipei Times and the Japan Times, a recent panel titled “Pacific Rim Shot” depicts a Taiwan-owned airlines called EVA AIRLINES, owned by the Evergreen Corporation, and famous for putting Hello Kitty on the side of the plane as it flies the skies between Japan and Taiwan, among other routes.

Griffith, who has always had a fascination with Asia, often places his cartoon characters in Japan or Taiwan, and in this recent panel, we can see the EVA Airlines plane and Zippy’s “dream,” as the cartoonist puts it.

Someone asked me the other day, why the PacMan game character was named PacMan. I had to admit I didn’t know. So I visited the Internet, and found out that “the original title was pronounced pakku-man (パックマン) and was inspired by the Japanese phrase paku-paku taberu (パクパク食べる), where paku-paku describes (the sound of) the mouth movement when widely opened and then closed in succession.^“

^{Now I know, too. The sound of one mouth eating.}

Footage of the British teacher standing alongside the main suspect for her murder has just been released by the Japanese police. Creepy.

MURDER MOST FOUL: Just as an aside, what are the latest developments in the English teacher murder case, in which a 22 year old UK woman was killed by a 28 year old stalker-cum-private-student? His parents are a doctor and a dentist in Gifu, rich family, the guy apparently never worked a day in his life. Did the cops catch him yet?

ABC for English learners: An English teacher who has taught in China and Japan wrote this list of A - Z  ideas as a way of inspiring her students, she told me in a recent email and said she is thinking of making it into a poster and posting it online. Cute. On a scale of 1 to 10, maybe not very useful. I’d give it a 6.

A design firm has developed a concept for the Onitsuka Tiger website which shows a sneaker with thousands of small images that, when rolled over, display pop up windows with tidbits about Japan. The site is named, what else?! —  Made of Japan.

(via AdRants)

I saw the most interesting thing the other day, and wondered if anyone knows what this is all about. I was watching a Japanese high school team play a Taiwanese high school team at a baseball tournament the other day, and after the game, the usual “thank you” to the opposing team was down with bows and handshakes and high fives by both teams, as a gesture of sportsmanship. Of course, the pro teams do it in Japan after each game, too.

But here’s the interesting part. After that normal thank you to the opposing team, the Japanese team did one more thing: the boys, age 14 or so, went to the third base line, stood on the line, and then bowed TO THE FIELD and say ThANK YOU to the dirt, to the diamond, to the field of Shinto Dreams! I never saw this before, not in Japan, not on TV, not anywhere, until yesterday.

My question to baseball experts out there: is this a Shinto ritual? And it is performed only by schoolboy teams, or do pro teams do it also?

One expert I queried told me in an email:

“If they were facing the field, they were probably paying their respects to
the diamond…. Kind of like the way judo guys bow before then enter or leave the
dojo. Shinto? Could be…. But more like bushido, which was how baseball was
treated when it first came to Japan…..Even some professional baseball players, when they first come onto to the field for the day from the dugout and when they go into the dugout at the end of the day will face the diamond, doff their caps, and bow respectfully.”

This is a post that poses a question, and I hope some people here can answer it, with good suggestions and examples.

As some of you might know, when newspapers in Chinese-speaking countries like Taiwan or China print the names of Japanese politicians, singers, actors, writers, models or visiting businessmen, the Chinese-language newspapers print the correct kanji of the person’s name, of course, but then when they pronounce these names on TV or radio broadcasts (or even in conversation), the Chinese or Taiwanese people pronounce the names with Mandarin “readings” and I feel this is wrong.

Because, for example, the singer Mika Nakashima, 中島美嘉 in kanji, her name is “read” and pronounced in China and Taiwan as CHUNG DAO MEI-CHIA. But that is NOT her name. It is Nakashima Mika. Don’t expect any Chinese or Taiwanese to know that, however. The TV actress Ai Iijima 飯島愛 is called FAN DAO AI in China and Taiwan. Again, wrong pronounciation of the name as it is said in Japan.

My question is this: how could one suggest to newspaper editors in China or Taiwan the proper way to print names of Japanese people in newspapers and magazines?

One idea would be to print the proper kanji or hanzu, and then follow that with a romaji of the proper name. For example, 中島美嘉 (Nakashima Mika). That way, readers overseas in Chinese-speaking countries could learn the proper names of Japanese singers, actors, politicians.

When I recently asked a Taiwanese woman if she knew the Japanese singer and actress Mika Nakashima, she said she didn’t know her. When I showed her the kanji of the name, she said: “Oh, Chung Dao Mei-chia, sure I know her! I just didn’t know her Japanese name.”

[Names of Westerners in China and Taiwan are romanized in print and pronounced correctly. Sort of. Sounded out. But Japanese names are always pronounced and read incorrectly. Oh, and Korean names, too.]

Any suggestions?

Other names that Taiwanese and Chinese do not know include: Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe, Beat Takeshi, Haruki Murakami, the Empress, you name it.